From Margaret B. Moore’s The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne.  University of Missouri Press, p. 131.

 

. . . The disappearance of the Indian may have been inevitable, but he [Hawthorne] deplored the sometime cruelty of the white man--or woman.  In "The Duston Family" it is Mrs. Duston, not the Indian, who is seen as the cruelest.  Hawthorne's portrayal of the Indian as savage and wild, even though sometimes surpassed by the cruelty of the settlers, especially women, was in contrast to some of the writings of that time. . . .

As the role of Mrs. Duston might suggest, another issue of the day was that of the place of women, and particularly the proper education they should have.

 

 

 

 

 

Source:  Moore, Margaret B.  The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne.  Columbia:  U of Missouri P, 1998.