Fanshawe — Context and Discussion

(0 User reviews) 291

In Category - Science Fiction Utopias

Authors: Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2004 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 44,259

Reading time 193 min

Text sections 4

The source record for Fanshawe — Context and Discussion measures this digital text at 44,259 words, 3 hr 13 min estimated reading time, and 4 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 21.6 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #7085

Hawthorne's first romance, set at Harley College, follows the reserved scholar Fanshawe and the entangled fates of Ellen, Dr. Melmoth, and a mysterious stranger. The opening chapters establish a secluded academic world, a tense household, and a hinted elopement, all rendered in the author's early, ornate style.

Editorial Edition Score 4.6/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg7085

Read the Text

This was a proposition that Dr. Melmoth did not choose to dispute; though he perhaps thought that his long and successful experience in the education of the other sex might make him an able coadjutor to his wife in the care of Ellen Langton. He determined to journey in person to the seaport where his young charge resided, leaving the concerns of Harley College to the direction of the two tutors. Mrs. Melmoth, who, indeed, anticipated with pleasure the arrival of a new subject to her authority, threw no difficulties in the way of his intention. To do her justice, her preparations for his journey, and the minute instructions with which she favored him, were such as only a woman's true affection could have suggested. The traveller met with no incidents important to this tale; and, after an absence of about a fortnight, he and Ellen alighted from their steeds (for on horseback had the journey been performed) in safety at his own door.

If pen could give an adequate idea of Ellen Langton's loveliness, it would achieve what pencil (the pencils, at least, of the colonial artists who attempted it) never could; for, though the dark eyes might be painted, the pure and pleasant thoughts that peeped through them could only be seen and felt. But descriptions of beauty are never satisfactory. It must, therefore, be left to the imagination of the reader to conceive of something not more than mortal, nor, indeed, quite the perfection of mortality, but charming men the more, because they felt, that, lovely as she was, she was of like nature to themselves.

From the time that Ellen entered Dr. Melmoth's habitation, the sunny days seemed brighter and the cloudy ones less gloomy, than he had ever before known them. He naturally delighted in children; and Ellen, though her years approached to womanhood, had yet much of the gayety and simple happiness, because the innocence, of a child. She consequently became the very blessing of his life,--the rich recreation that he promised himself for hours of literary toil. On one occasion, indeed, he even made her his companion in the sacred retreat of his study, with the purpose of entering upon a course of instruction in the learned languages. This measure, however, he found inexpedient to repeat; for Ellen, having discovered an old romance among his heavy folios, contrived, by the charm of her sweet voice, to engage his attention therein till all more important concerns were forgotten.

With Mrs. Melmoth, Ellen was not, of course, so great a favorite as with her husband; for women cannot so readily as men, bestow upon the offspring of others those affections that nature intended for their own; and the doctor's extraordinary partiality was anything rather than a pledge of his wife's. But Ellen differed so far from the idea she had previously formed of her, as a daughter of one of the principal merchants, who were then, as now, like nobles in the land, that the stock of dislike which Mrs. Melmoth had provided was found to be totally inapplicable. The young stranger strove so hard, too (and undoubtedly it was a pleasant labor), to win her love, that she was successful to a degree of which the lady herself was not, perhaps, aware. It was soon seen that her education had not been neglected in those points which Mrs. Melmoth deemed most important. The nicer departments of cookery, after sufficient proof of her skill, were committed to her care; and the doctor's table was now covered with delicacies, simple indeed, but as tempting on account of their intrinsic excellence as of the small white hands that made them. By such arts as these,--which in her were no arts, but the dictates of an affectionate disposition,--by making herself useful where it was possible, and agreeable on all occasions, Ellen gained the love of everyone within the sphere of her influence.

