Critical Commentary Related to Literary Links between Hawthorne and Melville
Critical Commentary Related to Literary Links between Hawthorne and Melville
Excerpts from Melville, Herman. "Hawthorne and
His Mosses". 1850. In these excerpts, Melville expresses his passionately
reverential response to Hawthorne's collection of short stories Mosses
from an Old Manse. In the course of doing so, he repeatedly refers to
the term mosses and compares the enigmatic Hawthorne to Shakespeare.
Excerpts from the lecture "Hawthorne and
Melville", by David B. Kesterson , from the section: Literary Interaction
and Influences: Melville's Reviews of Hawthorne's Works delivered in Salem,
Massachusetts, September 23, 2000, at the Phillips Library, Peabody Essex
Museum.
Excerpts from James R. Mellow's Nathaniel
Hawthorne in His Times Hawthorne biographer James R. Mellow examines
the internal evidence for the sexual tension between Coverdale and Hollingsworth
in The Blithedale Romance as a possible parallel for elements in the
personal relationship between Hawthorne and Melville.
Excerpts from Edwin Haviland Miller's Salem
Is My Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne Hawthorne biographer
Edwin Haviland Miller examines imagery in Melville's review of Hawthorne's
Mosses from an Old Manse as indicative of sexual tension in the personal
relationship between the two authors.
Excerpts from the lecture "The Meanings of Hawthorne's
Women," by Smith College Professor Richard H. Millington, presented at
the House of the Seven Gables Historic Site (Turner House), Salem, Massachusetts,
8 September 2000 Professor Millington's lecture "The Meanings of Hawthorne's
Women" connects most clearly with the relationship between Hawthorne and Melville
when he notes that "Melville's famous label-'Hawthorne: a Problem'-seems to
belong with special force to this whole question of identification with women-of
vicarious femininity or feminism in Hawthorne's work." While Millington necessarily
leaves open many of the questions that can be raised about his topic, he persuasively
shows that Hawthorne identified in many ways with women in his work whereas
he lacked any corresponding advocacy for women in the real world. The following
excerpts from Millington's lecture develop the concept of Hawthorne's "imaginary
femininity."
Excerpt from Hawthorne:
A Life
by Brenda Wineapple In this passage from Wineapple's 2003 biography
of Hawthorne, she discusses Melville's and Hawthorne's shared interest in
the sea but also contrasts "the coxswain…come back to tell all, striding off
the gangplank" with the writer who was a "dry-docked Custom House inspector
(223). (courtesy of Alfred
A. Knopf)
by Brenda Wineapple 
