Hawthorne
and Trump
Few
people read Nathaniel Hawthorne's first novel, the short romance Fanshawe (1828) in 2016. However melodramatic
and thin the book is, it is a key to problems treated in Hawthorne's
later fiction and to Donald Trump's whiteness.
Early American literature blackens the eyes and allows contemporary
readers to see better.
Henry
James noted that Hawthorne was not pleased with this early work, assigned it to
his boyish period, and eventually destroyed most copies of the first and only
edition. Hawthorne's technical skills
matured and reached perfection in his later works, but the themes introduced in
Fanshawe recurred throughout his
career and still resonate. Such critics
as Carl Bode and Millicent Bell made modest claims about the romance.
In a
1950 issue of New England Quarterly,
Bode asserted the book "makes the earliest announcement of one of his
greatest themes: that man must not cut himself off from man," and twelve
years later Bell suggested the theme was connected with Hawthorne's problem of
justifying the artist's way of life, because "art…is an isolating
occupation, which destroys the capacity for normal happiness." Scholars worked slowly in the old days and
were more forthcoming about the weaknesses
of art , and truly great artists did not rush to transform garbage into pabulum.
Read
attentively, Fanshawe reveals much
about Donald Trump. The protagonist Fanshawe is a prototype for such later Hawthorne characters as Dimmesdale, Aylmer,
Holgrave, and Kenyon; Butler, the
villain, seems to foreshadow Westervelt and the sinister Capuchin monk. The hidden gems in the romance are two
archetypal patterns: 1) a basic triadic
relationship and 2) woman as a tempering force capable of reinstating the
isolated male in the magnetic chain of humanity. These patterns fit Trump to a
"T." The more he speaks from
the three sides of his mouth, the more he reveals his being in need of a
woman's touch. The patterns mark the Trump discourse.
The
triadic relationship in Fanshawe
involves Fanshawe as the isolated scholar, Ellen Langton, and Edward
Walcott. Fanshawe has strong affections
for Ellen, but his dedication to the pursuit of knowledge is stronger than his
ability to love. He cannot give of
himself as freely as does his fellow student Edward. He rejects Ellen's love:
No, Ellen, we must
part now and forever. Your life will be
long and happy. Mine will be short….Think
that you scattered bright dreams around my pathway, -- an ideal happiness, that you would have
sacrificed your own to realize.
To make Ellen a victim in a marriage the way he is a victim
in his studies (Fanshawe mentions his studies have consumed the strength of his
heart) would be a greater sin than rejection.
Had Fanshawe had the strength to accept Ellen, she would have been his
guide to salvation:
Will it not be
happiness to form the tie that shall connect you to the world? to be your guide…to
the quiet paths from which your proud and lonely thoughts have estranged you?
Fanshawe is never united with normal humanity, nor is it
probable that Trump shall be so linked.
Fanshawe dies unfit for this world.
Four years later, Edward, disavowing his passions and pursuits, marries
Ellen.
Hawthorne
sprinkled similar themes and structures in The
Blithedale Romance, The Scarlet Letter, The Marble Faun, The House of Seven Gables, and several of his short
tales. Two triadic clusters operate in The Blithedale Romance: 1) Zenobia, Coverdale and Hollingsworth and
2) Priscilla, Coverdale, and Hollingsworth (if the last sentence of the novel
is reliable). The poet Coverdale is incapable of personal involvement with the problems of other characters
until Zenobia's suicide brings a shock of recognition. Only then can he confess his love for
Priscilla. Likewise, Hollingsworth is
blind to his error until in death Zenobia shows him what he must reform. Like
Fanshawe and Walcott, he and Hollingsworth are rivals, but Hawthorne was no
longer the boyish author, and he recognized the efficacy in a division of
labor. Woman must be split into light
(Priscilla) and dark (Zenobia) in order to normalize the men. How white of Hawthorne to arrive at such
wisdom; how white of Trump to realize that one wife is not sufficient.
Just as
Hawthorne used general qualities of Fanshawe the scholar-artist-idealist in
creating several his male characters,
Trump uses the qualities of the quintessential politician-pragmatist to create himself. A description of Fanshawe in his chamber
resembles a description of a future Trump in his penthouse:
He called up in review
the years, that, even at his early age, he had spent in solitary study, in
conversation with the dead, while he had
scorned to mingle with the living world, or to be actuated by any of its
motives. He asked himself to what
purpose was all this destructive labor, and where was the happiness of superior
knowledge. He had climbed but a few
steps of a ladder that reached to infinity: he had thrown away his life in
discovering, that, after a thousand such lives, he should still know
comparatively nothing.
It is only by virtue of triple-talk and postmodern ironies
that the analogy between Fanshawe and Trump remains intact. As far as we know
from public evidence, Trump has soaked in the living world and fully enjoys the
taste of money, and only a mesmeric eye permits us to see any kinship with
Fanshawe. But Hawthorne has long been a
mesmeric eye in American literature, and through his eye we see the odd value
of an adjusted question from Millicent
Bell: Is not the obsessive quest…possibly dehumanizing, even sinful, since apparently it leads to an
atrophy of the functions of affection and social responsibility?
Jerry W. Ward,
Jr.
February 18,
2016
