Portrait of Nathaniel Hawthorne by Charles Osgood, 1840(courtesy of Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, Gift of Professor Richard C. Manning, Acc#121459)
Excerpts Related to Salem Witchcraft from "Alice
Doane's Appeal"
Wood-Wax Passages from "Alice Doane's Appeal"
In "Alice Doane's Appeal" Hawthorne gives symbolic significance to a yellow-flowering weed, which grows aggressively on Gallows Hill.
This local wildflower is called "Wood Wax."
Excerpt from "Alice Doane's Appeal": Leonard
Doane's Memory of His Dead Father.
In this important passage, we that Leonard Doane's murder of Walter Brome
awakens in him the memory of his father's violent death during an Indian
raid. When Leonard looks at Walter's face and sees his father's, Hawthorne
reveals one of the dark themes explored in "Alice Doane's Appeal."
The Witch Tree Tradition
(courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum)
The story of the Witch Tree from S. Perley's History of Salem,
vol. 3. p. 285, reprinted in the Essex Institute Historical Collections,
vol. LVII, p. 17)
In
this selection from The American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining
Knowledge, Hawthorne write about the superstition of the martyr's path.
[link to MMD text 2196]