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

Animal magnetism began as a treatment for physical maladies. Mesmer believed that the earth and celestial bodies, rotating in the midst of universal fluid, continually generated electricity. This electricity was modified according to the nature of the receiver. Mesmer believed the human body was the most perfect electric machine in the world(Podmore75). A well man fell ill when his channel to the universal fluid became obstructed. The animal magnetist channeled his own universal fluid to the sick man to unobstruct his channel, therefore healing him.

Mesmer's study of animal magnetism prompted him to notice the strange behavior of the subjects while they were being magnetized (Burinelli63). This initiated his study of mesmerism. The subjects of magnetism convulsed and seemed to be unconscious, but they remained coherent and this greatly interested Mesmer. The Mesmeristic trance was a by-product of animal magnetism. Mesmer began to think of these patients as psychological studies, unlike an animal magnetist who strove to merely fix physical ills. He began to treat maladies of the mind such as dementia, depression and nervous conditions.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Heritage Press, New York, NY 1935.

Podmore, Frank. From Mesmerism to Christian Science:A Short History of Mental Healing. University

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