Hawthorne, William James, and the Psychology of “Wakefield”
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This essay explores how William James developed in his own philosophy ideas and techniques found in Hawthorne’s literature, particularly “Wakefield” (1835). The characteristic vagueness and ambiguity of Hawthorne’s short story anticipate James’s theory of consciousness, especially his use of “field” and “room” as metaphors for human consciousness. Both Hawthorne and James in their investigation of the interrelation between socially prescribed binary oppositions repudiate Emerson’s idealist concept of transcendental observer and the Cartesian dualism of subject and object. I demonstrate how their fascination with vagueness resulted from their intention to grasp phenomenal concreteness by renouncing the noumenal unity and stability in transcendental idealism. Their interest in concrete but changing and unfixed realities of life and the human mind caused both James and Hawthorne to reject the idealist notion of a dichotomy between noumenon (the realm of ideas) and phenomenon (that of senses). In Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912), James accentuates the significance of the interaction between seemingly contradictory notions such as fringe and focus, relations and elements, transitive and substantive, and conjunctive by disjunctive. “Wakefield” crystalizes Hawthorne’s championing of vagueness by deconstructing the two sets of conceptual binaries that Emerson constructs to theorize his transcendental idealism: mediocrity/commonness/simplicity vs. eccentricity/oddity/ strangeness; a selfish and self-centered subject/seer vs. an insignificant other/object to be seen.
Abstract
This essay explores how William James developed in his own philosophy ideas and techniques found in Hawthorne’s literature, particularly “Wakefield” (1835). The characteristic vagueness and ambiguity of Hawthorne’s short story anticipate James’s theory of consciousness, especially his use of “field” and “room” as metaphors for human consciousness. Both Hawthorne and James in their investigation of the interrelation between socially prescribed binary oppositions repudiate Emerson’s idealist concept of transcendental observer and the Cartesian dualism of subject and object. I demonstrate how their fascination with vagueness resulted from their intention to grasp phenomenal concreteness by renouncing the noumenal unity and stability in transcendental idealism. Their interest in concrete but changing and unfixed realities of life and the human mind caused both James and Hawthorne to reject the idealist notion of a dichotomy between noumenon (the realm of ideas) and phenomenon (that of senses). In Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912), James accentuates the significance of the interaction between seemingly contradictory notions such as fringe and focus, relations and elements, transitive and substantive, and conjunctive by disjunctive. “Wakefield” crystalizes Hawthorne’s championing of vagueness by deconstructing the two sets of conceptual binaries that Emerson constructs to theorize his transcendental idealism: mediocrity/commonness/simplicity vs. eccentricity/oddity/ strangeness; a selfish and self-centered subject/seer vs. an insignificant other/object to be seen.
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