... but its fantastical elements and jarring juxtaposition of styles made it a critical and commercial disappointment. The successes, "Redburn" (1849) and "White-Jacket," (1850) returned to the style that had made Melville famous, but neither work expanded the author's reputation. In the summer of 1850, under the influence of Nathaniel Hawthorne's, "The Scarlet Letter," Melville bought the Arrowhead farm near Pittsfield so that he ... His paired sketch, "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids," combines cunning social criticism and psychological insight. He wrote perhaps a do...

• Word Count: 2748
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography

... Hawthorne. This novel does not deal so much with witches as it does with the Black Man, which "is a traditional American name for the Devil."44 In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne commits adultery with Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. She is discovered and forced to wear a mark of shame, the scarlet letter A, on her dress for the rest of her life. Soon Mr. Prynne, her presumed-dead husband, returns to discover ... deep attraction to horror and gothic writing.56 His four major novels, Wieland or The Transformation, Arthur Mervyn, Ormond, and Edgar Huntly, are deeply influenced by early Engli...

• Word Count: 3126
• Approx Pages: 13
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School