NATHANNIEL HAWTHORNE 4

He recovered what Puritans professed but seldom practiced, the spirit of piety, humility, and tragedy in the face of the inscrutable ways of God”, Hence in “The minister’s Black Veil”, “young Goodman Brown” Brown” and other stories, Hawthorne told of the universal sinfulness of mankind. In The Scarlet Letter, of the need by the sinner for both penance and penitence; in The Marble Faun, of the genesis of sin; and in other narratives, of other aspects of sin and its expiation.
To develop his themes, Hawthorne cultivated a unique technique. As a boy, he had become acquainted with the writings of some of the great allegorists. Basing his method on suggestions derived from his reading of these authors, he located his stories, as he said, “In a neutral territory, somewhere between the real work and fairy land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet and each imbue itself with the other.