On Hawthorne's Calvinist Inclination

Nathaniel Hawthorne enjoys a high reputation in American literature. In the eyes of his contemporaries, he represented the most accomplished American storyteller and novelist. In spite of his ambivalence toward Calvinism of the American past, especially that of his own ancestors, his artistic imagination, creative consciousness, and conscience was conditioned by Calvinism. Particularly, Calvinist dogmas of total depravity and predestination prevail throughout his art so that beneath his lucidity of style there is his Calvinist inclination that illuminates the moral nature of his roles and decides his aesthetic distance between the narrator and the characters.In this paper, a study of Hawthorne's Calvinist inclination is made from the perspectives of the American Puritan legacy, the Calvinist background of New England, and the Calvinist influences upon Hawthorne in his life and in his work. The Scarlet Letter, his masterpiece is employed as the chief illustration of Hawthorne's Calvinist inclination.