"Main-street" at the Hawthorne in Salem Site

As to be expected from such a fine site, Hawthorne in Salem provides several good starting-places for understanding what's at stake in Hawthorne's representation of American Indians in "Main-street," their introduction, related literature, critical commentary, and documents pages, in particular. I can't recommend this site highly enough for anyone looking to get up to speed on all matters Hawthornesque or to jump-start a Hawthorney research project.

A Tale of Two Stories

Astute readers of the CitizenSE Categories will have noticed that I've done as much "Old News" blogging as on Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" and Morrison's Beloved and far more than many other better-known works on the list. Well, I'm on a mission to do the same eventually for another equally obscure Hawthorne tale: "Main-street." Published in 1849, it's one of the few pieces he composed while working in the Salem Custom-House. Despite its humorous frame--the narrator presents an elaborate puppet show, a shifting panorama of historical scenes tracing the history of the main street of Salem, while two members of the audience offer criticisms of both his artistry and his history, until a wire snaps and the march of time comes to a halt--the story is quite ambitious. Not only does it survey the early history of colonial New England, from the days of Squaw Sachem and Wappacowet and the arrival of Roger Conant, the first settler in Naumkeag, to the Great Snow of 1717--stopping along the way to mark the arrival of noted colonists, changes in colonial architecture, shifts in settler-Indian relations, and such major events as King Philip's War and the Salem Witch Trials--it offers serious commentary on the rise and fall of the Puritan errand into the wilderness.

As "Main-street" marks a period in Hawthorne's career--during the 1850s he would turn to novel-length romances--it has received some attention from Hawthorne specialists, but not as much as I would have expected for its significance in his career. When it has been read, it has been read for Hawthorne's attitudes toward Puritan New England and particularly for his take on Puritan constructions of otherness (from Quakers to witches to Indians), as well as for his representation of the artist-audience relationship. It has been read, that is, as a kind of key to his earlier, more important tales of 17th century New England and as a metacommentary on their reception. Perhaps it is best known for the showman's judgment of New England Puritanism: "Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors; and let each successive generation thank him, not less fervently, for being one step further from them in the march of ages." But there is much more to the story than this.

The reason I give it so much attention in my manuscript is that its most perceptive readers have made a strong case that "Main-street" should not only be read for its construction of colonial Puritan history but also as a commentary on the politics as much as on the attitudes to art of Hawthorne's own times. Michael Colacurcio, for instance, has read the story as a sharp critique of popular notions of racial Anglo-Saxonism and American manifest destiny. I pair "Main-street" with "Old News," then, to raise questions about Hawthorne's racial politics in the 1830s and 1840s: how do his attitudes toward African Americans and American Indians relate? was he more "progressive" on Indian affairs than the peculiar institution--as willing to criticize Indian removals as he was abolitionism? what was his response to the ideology and mythology of the "vanishing American"? how does his fiction relate to his political Jacksonianism? In the course of answering such questions, I link "Main-street" to earlier tales and later novels, by Hawthorne and others.

Just as my pursuit of racial politics in "Old News" led me into considerations of racialized aesthetics, so, too, does my similar aim for "Main-street" lead me to examine Hawthorne's turn toward the panorama and the weather and its relation to similar moves by his contemporaries. In the manuscript, I'm trying to decide whether I have enough material and arguments for a stand-alone chapter or whether it belongs in the same chapter with "Old News." In my teaching, I'm curious as to whether my students see it as strengthening or weakening the case for considering Hawthorne as a postcolonial writer. So as the opportunity arises in the coming weeks, I'll share some of my new thinking and research on "Main-street."

And Now, By (an Absolute Lack of) Popular Demand...

...here's some more Mooninite blogging!

Shorter "The Devil in Manuscript": Artist's work blows up Boston. Who'da thunk it?

Shorter "A Virtuoso's Collection": E-Bay enthusiast shows off Lite Brite Mooninite he bought for a mere $2,147.69, among other detritus of American pop culture he's accumulated over his suspiciously long life. Just who is this guy?

Shorter "A Rill from the Town-Pump": Unconsciously self-parodying monologue from a 21st-C reformer who wants to ban guerrilla marketing. Because it's all about the temperance, baby!

Shorter "The Birth-mark": In attempting to remove the Mooninite Lite Brite arrays marring the fair face of Boston, and purge the nation of the trash culture that produced and enabled Aqua Teen Hunger Force, liberal homeland security hawks, the anti-corporate left, and wingnuts-in-training band together to purify American culture, which dies and goes to heaven thanking them for their efforts. "Was it all worth it?" those left behind are compelled to wonder.

Shorter "The May-pole of Merry Mount": In which the narrator appends a prefatory note stating that "the grave pages of our New England annalists the great pages of Blogoramaville have wrought themselves, almost spontaneously, into a sort of allegory," suggests in the tale's opening that "Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire," and proceeds to tell a satirical version of Paradise Lost and Comus that turns into a parody of the Mooninite blogspat and the larger culture wars of which it is a part. Features passages like this:

In due time, a feud arose, stern and bitter on one side, and as serious on the other as any thing could be among such light spirits as had sworn allegiance to the May-pole. The future complexion of New England was involved in this important quarrel. Should the grisly saints establish their jurisdiction over the gay sinners, then would their spirits darken all the clime, and make it a land of clouded visages, of hard toil, of sermon and psalm forever. But should the banner-staff of Merry Mount be fortunate, sunshine would break upon the hills, and flowers would beautify the forest, and late posterity do homage to the May-pole.

A mock on both your houses? Or a subtle questioning of the terms of the framing of the event? You make the call!

Shorter "Main-street": A blogger trying to produce an amusing yet significant history of L'Affaire Mooninite is forced to give up the effort when inundated by commenters questioning his methods and motives so voluminously that his site crashes.

Add the first on this list to your own list of Dan McCall's thought crimes, for his mention of "The Devil in Manuscript" in Citizens of Somewhere Else sparked it, so to speak. The rest are entirely my own responsibility, I'm sorry to say. And I can't guarantee that I'm done with this....

BTW, if you think you're going to get a Close Reading Tuesday post after this unprecedented two-a-day, well, just keep hoping!