Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories and novels are laden with Mesmeristic Imagery. He incorporates Mesmerism to add an element of the supernatural to his works. Also, Mesmerism depicts a power struggle between a man and a woman. The man acts as Mesmerizer and knowingly takes advantage of the woman for deceitful purposes. Mesmerism and it's root, animal magnetism, are incorporated throughout Hawthorne's short stories and novels.

Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), an Austrian physicist, was a pioneer in the practice of Hypnotism. His theory began as animal magnetism. Mesmer believed a mysterious fluid penetrates all bodies. This fluid allows one person to have a powerful "magnetic" influence over another. His sessions of seances, in which he magnetized patients, created an initial sensation but soon the medical profession considered him a fraud. His theories of animal magnetism have been discarded , but hypnotism has been accepted as a subject for scientific study as well as a means of treating certain disorders (World Book 421).

Mesmer was not the first to use magnets to heal wounds. In all ages and all countries there have been people who have claimed to

Coale, Samuel Chase. Mesmerism and Hawthorne:Medium of a Romance. University of Alabama Press.

Animal magnetism and mesmerism were logically connected as cause and effect. While magnetizing Mesmer could throw subjects into a state between sleep and wakefulness so they could obey commands, even though their faculties had stopped functioning in the normal manner. Although not part of his original vision as a healer of physical ills, the trance of mesmerism grew in importance until it overshadowed everything else and became the essential phenomenon of the system. Mesmer understood that his will dominated the will of the patient, the cure coming about partly because he made the patient will the cure. Mesmer saw that a subject in a trance could obey his command because something deeper than ordinary consciousness was at work. He did not grasp fully the concept of the unconscious mind or realize that he was probing into deeply hidden parts of the psyche. Only after Mesmerism fully developed among unexpected lines did he comprehend the meaning of the trance(Burinelli 1!

in a sphere all by herself"(54). Beyond the "A" allowing Hester to enter others hearts it has mesmeric qualities all its own. It is described as the "deep meaning...which , as it were, streamed forth from the mystic symbol, subtly communicating itself to my sensibilities , but evading the analysis of my mind"(31). Hawthorne did not agree with mesmerism, in fact he despises it; he felt it was a violation of the human heart to have influence over somebody else's actions. When Dimesdale finds out Roger Chillingworth's true identity he says; "That old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin" Dimesdale then makes the suggestion that "He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart"(195).

Mesmerism influences much of Hawthornes novel, The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne uses mesmeris

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