Raymond Steding
Professor ---
English ---
May 31, 2016
 |
| Nathaniel Hawthorne |
Nathanial Hawthorne’s “Old Esther Dudley” published in “The United States Magazine and Democratic Review” (Jan. 1839) satirizes the opposition to the then ten-year-old Democratic party. The opening page of the “Review” highlights the latest New York election over the previous one by stating that “[t]he majority by which the Whigs then swept the State has been reduced between five and six thousand. The aggregate Democratic vote has been increased by upwards of forty-two thousand” (Hawthorne 3). In support of Democrats over the Whig Party, and in the style of a Hawthornian romance, “Old Esther Dudley” offers a politically didactic lesson allegorically through tone, satiric imagery, and subtle allusions to associate the Whig Party with Loyalists (Hawthorne 51). Although “Old Esther Dudley” aligns its political argument within the larger context of the “Review,” the story contains elements of a moral purpose which Hawthorne reveals eleven years later in his “Preface to The House of the Seven Gables.” Therein, he says that “the wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones . . . [and] becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief” (Hawthorne Preface). And further, that he will be pleased to convince his reader of the folly of those that seek “ill-gotten gold, or real estate, on the heads of an unfortunate posterity” (Hawthorne Preface). Hawthorne’s moral in “Old Esther Dudley” brings about an awareness that political ideologies may change, Loyalists may metamorphosize into Whigs, but unless people stop enriching themselves at the expense of others injustice goes on much the same.
An allegory to uncontrollable mischief that attempts to transcend generations is textualized through Esther’s desire to have her memories of colonialism restored by a return of the colonies to English rule. The English Governor Sir William Howe of the Province-House describes Esther “as being so perfect a representative of the decayed past--of an age gone by, with its manners, opinions, faith and feelings, all fallen into oblivion or scorn--or what had once been a reality, but was now merely a vision of faded magnificence” (Hawthorne 54). Esther as an allegory for decayed colonial ideals represents the past: “a symbol of a departed system embodying a history in her person” (Hawthorne 55). Thus, although the system that is symbolized by Esther is separated by time, the history of it remains in the present through her. The tone of the text conjures up a kind of spooky mischief since the past should not be alive in the present. The narrator states that although her “hope ever seemed to fit around her, still it was memory in disguise” (Hawthorne 54). Esther’s hope depends on her memories of experiences within a life lived from the excesses of English colonialism. According to the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, “if we want to point to the decay, we use “‘memory.’” Esther’s hope in the return of grand life lived under colonialism--a life of grandeur at the expense and taxation of others--brings the decaying process forward into the future. Her hope is analogous to a desire that brings with it out of the past processes of decay.
The narrator, in keeping with the theme of decaying processes entering into new forms, recites a story of old Esther’s “most frequent and favored guests . . . the children of the town” (Hawthorne 55). He states: “[b]y bribes of gingerbread of her [Esther’s] own making, stamped with a royal crown, she tempted their sunny sportiveness beneath the gloomy portal of the gloomy Province-House . . . [she would tell them] her stories of a dead world” (Hawthorne 55). The word portal means gateway or entrance, and it is a gloomy entranceway to the gloomy seat of English colonial power at the end of the revolutionary war. As a motif that appears five times within the story, the portal acts as a location where the activities that take place there symbolize the processes of the decaying past as those processes make their way into the future. It is here in the portal where Esther gives the children tasty treats while she entertains them with stories of her idealized past. Contrary to the haunting scenario of the text, Esther’s character never appears malevolent. When the child returns home, the mother says “to the little boy. ‘And did you really see [Governor Belcher] at the Province-House?’ ‘Oh yes, dear mother! Yes!’ the half dreaming child would answer” (Hawthorne 56). The text continues: innocently enough, “without affrighting her little guests, she [Esther] led them by the hand into the chambers of her own desolate heart, and made childhood’s fancy discern the ghost that haunted there” (Hawthorne 56). The child-like tone of the text contrasts with the narrator’s stark conclusions to imply that agents (such as Esther) of the transference of idolization of wealth that pass from one generation to the next are unconscious and therefore innocent of the associated human costs.
