A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (Annotated) E-Book

Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Herausgeber: ePembaBooks
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

• This edition includes the following editor's introduction: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Dark Romanticism

First published in 1851, "A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys” is a children's book by American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne in which he retells some legends of Greek mythology. In 1853 "A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys” was followed by a sequel, “Tanglewood Tales.”

In 1838, Hawthorne suggested to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that they collaborate on a story for children based on the legend of the Pandora’s Box, but this never materialized. But in 1851, Hawthorne set out deliberately to modernize the stories, freeing them from what he called “ cold moonshine” and using a romantic, readable style that was criticized by adults but proved universally popular with children.
The collection is a re-writing of six well-known Greek myths. The tales are “ The Gorgon’s Head,” “ The Golden Touch,” “ The Paradise of Children,” “ The Three Golden Apples,” “ The Miraculous Pitcher” and “ The Chimaera.”

Leseprobe

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Table of contents

Nathaniel Hawthorne and Dark Romanticism

A WONDER-BOOK FOR GIRLS AND BOYS

Preface

Part 1: The Gorgon's Head: Tanglewood Porch

Introductory to the Gorgon's Head

The Gorgon's Head

After the Story

Part 2: The Golden Touch: Shadow Brook

Introductory to the Golden Touch

The Golden Touch

After the Story

Part 3: The Paradise of Children: Tanglewood Play-room

Introductory to the Paradise of Children

The Paradise of Children

After the Story

Part 4: The Three Golden Apples: Tanglewood Fireside

Introductory to the 3 Golden Apples

The Three Golden Apples

After the Story

Part 5: The Miraculous Pitcher: The Hill-side

Introductory to the Miraculous Pitcher

The Miraculous Pitcher

After the Story

Part 6: The chimÆra: Bald Summit

Introductory to the chimÆra

The chimÆra

After the Story

Nathaniel Hawthorne and Dark Romanticism

Dark Romanticism, popularly known as " American Gothic", is a dark literary sub-genre that emerged in the 19th century from the philosophical movement known as transcendentalism (based on the rejection of the Unitarian Church and certain rationalist doctrines of the 18th century). Although this movement was a great influence on dark romanticism, there are important differences between them: while the former presents characters who seek to socially reform the world around them, the latter exposes the individual failures of the same protagonists. Broadly speaking, dark romanticism presents a more pessimistic view of the world.

One of the main characteristics of Dark Romanticism is the presence of macabre and self-destructive characters, subjects prone to madness and sin. Generally, American Gothic is melancholic, full of anguish and suffering. Like the works of English Gothic literature, American Gothic also features supernatural elements such as spirits and ghosts; the stories take place in sinister or exotic locations and the emotions of the characters are over the top (characters are subject to panic attacks, unbridled passions, rage, paranoia...). The dark romantics used emotions and feelings to explore the darker, unknown side of the human mind and soul. The three most important writers of this movement are Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe. Also ascribed to this movement is the poet Emily Dickinson. Although these first three authors were considered "anti-transcendentalists," their worldview was imaginative, essentially romantic, which emphasized intuition, the powers of nature and individual emotions. In literary terms, literary Romanticism would be represented by authors who dive into the boundaries of subjectivity and show a dark imagination accompanied by a vital attitude, let's say, heterodox. Surely, the best example of all this is Edgar Allan Poe with his masterful horror stories. But next to him it is essential to mention Nathaniel Hawthorne, born in Salem in 1804 and considered, like the previous one, as one of the founders of American Literature, a magnificent storyteller in whom the Puritan tradition of his family weighed heavily. Hawthorne was a great master of the horror story like his contemporary Poe. However, while Poe's tales provoke fear from the reader's own subconscious, those of the author of Salem are tales in the most genuine and aforementioned Gothic style, with apparitions, supernatural creatures, alchemists or witches. However, Hawthorne had not yet opted for his preferred genre in his first work “Fanshawe” (1828) and his most popular work is the novel "The Scarlet Letter" (1850), set in the 17th century, which tells the story of a woman accused of adultery who tries to live a dignified life amidst the rejection of Puritan society. Also well known were "The House of the Seven Gables" (1851), already belonging to the horror genre as it is set in a peculiar cursed building, and “The Blithedale Romance” (1852), a mystery romance that dramatizes the conflict between the ideals of a commune and the private desires and romantic rivalries of its members. His last novel "The Marble Faun" (1860) and the stories collected in the collection "Mosses from an Old Manse" (1846), full of romantic and disturbing elements but also with a certain moralizing intention, also belong to this genre. However, this does not prevent them from being of magnificent quality. Among them, the most famous stories are perhaps " Young Goodman Brown" (1835), about a character tempted by the Devil, and "R appaccini's Daughter" (1844), with a dark character who investigates poisonous plants. When you have lived all your life in a place as peculiar as Salem, perhaps you have to be a master of horror literature…

