NATHANNIEL HAWTHORNE 3

This theme, like others, is based on beliefs derived from Hawthorne’s own experiences. Another interest of Hawthorne’s which is important in his fiction was in the nature of sin and atonement. . His Italian travels furnished details utilized in the Marble Faun (1860).

During a period when many intellectuals in New England were Unitarians or Transcendentalists, Hawthorne tended to find validity in beliefs which many of his contemporaries had rejected; the beliefs of his puritan ancestors. Although not a formal convert to Calvinism, this author, as Prof. Herbert W.Schneider remarked in the puritan Mind, “saw the empirical truth behind the Calvinist symbols.