The difficulty of writing a story that attempts to persuade a reader of a moral purpose is that it must confront the dark side of the reader’s personality enough for them to see right from wrong without offending them. Since morality can only exist within the individual constituents of a political party, if the text is to make a moral argument against the desire for excessive wealth, then it must confront the selfish desire for wealth which nearly every reader has. The narrator states that “[i]t took no small nerve [on the part of the new authorities] to look her [Esther] in the face” (Hawthorne 54). The implication of the text is that in making a political argument to its readers, the “new authorities” equate with the Republican-Democrats of 1776 but at the same time less directly to its readers. It will take no small nerve on their parts to look at the bloody greed behind the excesses of colonialism that Esther innocently idealizes, as being alive and well in themselves, and it will take no small nerve to see that projecting an excessive desire for wealth on to political opponents does anything more than make one self-righteous. Appropriately enough, a mirror, a device used to look at oneself, allows colonialists to appear in “the inner world of the mirror with shadows of old life” (Hawthorne 54). The mirror brings these old attitudes held by the colonialists into the Province House, which is now under the rule of new authorities. Presumably the shadows of old life will not assault the reader like the shadow of the Province-House that “flings its shadow on the loiterer in its courtyard” (Hawthorne 51), but instead allow the reader to comfortably project their greediness onto their political opponents and yet cause them enough awareness to question whether or not their political choices are being driven by desires for excess wealth.
Although Hawthorne provides a moral, he does not want “to impale the story (House of the Seven Gables) with its moral, as with an iron rod” (Hawthorne Preface). And, within “Old Esther Dudley” he employs various techniques within in his style of romance to teach a subtle moral lesson to his reader. The way that the romance novel comes under the romantic definition according to the author “lies in the attempt to connect a by-gone time with the very present that is flitting away from us. It is a legend, prolonging itself, from an epoch now gray in the distance, down into our own broad day-light.” He goes on to say that “the reader, according to his pleasure, may either disregard, or allow it [the stories legendary mist] to float almost imperceptibly about the characters and events for the sake of a picturesque effect” (Hawthorne Preface). One such example of the author’s romantic style follows:
And, punctually as the clock of the Old South told twelve, came the shadows of . . . all the grandees of a bygone generation, gliding beneath the portal into the well-known mansion, where Esther mingled with them as if she likewise were a shade. Without vouching for the truth of such traditions, it is certain that Mistress Dudley sometimes assembled a few of the staunch, though crest-fallen old tories, who had lingered in the rebel town during those days of wrath and tribulation. (101)
The above passage indicates a time of communion between a ghostly bygone generation, or between crest-fallen old tories that are real. The truth of the matter is not as important to the text as is the effect of the picturesque upon the reader’s perception of what happens to those that believe in a doomed political system.
Hawthorne’s narrator continues to describe a scene in the author’s style of romance writing that parallels a strikingly similar historical scene in 1766 that the biographer Harlow Unger explains. A comparison between Unger’s and Hawthorne’s depiction highlights the way the author’s style helps him reveal his lesson to his reader despite what others may consider historical fact. The historical record from “those days of wrath and tribulation” by Unger documents a time when John Hancock wins the repeal of the Stamp Act, and Royal Governor Bernard celebrates, believing that the repeal signified peace between England and the colonies: “At Province House, the governor’s mansion on Marlborough Street, Governor Benard celebrated Repeal Day with his Council by drinking His Majesty’s health, before stepping out courageously to mingle with the rest of Boston” (Unger 107-8). In contrast to such an honorable event, the romance style of Hawthorne’s narrator paints the Loyalist’s gathering in “Old Esther Dudley” as activities of treasonous has-beens:
Out of a cobwebbed bottle, containing liquor that a Royal Governor might have smacked his lips over, they quaffed healths to the King, and babbled treason to the Republic, feeling as if the protecting shadow of the throne were still flung around them. But, draining the last drops of their liquor, they stole timorously homeward, and answered not again, if the rude mob reviled them in the street. (Hawthorne 55)
Whether or not Hawthorne relied on the same source material as Unger, the differences in the two passages exemplify the extent to which Hawthorne’s style allowed his story to emphasize the temporality and impotence of those who idealize systems of governance.
Other formal elements of Hawthorne’s style such as the use of overstatement suggests absolute certainty to such a degree that it makes the pronouncements within the text imply their opposite. When Esther routinely watches out with hopes of seeing the return of a British ship, “the passengers in the street” would yell out to her, “‘When the golden Indian on the Province-House shall shoot his arrow, and when the cock on the Old South spire shall crow, then look for a Royal Governor again!’” (Hawthorne 57). The absurdity of an image such as a golden Indian or a metal rooster coming to life stands humorously juxtaposed to Esther’s undying faith. The irony of the statement is that the text suggests that an equivalent to a Royal Governor returns. When the narrator says that John Hancock, a New England merchant, trod [his foot] upon humbled royalty, as he ascended the steps of the Province-House, the people’s chosen Governor of Massachusetts,” a continuity in the sense of wealth inherited from the word “merchant” combines with a sense of power from the phrase “trod upon humbled royalty.” Thus, the text gives the impression that both wealth and power ascend under the rule of Hancock. The image stands in contrast with the subtlety of the last phrase “the people’s chosen Governor of Massachusetts” (Hawthorne 57). So it is with a touch of sarcasm, the text implies that both wealth and power begins to rule again.