Beyond horror, and less remembered for it, Hawthorne also wrote with great success two collections of wonderful tales aimed at both youngsters and the general public, " A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys" (1851) and its sequel "Tanglewood Tales" (1853).

The Editor, P.C. 2022

A WONDER-BOOK FOR GIRLS AND BOYS

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Preface

The author has long been of opinion that many of the classical myths were capable of being rendered into very capital reading for children. In the little volume here offered to the public, he has worked up half a dozen of them, with this end in view. A great freedom of treatment was necessary to his plan; but it will be observed by every one who attempts to render these legends malleable in his intellectual furnace, that they are marvellously independent of all temporary modes and circumstances. They remain essentially the same, after changes that would affect the identity of almost anything else.

He does not, therefore, plead guilty to a sacrilege, in having sometimes shaped anew, as his fancy dictated, the forms that have been hallowed by an antiquity of two or three thousand years. No epoch of time can claim a copyright in these immortal fables. They seem never to have been made; and certainly, so long as man exists, they can never perish; but, by their indestructibility itself, they are legitimate subjects for every age to clothe with its own garniture of manners and sentiment, and to imbue with its own morality. In the present version they may have lost much of their classical aspect (or, at all events, the author has not been careful to preserve it), and have perhaps assumed a Gothic or romantic guise.

In performing this pleasant task,—for it has been really a task fit for hot weather, and one of the most agreeable, of a literary kind, which he ever undertook,—the author has not always thought it necessary to write downward, in order to meet the comprehension of children. He has generally suffered the theme to soar, whenever such was its tendency, and when he himself was buoyant enough to follow without an effort. Children possess an unestimated sensibility to whatever is deep or high, in imagination or feeling, so long as it is simple likewise. It is only the artificial and the complex that bewilder them.

LENOX, July 15, 1851.

Part 1: The Gorgon's Head: Tanglewood Porch

Introductory to the Gorgon's Head

Beneath the porch of the country–seat called Tanglewood, one fine autumnal morning, was assembled a merry party of little folks, with a tall youth in the midst of them. They had planned a nutting expedition, and were impatiently waiting for the mists to roll up the hill–slopes, and for the sun to pour the warmth of the Indian summer over the fields and pastures, and into the nooks of the many–colored woods. There was a prospect of as fine a day as ever gladdened the aspect of this beautiful and comfortable world. As yet, however, the morning mist filled up the whole length and breadth of the valley, above which, on a gently sloping eminence, the mansion stood.

This body of white vapor extended to within less than a hundred yards of the house. It completely hid everything beyond that distance, except a few ruddy or yellow tree–tops, which here and there emerged, and were glorified by the early sunshine, as was likewise the broad surface of the mist. Four or five miles off to the southward rose the summit of Monument Mountain, and seemed to be floating on a cloud. Some fifteen miles farther away, in the same direction, appeared the loftier Dome of Taconic, looking blue and indistinct, and hardly so substantial as the vapory sea that almost rolled over it. The nearer hills, which bordered the valley, were half submerged, and were specked with little cloud–wreaths all the way to their tops. On the whole, there was so much cloud, and so little solid earth, that it had the effect of a vision.

The children above–mentioned, being as full of life as they could hold, kept overflowing from the porch of Tanglewood, and scampering along the gravel–walk, or rushing across the dewy herbage of the lawn. I can hardly tell how many of these small people there were; not less than nine or ten, however, nor more than a dozen, of all sorts, sizes, and ages, whether girls or boys. They were brothers, sisters, and cousins, together with a few of their young acquaintances, who had been invited by Mr. and Mrs. Pringle to spend some of this delightful weather with their own children at Tanglewood. I am afraid to tell you their names, or even to give them any names which other children have ever been called by; because, to my certain knowledge, authors sometimes get themselves into great trouble by accidentally giving the names of real persons to the characters in their books. For this reason I mean to call them Primrose, Periwinkle, Sweet Fern, Dandelion, Blue Eye, Clover, Huckleberry, Cowslip, Squash–Blossom, Milkweed, Plantain, and Buttercup; although, to be sure, such titles might better suit a group of fairies than a company of earthly children.

