문학시장과 가정성 : 호손과 멜빌의 글쓰기 = Literary Marketplace and Domesticity : Authorship in Hawthorne and Melville

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Domestic novel was one of the most popular genres in the mid-nineteenth century American literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville were keenly aware of the success of domestic novels by woman writers and produced their own novels equivalent to those writings. My thesis examines the two writers' authorship by comparing The House of the Seven Gables and Pierre or The Ambiguities in terms of their plots and immanent ideologies.
Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables ends with the marriage of Holgrave and Phoebe. To a certain extent the conclusion of the novel seems to reach a happy ending. Their marriage reconciles the Maules and the Pyncheons and declares the upcoming democratic society of America. This conclusion, however, leaves many problems unsolved and the problematic ending leads us to Hawthorne's authorial consciousness. As in Holgrave's daguerreotype, Hawthorne's pessimism about the nineteenth century America is skillfully concealed under domestic literary plots and ideologies.
While Hawthorne employs domesticity to formulate his individuality, Melville uses it to make his character more stand out. In Pierre, Melville's incest motif parodies the domestic novel and takes critical stance toward the society. In addition to social criticism, Melville incorporates into Isabel his desire to write a great literary work and his anxiety about its shameful consequence. Isabel's story is mainly concerned with the invalidity of language and impossibility of pursuing the truth. Without any conjecture about this impasse, Pierre immaturely attempts to write a mature work only to produce a failed one. By showing vanity as well as heroism of Pierre, Melville tries to provide a text that has a room for the people to read in their own ways.
Hawthorne and Melville strived to communicate with the literary public through their own elaborations on the terms of domesticity. There is no denying that the elements of the domestic novel and the rhetoric of gender in their works played a big role in the canonization of their novels. Nonetheless their struggle to differentiate themselves from women writers and to build their own relationship with the literary marketplace should be appreciated.