earticle

영어

Any investigation of the quest for a new destination in antebellum American fiction must confront the complex treatment of such impulses in the fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne, for no other author of the period more instinctively or pervasively set his fiction within the framework of the Edenic paradigm. As R. W. B. Lewis notes, Hawthorne “more than any other contemporary exploited the active metaphor of the American Adam—before and during and after the Fall” (111). Although his writings seldom include the idealized landscapes occurring in Cooper’s fiction, Hawthorne’s
frequent use of Edenic allusion and the pervasive presence in his fiction of gardens and natural settings suggest his attraction to and fascination with the Edenic paradigm as a means of examining and expressing American experience. However, throughout Hawthorne’s fiction, he shows us his strong distrust of the attainability of an Edenic existence. His most powerful fiction, as well as much of his minor work, portrays various kinds of falls from paradise as a new destination. His protagonists often fail to achieve the paradisal potential of their settings not only because of their naivety but also because of their moral and mental failures. His works have often been seen to depict the traditional fall with characters moving from ignorance to knowledge, yet one of the lessons his characters usually learn is that their knowledge is limited—a lesson which often causes them to abandon their paradisal settings and hopes.