Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition

Nathaniel Hawthorne is notorious for complaining in a letter to one of his publishers that a "damn'd mob of scribbling women" was stealing his audience. Elsewhere, he referred to women authors as "ink-stained Amazons" who were "without a single exception, detestable", and once expressed his wish that all women be "forbidden to write, on pain of having their faces deeply scarified with an oyster-shell".

This collection of original essays presents a more complex and positive view of Hawthorne's attitudes toward women, demonstrating his recognition of the crucial role that women played -- as critics, reviewers, readers, and authors -- in building a national readership that male his writing career so successful.