It is not to be supposed that these little folks were to be permitted by their careful fathers and mothers, uncles, aunts, or grandparents, to stray abroad into the woods and fields, without the guardianship of some particularly grave and elderly person. Oh, no, indeed! In the first sentence of my book, you will recollect that I spoke of a tall youth, standing in the midst of the children. His name—(and I shall let you know his real name, because he considers it a great honor to have told the stories that are here to be printed)—his name was Eustace Bright. He was a student at Williams College, and had reached, I think, at this period, the venerable age of eighteen years; so that he felt quite like a grandfather towards Periwinkle, Dandelion, Huckleberry, Squash–Blossom, Milkweed, and the rest, who were only half or a third as venerable as he. A trouble in his eyesight (such as many students think it necessary to have, nowadays, in order to prove their diligence at their books) had kept him from college a week or two after the beginning of the term. But, for my part, I have seldom met with a pair of eyes that looked as if they could see farther or better than those of Eustace Bright.

This learned student was slender, and rather pale, as all Yankee students are; but yet of a healthy aspect, and as light and active as if he had wings to his shoes. By the by, being much addicted to wading through streamlets and across meadows, he had put on cowhide boots for the expedition. He wore a linen blouse, a cloth cap, and a pair of green spectacles, which he had assumed, probably, less for the preservation of his eyes than for the dignity that they imparted to his countenance. In either case, however, he might as well have let them alone; for Huckleberry, a mischievous little elf, crept behind Eustace as he sat on the steps of the porch, snatched the spectacles from his nose, and clapped them on her own; and as the student forgot to take them back, they fell off into the grass, and lay there till the next spring.

Now, Eustace Bright, you must know, had won great fame among the children, as a narrator of wonderful stories; and though he sometimes pretended to be annoyed, when they teased him for more, and more, and always for more, yet I really doubt whether he liked anything quite so well as to tell them. You might have seen his eyes twinkle, therefore, when Clover, Sweet Fern, Cowslip, Buttercup, and most of their playmates, besought him to relate one of his stories, while they were waiting for the mist to clear up.

"Yes, Cousin Eustace," said Primrose, who was a bright girl of twelve, with laughing eyes, and a nose that turned up a little, "the morning is certainly the best time for the stories with which you so often tire out our patience. We shall be in less danger of hurting your feelings, by falling asleep at the most interesting points,—as little Cowslip and I did last night!"

"Naughty Primrose," cried Cowslip, a child of six years old; "I did not fall asleep, and I only shut my eyes, so as to see a picture of what Cousin Eustace was telling about. His stories are good to hear at night, because we can dream about them asleep; and good in the morning, too, because then we can dream about them awake. So I hope he will tell us one this very minute."

"Thank you, my little Cowslip," said Eustace; "certainly you shall have the best story I can think of, if it were only for defending me so well from that naughty Primrose. But, children, I have already told you so many fairy tales, that I doubt whether there is a single one which you have not heard at least twice over. I am afraid you will fall asleep in reality, if I repeat any of them again."

"No, no, no!" cried Blue Eye, Periwinkle, Plantain, and half a dozen others. "We like a story all the better for having heard it two or three times before."

And it is a truth, as regards children, that a story seems often to deepen its mark in their interest, not merely by two or three, but by numberless repetitions. But Eustace Bright, in the exuberance of his resources, scorned to avail himself of an advantage which an older story–teller would have been glad to grasp at.

"It would be a great pity," said he, "if a man of my learning (to say nothing of original fancy) could not find a new story every day, year in and year out, for children such as you. I will tell you one of the nursery tales that were made for the amusement of our great old grandmother, the Earth, when she was a child in frock and pinafore. There are a hundred such; and it is a wonder to me that they have not long ago been put into picture–books for little girls and boys. But, instead of that, old gray–bearded grandsires pore over them in musty volumes of Greek, and puzzle themselves with trying to find out when, and how, and for what they were made."

"Well, well, well, well, Cousin Eustace!" cried all the children at once; "talk no more about your stories, but begin."

"Sit down, then, every soul of you," said Eustace Bright, "and be all as still as so many mice. At the slightest interruption, whether from great, naughty Primrose, little Dandelion, or any other, I shall bite the story short off between my teeth, and swallow the untold part. But, in the first place, do any of you know what a Gorgon is?"

