Similarities Between Hawthorne and Emerson

Naga Musaed
Professor Filer
Literature
04/3/19
Hawthorne and Similarities Between the Writings of Hawthorne and
Emerson
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a popular American novelist, short story writer and a dark
romantic. His works are considered a part of the Dark Romantic movement, as they mainly
focused the sins of the human beings and other evils of mankind. Ralph Waldo Emerson was
an American writer who was known to lead the transcendentalist movement of the 19th
century. Both these authors have writings which are like each other.
The purpose of this essay is to determine in what manner are there similarities
between the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
When one compares the ideas of Hawthorne and Emerson and the similarities that
they talk about in their stories, it is seen that both the authors talk about human existence in
one way or another. One of the most important aspect of human existence that is being
explored in both of their novels and stories is the ever-going tension between an individual’s
intellect and his/her emotions. As stated by Khojastehpour (16) this is one of the major
themes that is being explored in the stories of Hawthorne and Emerson. For instance, in

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stories like “Young Goodman Brown” and “Rappachini’s Daughter”, the readers find that
Hawthorne has stated ambivalence in the stories which id related to the society, as the author
himself states that the society is conspiring against the human beings in one form or another.
Similarly, the readers find that the author Hawthorne although in his story “Nature” considers
nature to be the equivalent of his heart, but at the same he does not hesitate to explain that
nature does not have a soul of its own. This is a perfect example of theme of conflict between
the intellect and the emotion that is so common among the human beings.
The second theme that the readers find common among the writings of Hawthorne
and Emerson are the fact that human nature is mostly corrupted by science. As stated by Tao
(20), this is another important theme that the readers can find in the works by these two
authors. Emerson, being known to be a Transcendentalist, always believed nature to hold
more power over science. I t is exactly these reasons that in the story “Rappachini’s
Daughter”, the readers find Dr. Rappachini violate the human laws by injecting poison into
his daughter to prevent her from requiring the basic human needs. Thus, this is another of the
reasons that the reader finds the stories of Emerson and Hawthorne similar in a lot of aspects.
The third aspect that the reader links the similarity between the writings of Hawthorne
and Emerson is the theme of society conspiring against the human beings. This theme is most
prominent in the beliefs of Ralph Waldo Emerson in “Self Reliance” as he himself states that
the society is like a joint stock company where the members agree to share their activities
with each other only to be sacrificed to the needs of the leader of the society. This theme is