Continue Reading →

Hawthorne's first published romance opens with a deliberately archaic flourish: the motto from Shakespeare and the naming of "Harley College" as a stand-in for a New England seminary. The narrator immediately signals the institution's decline—"few candidates for the degrees" and two commencements without any baccalaureates—while the prose itself is formal, periodic, and slightly self-conscious. The introductory note (added later) frames the work as a youthful experiment, one the author tried to suppress. Readers encountering Fanshawe for the first time should note how the narrator's voice oscillates between earnest description and ironic detachment, a tension that persists through the early chapters.

The College as a Character

The opening chapter devotes considerable space to the setting: "an ancient though not very populous settlement, in a retired corner of one of the New England States." Harley College is described as having "claims to reverence on the score of age" despite its obscurity. The narrator dwells on its isolation and dwindling reputation, creating a mood of faded grandeur. This is not merely backdrop; the college's decline mirrors the constrained lives of its inhabitants. Dr. Melmoth, the president, is introduced through his correspondence with learned men, and his household—particularly his wife's sharp tongue—is rendered with a mix of humor and precision. The physical campus is sketched only in outline, but its psychological weight is felt. Readers should watch how the setting shapes the characters' choices, especially Fanshawe's own withdrawn nature.

Voices in Collision

A key early scene dramatizes a domestic tussle over a newspaper article. Dr. Melmoth reads a long letter aloud while Mrs. Melmoth tries to share news of a shipwreck. The narrator presents their competing voices in a comic counterpoint: the doctor's learned abstractions versus the dame's shrill insistence. The passage is notable for its precise rendering of interruption and tone—"the doctor's lungs were deep and strong, and victory seemed to incline toward him"—until Mrs. Melmoth deploys "a tone whose peculiar shrillness" silences him. This moment reveals Hawthorne's early interest in power dynamics within marriage and the clash between scholarly detachment and domestic urgency. The shipwreck report, naming the brig Ellen, foreshadows a plot thread involving the character Ellen, but the excerpts do not confirm a direct link.

Ellen and the Threat of Elopement

Mrs. Melmoth's suspicion that Ellen "would have been enticed away long ere this, for the sake of her money" introduces a central anxiety: the vulnerability of a young woman in a secluded setting. Dr. Melmoth's private knowledge that "an elopement had been plotted, and partly carried into execution" adds dramatic irony. The excerpts do not reveal the plotter's identity or the outcome, but the tension is established through oblique references and the guarded dialogue between the Melmoths. The breakfast scene, with its silence and interrupted conversation, underscores the household's unspoken conflicts. Readers should note how Hawthorne withholds information, letting the reader infer danger from the characters' evasions and the narrator's knowing asides.

The Scholar Fanshawe

Fanshawe himself appears only briefly in the excerpts, but his character is hinted at through the introductory note's speculation that Hawthorne "intended, through the character of Fanshawe, to present some faint projection of what he then thought might be his own obscure history." The novel's title, and the fact that it is his first romance, suggests that Fanshawe is the focal point. Yet the early chapters devote more attention to the Melmoth household and the college setting. This imbalance may reflect Hawthorne's inexperience or a deliberate strategy of delayed introduction. The excerpts do not show Fanshawe in action, so readers must rely on the framing and the atmosphere of withdrawal and secrecy to form an initial impression. The scholar's name itself—suggesting "fancy" or "fantasy"—may hint at his role as a dreamer.

As you read Fanshawe, attend to the narrator's shifting tone—sometimes mock-heroic, sometimes tender—and the way small domestic details (a newspaper, a letter, a tone of voice) carry larger implications. The novel is brief, but its language rewards close attention. Hawthorne's later mastery of allegory and psychological depth is here in embryonic form, visible in the careful construction of setting and the charged silences between characters.

I finished Fanshawe feeling that strange quiet after a storm, where the world seems hushed. It made me think of wandering through notes, sitting with someone else’s thoughts about Under the Storm — Reading Notes. There’s a shared tenderness there, a way of holding onto moments that feel too fragile to name aloud.