| Nathaniel Hawthorne's sense of the comic makes a subtle, complex contribution to the tone of his works. His recognition of comic incongruities--particularly the discrepancy between a character's self-estimate and an estimate by a disinterested observer--creates contrasts of celebration, satire, and pathos. Hawthorne's comedy repeatedly raises questions about the significance of individuals' sufferings. But Hawthorne's view is not encompassed by either romantic ideas of humor and pathos or modern absurdist comic visions. Rather, he follows a personal, psychological path in which he explores whether a better response to human struggles is tears or laughter.; Fanshawe, "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," and "Young Goodman Brown" demonstrate Hawthorne's early discovery of his approach to comedy. The gloomy Fanshawe stands in contrast to the spirit of farce elsewhere in the romance, but the depictions of Robin and of Goodman Brown contain an ambivalent mixture of comedy and tragedy, as do the stories' depictions of unruly representatives of adult authority. Other tales--"The Canterbury Pilgrims," "The Great Carbuncle"--contrast the innocence of young couples with satirical portraits of older egoists and depict the deepening of the young peoples' love. Other tales, such as "Wakefield," expand the depiction of the egoist, while "The Celestial Railroad" and "Earth's Holocaust" satirize public follies. Comedy in the tales culminates in the contrast between Ethan Brand's view of himself as a tragic figure and the comic assemblage surrounding him.; The major romances allow for sustained comic views. In "The Custom-House" Hawthorne casts himself as a sympathetic comic figure, and The Scarlet Letter casts a varying satiric light on the woes of its characters. The House of the Seven Gables contains Hawthorne's achieved comic vision, an affirmative view based on a full exploration of comedy and tragedy. The Blithedale Romance and The Marble Faun combine satire with a new comic-psychological characterization in Coverdale and Kenyon and reach towards a new affirmative vision. |
