Hawthorne used this idea of a curse on the family of an evil judge in his novel The House of the Seven Gables. Many of Hawthorne´s stories are set in Puritan New England, and his greatest novel The Scarlet Letter has become the classic portrayal of Puritan America. It tells of the passionate, forbidden love affair linking and sensitive, religious young man, the reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and the sensuous, beautiful townsperson, Hester Prynne. Set in Boston around 1650 during early Puritan colonization, the novel highlights the Calvinistic obsession with morality, sexual repression, guilt and confession, and spiritual salvation. For its time, The Scarlet Letter was a daring and even subversive book. It uses allegory a technique the early Puritan colonists themselves practiced. Hawthorne´s reputation rests on his other novels and tales as well. In The House of the Seven Gables he again returns to New England´s history. The theme concerns an inherited curse and its resolution through love. Hawthorne´s last two novels were less successful. Both used modern settings, which hampered on the modern romance. The Blithedale Romance and The Marble Faun.

Fifth chapter – The rise of realism.

The U.S. Civil War between the industrial North and the agricultural, slave-owning South was a watershed in American history. The innocent optimism of the young democratic nation gave away. Before the war idealist championed human rights, especially the abolition of slavery; after the war, Americans increasingly idealised progress and the self-made man. Business boomed after the war. War production had boosted industry in the North and given it prestige and political clout. The new intercontinental rail system, inaugurated in 1869, and the transcontinental telegraph, which began operating in 1861, gave industry access to materials, markets, and communications. In 1860, most Americans lived on farms or in small villages , but by 1919 half of the population was concentrated in about 12 cities. Problems of urbanisation and industrialisation appeared. Farmers too saw themselves struggling against the money interests of the East, the so-called robber barons like J.P.Morgan and John D. Rockefeller. He ideal American of the post-Civil War period became the millionaire. From 1860 to 1914 the United States was transformed from a small young agricultural ex-colony to a huge, modern industrial nation.