Yet the general
conception, and the mode of drawing out the story and of illustrating
the characters, is dramatic in a high degree. The author's exegesis of
the moods of his persons is brief, suggestive, restrained; and,
notwithstanding the weight of moral meaning which the whole work
carries, it is impossible to determine how much the movement of events
is affected by his own will, or by that imperious perception of the
necessary outcome of certain passions and temperaments, which influences
novelists of the higher order.
As a demonstration of power, it seems to me that this first extended
romance was not outdone by its successors; yet there is a harshness in
its tone, a want of mitigation, which causes it to strike crudely on the
aesthetic sense by comparison with those mellower productions. This was
no doubt fortunate for its immediate success. Hawthorne's faith in pure
beauty was so absolute as to erect at first a barrier between himself
and the less devout reading public. If in his earlier tales he had not
so transfused tragedy with the suave repleteness of his sense of beauty,
he might have snatched a speedier popular recognition. It is curious to
speculate what might have been the result, had he written "The House of
the Seven Gables" before "The Scarlet Letter." Deep as is the tragic
element in the former, it seems quite likely that its greater gentleness
of incident and happier tone would have kept the world from discovering
the writer's real measure, for a while longer.
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