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

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

Burinelli, Vincent. The Wizard From Vienna:Franz Anton Mesmer. Coward, McCann and Geoghegan

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.

In, The House of the Seven Gables, it was evident that Hawthorne was still up to his mermeristic tricks. From the start of the book, it is believed that Hawthorne tries to mesmerize the audience by repeating the name Pyncheon four times in a ROW.

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 Mesmeri

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