In an attempt to redeem his name and honor from the shame of William Hathorne and his son, John Hathorne's actions during the Salem Witchcraft trails, Nathaniel Hawthorne created a cast of characters in The Scarlett Letter who, through the course of the novel try to gain redemption for their own sins.
             Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804. He graduated from Bowden University in 1825 with Fanshawe (1828) nearly complete. During his college career, Hawthorne excelled in his composition courses and came out determined to become a fiction writer. His writing "life" began in 1837 when a friend secretly paid for the publishing of Twice-Told Tales. To learn more about writing he then undertook editorial work in Boston, and then transferred to a job in the Boston Custom House. Hawthorne then invested over one thousand dollars in the Brook Farm Community hoping that in a socialist society he would be able to combine the practical and the creative. He left about a year later disappointed and worse off than he was when he joined. At the ripe age of 38, he married Sophia Peabody of the famous Salem Peabody family. During which he compiled the works to make Mosses from an Old Manse (1846). After he was fired from the Custom House for political reasons, he returned to his craft and wrote one of his greatest romances, The Scarlett Letter. In this tale set in Puritan Boston, he created four unforgettable characters. Mixing his past with his literature, the cursed Hathornes become the cursed Pyncheons in The House of Seven Gables, declining from wealth and prominence to poverty and eccentricity. Their claim to a great estate could not be established because the deed has been lost, as the actual deed was lost to Hawthorne's family. "Since it will not yield up it's secrets for the guilt to purged, it must be left behind be the new generation." (Unger 225) In 1852, The Blithedale Romance met with horribl...