UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

Thomas R. Mitchell

A fresh look at Nathaniel Hawthorne's relationship with Margaret Fuller

This book explores the deeply emotional yet enigmatic relationship between two nineteenth-century American writers, showing how Margaret Fuller's radical ideas about women's rights, equality of the sexes, and the nature of marriage influenced Nathaniel Hawthorne's writing.

Drawing on recently published letters and journals, Thomas R. Mitchell describes how Julian Hawthorne's mis-representation of his father's relationship with Fuller destroyed her literary reputation, promoted Hawthorne as a defender of conservative values, and continues to obscure the depth of Hawthorne's personal and intellectual involvement with her. Mitchell concludes that far from being repulsed by Fuller and her assertiveness—as many scholars have claimed—Hawthorne experienced with her perhaps the most intimate relationship that he ever had with a woman, his wife alone excepted.

Blending biography, cultural history, and literary and psychological analysis, Hawthorne's Fuller Mystery raises provocative questions about the origins and intent of Hawthorne's greatest works and offers compelling new readings of "Rapaccini's Daughter," The Scarlet Letter, The Blithe-dale Romance, and The Marble Faun.

"Mitchell does an excellent job of establishing the possibility that Hawthorne's 'fictional engagement' with Fuller was indeed both considerable and complex. His book is a tour de force of feminist readings, as it proceeds from work to work with an admirable imaginative boldness."

Joan von Mehren, author of Minerva and the Muse: A Life of Margaret Fuller
"This book appears at just the right moment to stir up tremendous excitement among academics and readers who are interested in cultural controversy and reform in nineteenth-century America. Hawthorne's Fuller Mystery will create one of the largest splashes of any academic study in recent decades."

Buford Jones, coeditor of Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews

Thomas R. Mitchell teaches at Laredo Community College.

Literary Studies / Women's Studies
336 pp.
LC 98-26696
$45.00s cloth, ISBN 1-55849-170-8
1998

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