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ACCORDING to Nathaniel Hawthorne's biographer, Henry James, Jr., Hawthorne's heritage as a descendant of the "clearest Puritan strain" served to restrict his literary talent to the exploration of one theme: the "consciousness of sin" (5, 8). In 1858, Hawthorne observed Catholicism as he sojourned in Rome; this encounter enriched his investigation of the effects of sin upon human beings. Soon after his arrival in Rome, for instance, he describes the scene of a "lady, confessing to a priest" within a "wooden confessional" (Notebooks 184). Hawthorne lingered until "the lady fmishe[d] her confession," observing her closely (184). In The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The Marble Faun (1859), Hawthorne sets forth his examination of the effects of sin and guilt upon the individual and his or her relationship to a community. Both novels explore the destructive nature of silence, the false unity felt by fellow sinners, and the sense of solitude which stems from culpability. Yet the two novels are set in very different cultural contexts: The Scarlet Letter presents a Puritan view of morality, practiced in a constrictive New England community which Hawthorne compares to the one where he dwelt and developed, while The Marble Faun - inspired primarily by the fifty-four-year-old Hawthorne's visit to the Eternal City - allows its sinners the freedom of Rome's vastness and the "infinite convenience" of the Catholic Church (MF 355). Jenny Franchot's pivotal study, Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism, suggests that The Scarlet Letter both "critiquefs] Calvinist piety" and "underscore^] the limitations of Catholic piety," and that The Marble Faun maintains "a religiously fearful relation with itself as narrative" (263, 356). While Hawthorne did recognize the limitations of both faiths, he also boldly explored their potential. A comparative investigation of the representations of guilt and the search for redemption in the two novels will reveal the distinction that Hawthorne draws between the act of penance and the attitude of penitence even as he questions whether confessions should be made to the community - an act which may transform the sinner into a scapegoat or a saint - or to one other in secret, a procedure which may preserve individuality and personhood.
Despite the differences in cultural settings, both novels explore three common themes which Hawthorne...