Withdrawn

Trent Walters recently put up a very interesting post on Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "Wakefield." This is a story about a man who leaves his wife and home, only to move to a nearby street where he "dwelt upwards of twenty years" unnoticed and free to, in effect, keep observing his wife and the life he has himself left behind.

Trent interprets the story as one about depression:

Again and again, Wakefield nearly leaves, "excited to something like energy of feeling [if he had used his imagination, he could have felt his wife's pain]." Later he tries wake himself up: "Wakefield! Wakefield! You are mad!" Come on. If he's aware of his crime, what's stopping him from rectifying it for twenty years?

He is "unwilling to display his full front to the world," and "an influence beyond our control lays its strong hand on every deed which we do, and weaves its consequences into an iron tissue of necessity. Wakefield is spell-bound." Are these not perfectly apt descriptions of depression? Perhaps in Hawthorne's day he saw the influence as other-worldly. Even when energy breaks the heavy spell of depression, it is too brief to be effective:

[He] throws himself upon the bed. That latent feelings of years break out; his feeble mind acquires a brief energy from their strength.... [His situation] so moulded him to himself, that, considered, in regard to his fellow-creatures and the business of life, he could be said to possess his right mind.

This is a perfectly coherent interpretation of the story (one of my favorite Hawthorne tales, probably one of my favorite short stories period), and I certainly would not decry finding access to such a story, which is admittedly one that invites disparate readings, through discovering in it certain personal resonances. But I would say that it is certainly not the only coherent interpretation of "Wakefield." The protagonist does indeed seem to be characterized by "solitude and self-absorption," and Hawthorne himself could indeed have been described in such terms as well. (Trent goes on to highlight other language Hawthorne uses to describe Wakefield: "his mind occupied itself in long and lazy musings, that ended to no purpose, or had not vigor to attain it; his thoughts were seldom so energetic as to seize hold of words.")

But Hawthorne is quite self-conscious in portraying Wakefield in this way. It is not the sort of portait by which the words seem to hide another, different and unconscious meaning. And Wakefield shares the attributes of some of Hawthorne's other characters, particularly the narrator of The Blithedale Romance, who agrees to join an experimental New England commune but finds himself mostly withdrawing from the whole scene in order to observe it more closely. (At one point he climbs up a tree so he can observe and listen to two of his fellow members without being noticed.) More than anything else, in my opinion, these characters embody the habitual attitude of the writer: solitary, detached, to some extent isolated from his own feelings in favor of heightened observation of others and the world around him. Although obviously he isn't a writer, Wakefield nevertheless seems to me a portait of the artist, not of the human being behind the artist's demeanor, but of the behavior the artist is almost compelled to exhibit in order to be an artist.

And insofar as this behavior can be self-destructive, oblivious to the effects it has on other people, arises from impulses the human being perhaps can't even control, Hawthorne also seems to condemn it.

Comments

[dylan kinnett]

I thought it might help to comment with link to the Hawthorne's story.

http://www.online-literature.com/hawthorne/156/

[Trent Walters]

I agree that it is a conscious decision. I only meant to suggest that he could not have fully understood the ramifications of depression in its entirety but enough so that he and the character eventually stepped out of its spell.

I also agree with your position that it can be (even simultaneously) viewed through the lens of the artist.

[birnbaum]

Just in case it has escaped anyone's attention
Andre Codescru(sic) recently publlshed a novel, Wakefield, based on the Hawthorne story...

[marly youmans]

Hawthorne...

In some sense, is he not, as he does so often, twisting his calling together with its related impulse toward a kind of damnation--the chill observing eye and the withdrawal from "the magnetic chain of humanity"? A great deal of Hawthorne's considerable power seems to spring directly out of a tension between a desire to be a part of the human family and the demands of a watching and reflecting art; that's obvious. But I also wonder if he didn't fear the power that's in the making of stories: the way the self is overtaken, abolished, and scattered in moments of peak creation.

[Scott]

This is one of my favorite short stories of all time as well (actually, I think most of Hawthorne's short stories are excellent). Mush of Paul Auster's work has been influenced by Hawthorne and he makes pretty explicit references to this story in "The Locked Room" (the final book of the New York Trilogy). In many ways, in fact, "The Locked Room" feel like an interpretation/retelling of Wakefield.

I've always liked this and others of Hawthrone's stories for the way they so well support multiple readings and interpretations.

[HR]

Are you familiar with Borges' essay on "Wakefield"?

[Robert Nagle]

I have nothing insightful to say here except to express my astonishment that this story (which I discovered randomly only a decade ago) seems to have a retinue of admirers among litbloggers. And Borges....my jaw just dropped.

[Guisela]

I agree with marly youmans, about Hawthrone's influence in Auster's works. Not only in the locked room, but in many others: rememeber "Oracle night" where the character of his roman the one left underground) also wanted to begin a new life, and "The book of illusions" where charcacter Hector Mann has to leave all behind and cut with past lives many times.
In fact when I was reading this last book, Wakefield came to mi mind so many times tah I sayd "I wonder if Auster has ever read Wakef..." and then, one of the characters begins to talk about Hawthrone. Bingo.
Auster loves hasard (read The Red Notebook) and things that can happen when you chose a way. Many of Auster's characters chose to cut their lives and to begin a new one, and sometimes they seem like random electiosn but NOP! Thery are decide by something bigger that leads every character there where he was supposed to arrive from the beginning.