Miss K and Nathaniel Hawthorne

I had a lot of odd English teachers in high school—but I think we all did. It’s just a profession for the odd, and therefore interesting. One of them acted out The Odyssey for us rather than having us read it. She was amazing. Another made us color in little circles she called “Thought Dots” and tried to steal credit for my West Virginia Young Writer’s story (Which would’ve been fine, but the credit totally belonged to my mother). She was pretty lame. My AP English teacher used to make fun of us when we didn’t get something, and when I told her I’d written my test essay on Hesse’s Siddhartha, she just said, “You would!” This was not a compliment. She was hilarious.

But there was this one teacher…

In WV, at least when I was in school many moons ago, American Lit was tenth grade. My tenth grade teacher was therefore entrusted with Stephen Crane, Washington Irving, Thomas Paine, etc.—some of my favorite stuff today. But there was one author she really made me hate. Nathaniel Hawthorne.

We never read The Scarlet Letter, precisely. She gave us a page full of summaries of each chapter, and she had us summarize the summaries. When my brother had her class four years later, she was still employing this beastly tactic, and I’ve no doubt that she had done for countless generations preceding me. She’d been there forever. How many generations of Brooke High students now hate Hawthorne because of this torture?

Still, I love a nice Gothic Romance, so when my mother offered me The House of the Seven Gables and assured me it was brilliant, I thought, okay, I’ll have it. A month later it was still untouched, but watching the History Channel (I love it. Way too much.) one night I found a documentary on the Salem Witch Trials. I saw that Hawthorne’s great great grandfather was the presiding judge at these “trials”, and Hawthorne (who changed his name from Hathorne, to disassociate himself with said judge) wrote the book to exorcise what he saw as a curse on his family.

That was all I needed. I picked it up the next day and started reading. Miss K, tenth grade English, you did us a disservice by not having us read this book. It’s wonderful!

There’s an afterward in my addition by Henry James, which plays the part of an apology in a way. Hawthorne’s characters are very 2-D, they’re types more than people. But his setting is anything but flat. The man’s powers of description, while they’re extremely over-used to our modern eyes, to the point of being Dickens-like tirades on the qualities of a single chair, are truly brilliant. The book is like a painting; one of those portraits by Hals where every single stroke that went into it is evident and awe-inspiring, which makes the whole that much more interesting. (Hm, I can’t stop being an art historian, apparently. Imagine that.)

In retrospect, I suppose it might be a little laborious for a high school kid to read that kind of thing. It takes a definite appreciation for imagery and craft, in a way, and I’m not sure I would’ve been bothered. But on the other, some high school kids enjoy the act of reading more than others. She could’ve at least given us a chance, right?

It’s okay, Miss K. I loved you anyhow.

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