"I do," said Primrose.

"Then hold your tongue!" rejoined Eustace, who had rather she would have known nothing about the matter. "Hold all your tongues, and I shall tell you a sweet pretty story of a Gorgon's head."

And so he did, as you may begin to read on the next page. Working up his sophomorical erudition with a good deal of tact, and incurring great obligations to Professor Anthon, he, nevertheless, disregarded all classical authorities, whenever the vagrant audacity of his imagination impelled him to do so.

The Gorgon's Head

Perseus was the son of Danaë, who was the daughter of a king. And when Perseus was a very little boy, some wicked people put his mother and himself into a chest, and set them afloat upon the sea. The wind blew freshly, and drove the chest away from the shore, and the uneasy billows tossed it up and down; while Danaë clasped her child closely to her bosom, and dreaded that some big wave would dash its foamy crest over them both. The chest sailed on, however, and neither sank nor was upset; until, when night was coming, it floated so near an island that it got entangled in a fisherman's nets, and was drawn out high and dry upon the sand. The island was called Seriphus, and it was reigned over by King Polydectes, who happened to be the fisherman's brother.

This fisherman, I am glad to tell you, was an exceedingly humane and upright man. He showed great kindness to Danaë and her little boy; and continued to befriend them, until Perseus had grown to be a handsome youth, very strong and active, and skillful in the use of arms. Long before this time, King Polydectes had seen the two strangers—the mother and her child—who had come to his dominions in a floating chest. As he was not good and kind, like his brother the fisherman, but extremely wicked, he resolved to send Perseus on a dangerous enterprise, in which he would probably be killed, and then to do some great mischief to Danaë herself. So this bad–hearted king spent a long while in considering what was the most dangerous thing that a young man could possibly undertake to perform. At last, having hit upon an enterprise that promised to turn out as fatally as he desired, he sent for the youthful Perseus.

The young man came to the palace, and found the king sitting upon his throne.

"Perseus," said King Polydectes, smiling craftily upon him, "you are grown up a fine young man. You and your good mother have received a great deal of kindness from myself, as well as from my worthy brother the fisherman, and I suppose you would not be sorry to repay some of it."

"Please your Majesty," answered Perseus, "I would willingly risk my life to do so."

"Well, then," continued the king, still with a cunning smile on his lips, "I have a little adventure to propose to you; and, as you are a brave and enterprising youth, you will doubtless look upon it as a great piece of good luck to have so rare an opportunity of distinguishing yourself. You must know, my good Perseus, I think of getting married to the beautiful Princess Hippodamia; and it is customary, on these occasions, to make the bride a present of some far–fetched and elegant curiosity. I have been a little perplexed, I must honestly confess, where to obtain anything likely to please a princess of her exquisite taste. But, this morning, I flatter myself, I have thought of precisely the article."

"And can I assist your Majesty in obtaining it?" cried Perseus, eagerly.

"You can, if you are as brave a youth as I believe you to be," replied King Polydectes, with the utmost graciousness of manner. "The bridal gift which I have set my heart on presenting to the beautiful Hippodamia is the head of the Gorgon Medusa with the snaky locks; and I depend on you, my dear Perseus, to bring it to me. So, as I am anxious to settle affairs with the princess, the sooner you go in quest of the Gorgon, the better I shall be pleased."

"I will set out to–morrow morning," answered Perseus.

"Pray do so, my gallant youth," rejoined the king. "And, Perseus, in cutting off the Gorgon's head, be careful to make a clean stroke, so as not to injure its appearance. You must bring it home in the very best condition, in order to suit the exquisite taste of the beautiful Princess Hippodamia."

Perseus left the palace, but was scarcely out of hearing before Polydectes burst into a laugh; being greatly amused, wicked king that he was, to find how readily the young man fell into the snare. The news quickly spread abroad that Perseus had undertaken to cut off the head of Medusa with the snaky locks. Everybody was rejoiced; for most of the inhabitants of the island were as wicked as the king himself, and would have liked nothing better than to see some enormous mischief happen to Danaë and her son. The only good man in this unfortunate island of Seriphus appears to have been the fisherman. As Perseus walked along, therefore, the people pointed after him, and made mouths, and winked to one another, and ridiculed him as loudly as they dared.

"Ho, ho!" cried they; "Medusa's snakes will sting him soundly!"