Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ancestors were the very men who put the accused to death in the famous Salem Witch Trials. Hawthorne was very embarrassed to be the descendant of such people, so he clearly showed his distaste of Puritan customs and culture in his writings. As an example, in The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel revealed his repugnance at the ancient ancestors that put innocent people to death for witchery, as it is shown in the book in a symbolic way with his characters, such as Matthew Maule. Nathaniel was not a transcendentalist, but was definitely influenced by the transcendentalists of his time, while he was himself a Dark Romantic, just like other famous writers in his time, including Edgar
Allen Poe and Lord Byron, among others. Nathaniel was born in Salem, Massachusetts,
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Perhaps this is why throughout many of Hawthorne’s books we find he wrote in a bad view of the Puritans, their somewhat superstitious practices, and so forth that exhibited the bad taste in their religion, in his opinion. It greatly embarrassed Hawthorne to be their descendant and dramatically affected what he would wrote about in his stories throughout his life, that are known to this day as great exhibits of American Romanticism.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, as said previously, was a descendant of one of the judges