In this excerpt from "Ethan Brand's Homecoming," published in New Essays on Hawthorne 's Major Tales, edited by Millicent Bell, Rita K. Gollin addresses the theme of alienation in "Ethan Brand" and relates the theme to Hawthorne's life.

"Like Ethan Brand, Reuben Bourne, and many other characters he had already created or would later invent, Hawthorne now returned to a memory-haunted place that had long been the vortex of his emotional universe. He was happily married, with two children, but with two collections of stories to his credit, he had failed to support his family by writing alone" (84). (courtesy of Cambridge University Press)