The Wives of the Dead

In “The Wives of the Dead”, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s eerie tale of somnambulance and wish fulfillment, the author tells the story of two women faced by tragedy and then given relief, whether real or imagined.

Nathaniel Hawthorne had many obsessions. Firmly a member of the Romantic literary tradition that stressed emotion and inspiration over rationality, Hawthorne brooded about life and death, shame and redemption, love and betrayal, and the dark horrors that lurk deep in the human soul. His preoccupations are on display in “The Wives of the Dead,” a story with the eeriness of a Twilight Zone episode, in which tragic news may not be what it seems.

The title itself invokes the macabre. Not many stories outside Gothic horror have the word “dead” in their titles, and few titles are so formal and funereal. Though not strictly Gothic—in this story, tragedy replaces horror—the story contains some of its effects, and it straddles Gothic and dark romanticism, which may contribute to its enduring popularity.

Hawthorne’s writing style mirrors Gothic horror as well, painting layer upon layer of gloom until a feeling arises of deep sadness tinged with dread. A fellow author who worked extensively with these and related moods was Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote admiringly of Hawthorne’s style and tone. (Several of Hawthorne’s other works are available in study-guide form at SuperSummary.com.)

The story contains three main sections: the public, in which the women’s sudden loss draws commiseration by visiting townsfolk; the private, in which the sisters console one another; and the somnolent, in which each widow wakes to good news that may or may not be imaginary.

The locale, “a principal seaport of the Bay Province” (3), refers to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, an amalgam of English colonial holdings that include most of what is today referred to as New England: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, and portions of New Hampshire and Vermont. The “principal seaport” suggests either Salem (where the author spent much of his life), Boston, or Plymouth.

“Canadian warfare” places the time between 1689 and 1763, when European wars often spilled over onto the American colonies. England and France fought for control of the region. The final conflict, the French and Indian War, cost France its Canadian holdings. The story sets the time as “a hundred years ago” (3); the author penned the tale in 1829, published it in 1832, and re-issued it in 1851. Among the releases, only the 1851 edition occurred even roughly 100 years after a colonial war. A reference to the 1747 novella Zadig by Voltaire also limits the story’s date to the French and Indian War and also suggests that Hawthorne re-edited the 1829 story before including it in his 1851 anthology. In any case, the story happens during America’s colonial past.

Further hints of the Early American setting are the “specimens of Indian manufacture” (3) that suggest a still-vibrant Native culture nearby, and the expressions of piety that fit snugly into daily colonial life, especially among people descended from early settlers who came to America to escape religious persecution. These asides create a sense of antiquity and, with it, a vaguely sad feeling about the long ago and far away—of people long dead and hard times long past.

A sense of foreboding and of bad fate loom over the story. The tale takes place between twilight and deepest night; the wonderful news the young brides each receive at the upstairs window somehow cannot compete with the enormity of the nighttime gloom. Even the moonlight that breaks out after the rainstorm can’t fully dispel the strange darkness. The two women seem trapped inside their sadness; despite good news overturning bad, there’s the sense that they’ll end up mired in deep mourning with no escape.

Hawthorne took a great interest in the sorrows and strengths of women. His most famous work, The Scarlet Letter, deals with the struggles of an unwed colonial mother in an era when giving birth without the benefit of marriage was cause for punishment. The heroine, Hester Prynne, having been outcast, must navigate between her lover, a minister, and her husband, long believed dead at sea, who returns to threaten her. She strives to reconcile with the two men but can only watch as they self-destruct. Though her story is tragic, her strength, intelligence, and dignity carve a path through fate and help to protect both herself and her daughter.

In “The Wives of the Dead,” the author again addresses the struggles that women often must endure, and how they can help each other to rise through torment toward serenity. A major subtext of the story is the closeness between the two women. They share a connection through marriage to two brothers; they also share a home together and the happiness of married life. Though connected by law, clearly they are also sisters in spirit. Even their names are similar. When tragedy destroys both their marriages at once, the two women turn to each other for support. Their love and caring for one another is on display throughout the story. By contrast, the men who bring them good news are solitary, lonely figures.

The author took a great interest in the intersection between the real and the imagined, a neutral zone where thought blends one into the other. In the final sentence of the story, it appears that Margaret awakens when Mary, adjusting her sleeping sister’s bedclothes, sheds an accidental teardrop onto Margaret’s cheek. It then dawns on the reader that the “she” who awakens might be Mary herself. This opens a series of possibilities: Mary may have dreamed her encounter with Stephen, and Margaret also may have dreamed that Goodman Parker came to her door with good news about her husband. Perhaps their husbands never were in danger; perhaps Mary isn’t married at all and simply dreamed that she lives with Margaret. Reality swerves off into surreal fantasy.

The story’s gloomy atmosphere, its tragedy limned by imagined hope, the enduring friendship of two widows, and the suggestion that the real, no matter how good or bad, might be entirely imaginary, all make for a classic tale from the era of dark romance.