Paper topics for Hawthorne and Crafts

Due: Friday, October 24, 4 p.m., Cushing-Martin 134

Choose one of the following topics and write a 5-7 page paper. You may also devise your own topic, as long as you clear it with me first.

1) Analyze the garden in The House of the Seven Gables. Hawthorne describes it as, among other things, a new Eden; an antidote to the crumbling house; a locus of magic and imagination. Choose one set of images to discuss in detail.

2) Discuss the role of the townspeople in The House of the Seven Gables. Why is this “haunted” house set in the midst of a bustling town and not on a lonely hill in the middle of nowhere? What contrasts is Hawthorne drawing? You might examine specific characters like the cookie-buying little boy, the man on the train, or Uncle Venner; or you might consider the town itself as a character.

3) Analyze the role of Hawthorne’s narrator(s) in Seven Gables. His third-person narrator often speaks in a personal voice, and with a tone that veers from melodramatic to mocking. Who do we imagine the narrator to be, and why does Hawthorne choose such a distinctive style? How could we compare his narrator to the other major storyteller in the novel, Holgrave, who takes over an entire chapter as narrator, and mesmerizes Phoebe in the process? What is the meaning of narration for Hawthorne?

5) Choose one or more houses to examine in either The House of the Seven Gables or The Bondwoman’s Narrative. How do different architectural forms (cottages, mansions, ruins, slave quarters) shape the experiences of the characters? What correspondences can you find between the physical structures of the houses and other sorts of structures: narrative/plot structure; psychological states; systems of secrets and knowledge, etc.? Do not attempt to account for all architectural examples, but choose one major or a few more minor cases to study in detail.

6) Analyze the role of doubles, doppelgangers, and repetitions in either Seven Gables or Bondwoman. You might choose doubled characters, doubled events, doubled settings, doubled structures. Why do the authors create these doubles? Why are doppelgangers (the German word for a ghostly double of a living person) so creepy? What do they tell us about the status of past and present? In Crafts’s case, what might doubling have to do with the conditions of slavery?

7) Discuss Hannah’s changing attitudes toward ghosts and the supernatural in The Bondwoman’s Narrative. For most of the novel, she exhibits skepticism toward the supernatural, but towards the end of the novel she grows more superstitious. Why does she undergo this transformation?

8) Analyze the role of marriage in The Bondwoman’s Narrative. Hannah seems to reject the idea of marriage for most of the novel; her impending marriage to a field slave sends her running for freedom; and her sudden happy marriage closes the novel. How do we interpret her attitude toward marriage? What does marriage represent for her, and how is it connected to issues of slavery and freedom? Why is she so repulsed by marriage to a fellow slave?

9) Perform a reading of the “happy ending” in either novel. Why do things fall into place so suddenly in both novels? Why don’t Hawthorne and Crafts devote more time to these major plot twists? To what extent are these endings really happy, and how do the novels define that happiness? Some might read the happy ending might as a conservative narrative move—a retreat to the familiar. Do you agree?

10) How does The Bondwoman’s Narrative use and revise The House of the Seven Gables? Be sure not to just list similarities and differences, but to analyze particular plot elements, characters, settings, or techniques in detail. Why might Crafts have been drawn to Hawthorne’s story? What themes do the stories have in common, and how/why does Crafts apply them to the context of her fictionalized slave narrative?