The snow-image, and other twice-told tales — A Closer Reading

The Preface as a Defense of Psychological Romance

Hawthorne opens the volume not with a story but with a letter to his friend Horatio Bridge, in which he responds to critics who have called him "egotistical, indiscreet, and even impertinent" for his prefaces. He insists that these introductions have often interested readers more than the tales themselves, and he justifies his method by claiming that he has been "burrowing, to his utmost ability, into the depths of our common nature, for the purposes of psychological romance." This phrase is key: Hawthorne explicitly aligns his project with psychological exploration, not mere entertainment. He also notes that he has been "addressing a very limited circle of friendly readers," suggesting an intimacy that the public may now be overhearing. The preface thus functions as both a personal apologia and a statement of artistic intent, preparing the reader for stories that prioritize inner experience over outward action.

New England Landscapes and the Weight of the Past

The catalog subjects list "New England -- Social life and customs" and "Historical fiction, American," and the excerpts bear this out. In "The Canterbury Pilgrims," the narrator describes a "spring of water" beside a hilly road, where "the work of neat hands and considerate art was visible." The two young protagonists wear "strange, old-fashioned garb" that seems inherited from "great-grandsire's" wardrobes, and the narrator muses that they might be "ghosts of two young lovers who had died long since." This layering of present and past is typical: Hawthorne's New England is haunted by its own history, and his characters often carry the visible marks of earlier generations. The setting is not merely backdrop but an active force that shapes the characters' speech, dress, and sense of possibility.

Idealized Love and Its Discontents

Several stories in the collection examine love as an ideal that may be unsustainable. In the excerpt from "Sylph Etherege," the title character declares, "I will neither fade into the moonlight, nor flit away upon the breeze. Yet you cannot keep me here!" This line captures a tension between ethereality and stubborn presence. The male character Vaughan responds with "a strange smile of mockery and anguish," suggesting that the lovers are caught between romantic fantasy and harsh reality. Similarly, in "The Canterbury Pilgrims," the young couple Josiah and Miriam speak in the formal, slightly archaic language of Quakers ("Thee and I will rest here a moment"), and their shyness—"she, however, repelled him, though not unkindly"—hints at social codes that constrain even their most private moments. Hawthorne presents love not as a simple emotion but as a negotiation with memory, propriety, and the fear of loss.

Readers approaching this collection should attend to Hawthorne's narrative voice, which often shifts between detached observation and sympathetic engagement. The stories reward attention to small details—a gesture, a piece of clothing, a turn of phrase—that carry thematic weight. Because the excerpts are incomplete, the full arc of each tale remains unknown, but the patterns visible here suggest a writer consistently concerned with how the past presses upon the present, and how the imagination both liberates and imprisons.

Years among these shelves, I’ve noticed how Hawthorne’s snow-image, all fragile perfection under the cold, finds a quiet echo in the homestead lights of Southern Lights and Shadows — Background and Themes. Both whisper of homespun dreams worn thin by weather, and I hold that kinship gently, like a bookmark pressed between their pages.