The text makes other parallels between Hancock and Royalty. When Esther collapses upon the realization that Hancock is a traitor to the King, Hancock says to her, “Your life has been prolonged until the world has changed around you” (Hawthorne 58). Since Esther “is “a symbol of a departed system embodying a history in her person” (Hawthorne 55), and her “life has been prolonged until the world has changed around [her],” is it not possible that John Hancock will replace King George’s rule and continue similar practices under a new political system? The text makes the allusion that Hancock may become a king when the narration by General Howe says, “King George’s head on these golden guineas is sterling yet, and will continue so, I warrant you, even should the rebels crown John Hancock their king” (Hawthorne 53). The narrator’s statement of Howe suggests two meanings: an actual meaning that the guineas will retain their intrinsic value as gold despite a change in political systems, and an alluded to meaning that John Hancock as Governor will honor money like King George. A detailed description of what the historical John Hancock idealized comes from the opening pages of John Hancock: Merchant King and American Patriot by Harlow Giles Unger: “Hancock loved wealth. He reveled in it. He adorned all the foppish trappings it could buy: the fashionable wigs, frilled shirts, silk and velvet jackets and breeches” (Unger 1). The depiction of Hancock by Unger reveals that he idealized the parts of the English culture as much as any Loyalist.
The text further implicates Hancock as a Loyalist sympathizer when he stands in the portal of the Province-House with Esther, just before she collapses in death, and says to his entourage “let us reverence, for the last time, the stately and gorgeous prejudices of the tottering past!” The words, reverence, stately and gorgeous, have a tone of honorable admiration for what Hancock describes as prejudices --harmful actions--of a tottering past--a political system in decline. Hancock’s words to his men imply that the “stern republicans” honored the excesses of wealth as much as the Loyalists and the problem is not the desire for wealth but the decline of their system. The text's ironic portrayal of Hancock implies the authors moral. The imagery when Esther collapses between the pillars of the Province House portal and the key to falls from her hands suggests that Hancock replaces her function. They stand in the gloomy portal where decaying processes pass from one generation to the next, and it is there that Esther cries out her final plea “God save the King!” It is not difficult to imagine that readers would make the connection between King George and the Merchant King, John Hancock. Further, despite Hancock’s proclamation of “‘We are no longer children of the past!,’” he precedes his statement with “‘We will follow her [Esther] reverently to the tomb of her ancestors; and then, my fellow-citizens, onward--onward!’” (Hawthorne 59). Reverence for Esther implies reverence for the attitudes that she held for the English colonialists. The Hawthornian humor in Hancock’s statement “We are no longer children of the past” is that it is an ironic statement. The new rulers of America shall continue blind to their self-serving attitudes in the same historical way as the colonialists unless they become conscious of the greed that drives them onward.
A satire of the “stern republicans” (Hawthorne 55) who unknowingly carry forward under a new guise the same idealization of wealth as the English colonialists presents the readers of the US Magazine and Democratic Review with a humorous depiction of the founders of “America’s first political party, the Whigs” (Unger 87). The Whigs of 1768 became Republican-Democrats after the revolutionary war. The text connects Hancock to “stern republicans” through an unsaid but well-known fact that Hancock was a Whig. Thus, the text implies through understatement that the opponents of the Democratic Party of 1839 have the same drive for excessive wealth as the American Whigs of the 1760s had. The text suggests that the decaying processes brought forward through old Esther have continued through John Hancock into the-the United States political system and continue to exist within the aspirations of the Whig party of 1839.
“Old Esther Dudley” satirizes the Whig party of 1839 through Hawthorne’s form of romance story-telling which pulls the reader into political dialogue with the text. By taking the liberty of naming John Hancock as a republican rather than as an American Whig the narration allows the reader to associate Hancock to the Democratic Party’s opposition. Through the subtlety of the author’s romance, and through literary features such irony, tone, overstatement and understatement, the text gently confronts the desire for wealth within individuals to help them question whether or not their political party of choice will bring the change they desire. “Old Esther Dudley” is not simply a political satire but a lesson for all that support political parties to look into a mirror to see if their hope resides in the idealization of excess rather than in a political system.
Works Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Old Esther Dudley." Making of America: The United States
Magazine and Democratic Review: 1839 (Vol. 5-6). ebooks.library.cornell.edu. Web. 29 May 2016.
--.”Preface to The House of the Seven Gables.” etc.usf.edu. University of Southern Florida. Web. 29 May 2016.
Unger, Harlow Giles. John Hancock: Merchant King and American Patriot. New York:
John Wiley & Sons, 2000. Print
No comments:
Post a Comment