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Chapter 4. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Van Doren, Carl. 1921. The American Novel (6250 words) |
 | In none of these does there appear that elaboration of local color which was to characterize American short stories a generation or so later, but neither was Hawthorne in attentive to the outward manners of his age. |
| To make a novel out of his material instead of a brief tale Hawthorne did not increase it, as he might have done, out of his antiquarian knowledge of early Salem: as regards such decorations his story is almost naked. |
| Elaborate as the background is, and stiff and difficult as it must have been to handle, the few essential persons of the drama move as freely and naturally as in the earlier novels with their almost empty stages. |
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