The Gray Champion

While Hawthorne's novels, in particular The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, have occupied a central position in the canon of American literature since the author's lifetime, literary scholars only "discovered" his short stories in the second half of the 20th century; the initial spark was the publication of Q. D. Leavis' essay Hawthorne as Poet (1951). Since then, "The Gray Champion" has been one of his most frequently discussed stories, but hardly because it is considered his most successful. Rather, many critics use this story in particular to demonstrate the problem of irony, which is central to Hawthorne research. Hawthorne's prose is known for its ambiguity; Joel Porte, for example, emphasizes that Hawthorne often means exactly the opposite of what he appears to say.^[26]

The difficulty of proving an ironic intention, i.e. trying to deduce the author's intention or attitude from the statements in his story, has become so central to the history of Hawthorne's reception that the concept "Hawthorne Question" has been coined to describe it.^[27]

Like few stories, "The Gray Champion" has inspired such attempts, because the jingoism displayed by the narrator can hardly be reconciled with the common image of Hawthorne as a skeptic and astute observer of human and social abysses.^[28] The Gray Champion comes across as a Rorschach picture. Critics such as Ursula Brumm, Neal Frank Doubleday and Nina Baym stand for the conventional reading. They take the narrator at his word and see the story as an expression of a convinced patriotism typical of the time; as late as 1979, Lea Bertani Vozar Newman described this interpretation as predominant in her research overview.^[29] Since the 1960s, critics have increasingly read the text as a satirical pastiche: According to them, Hawthorne does not speak after his contemporaries, but rather mimics them. Of particular note here are the works of Frederick C. Crews (1966), Frederick Newberry (1973/1987), Michael J. Colacurcio (1984) and G. R. Thompson (1993).

As a young country that emerged from the former English colonies after a revolution, the United States had a particular need to prove itself as a nation, especially to the "old" nations of Europe, but also to reassure itself. Historiography and literature played a particularly important role in this. Writers were expected to refute the European prejudice of the "uncultured" Americans. Soon after the Revolution, American historiography clearly endeavoured to demonstrate the distinctiveness and autonomy of the Americans even in the pre-Revolutionary period and thus to historically legitimize their independence and nationhood. The choice of language and themes in "The Gray Champion" should be understood in this cultural and ideological context.

In many respects, the story corresponds to the "program" of American romantic nationalism, for example in the choice of setting. Even in Washington Irving's Sketch Book (1819-1820), which was a model for Hawthorne in many respects, most of the stories are set in European locations. However, the two exceptions, Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which are set in rural New York, were the most popular - although both stories are based on German legends. The Gray Champion, on the other hand, deals with the "Angel of Hadley", a genuinely American story that also bears the hallmarks of a saga or legend: On the one hand, it connects a verified historical event with the fairytale-like idea of a guardian angel; on the other hand, according to Hutchinson, it is rooted in oral tradition, so in a certain sense it is "folkloric," and thus not only a national, but also a typically Romantic subject.^[30] Hawthorne was not the first to recognize this; as early as 1815, William Tudor, in an article in the North American Review, listed memorable events in American history that lent themselves particularly well to literary adaptation and also recommended the "Angel of Hadley."^[31]

Henry James also emphasized the importance of the setting in his biography of Hawthorne (1879). James, who himself left his native New England at an early age and describes it here with a slightly mocking distance, characterizes Hawthorne as a proud local patriot. He had done Massachusetts a great service by bringing the state's "primitive annals" to life in order to at least make them seem picturesque. The city of Boston should be particularly grateful to him for "The Gray Champion", which he emphasizes as a work of great beauty and compares to a showpiece because of its economy. He also praised the vivid descriptions of the characters.^[32]

In addition to the location, the specific historical background has also been chosen with care. The uprising against Andros in 1689 was often portrayed in 19th century American historiography as a kind of stage rehearsal for the American Revolution, even though the Puritans, who were better known for their austerity and fear of God, were only partially suited to the rebel role intended for them. George Bancroft, the leading American historian of his time, describes the uprising as an early manifestation of a specifically American desire for freedom that was already present at the time and an important stage in the formation of the nation. Although his twelve-volume History of the United States was not published until 1834 and cannot be considered a direct model, Hawthorne was certainly familiar with his earlier writings. Bancroft's account has often been compared to "The Gray Champion",^[33] and George Dekker even describes Hawthorne's prose as its "fictional clone."^[34] Hawthorne already points out in the first sentence that history seems to be repeating itself here, and the second makes use of the anti-monarchist invective found in Bancroft, but also in English Whig historians such as Thomas Babington Macaulay:^[35]

"There was once a time when New England groaned under the actual pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on the Revolution. James II, the bigoted successor of Charles the Voluptuous, had annulled the charters of all the colonies, and sent a harsh and unprincipled soldier to take away our liberties and endanger our religion. The administration of Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a single characteristic of tyranny […]

Unless one assumes a parodic intention on Hawthorne's part, as many critics do, one must conclude that Hawthorne shares Bancroft's enthusiastic patriotism, if only because he appeals to his audience by seeing "our" liberties in danger. Thus Nina Baym says that "The Gray Champion" is "unambiguously patriotic, and his attitude toward the Puritans unreservedly affirmative,"^[36] and Edward Wagenknecht that Hawthorne presents the "struggle of his ancestors against their adversaries" as a contrast like "black and white"^[37] (the fact that the fighter is gray escapes him, as G. R. Thompson notes^[38]). For Henry G. Fairbanks, it is no less a triumph of patriotism than of Protestantism, so vividly portrayed that it could still stir the emotions today.^[39] Several of the other critics who do not see the text as satire, however, are embarrassed by Hawthorne's sabre-rattling, despite their understanding of other times, customs and circumstances, such as Neal Frank Doubleday.^[40] Although he identifies some ironic overtones in the portrayal of the Puritans, the story as a whole is firmly anchored in the nationalist historiography and literature of its time.^[41]

Bancroft and Hawthorne's identification of the Boston riot of 1689 with the American Revolution is rooted in the typological tradition that characterized Puritan historiography.^[42] According to typological biblical exegesis, similarities between persons and events in the Old Testament and those in the New Testament can be explained as divine promises. Typology became of paramount importance to the Puritans of New England, who habitually applied this tool for understanding Scripture to secular matters.^[43] In the hope that the promises of the New Testament would be fulfilled in their lifetime, they also sought biblical correspondences for current political developments and natural phenomena and soon believed that they had indeed identified signs of providence everywhere. Long after the end of Puritanism and despite progressive secularization, this Puritan trait continued to have an effect. Bancroft and Hawthorne's comparison therefore not only legitimizes the revolution by asserting historical continuity, but also at least implicitly lends it a salvation-historical significance. According to Peter Shaw, Hawthorne explicitly uses the vocabulary of Puritan typology in his description of the "gray champion" as the "pattern and model of the inherited spirit of New England", while the proleptic assertion of a "primitive democratic spirit" already prevalent among the Puritans corresponds entirely to the 19th century view of history.^[44]

According to Ursula Brumm, the effectiveness of the story for the purpose of patriotic edification is explained not so much by the rhetoric of the word level, but by its deeper allegorical and mythical qualities. The composition of the street scene is allegorical in the true literary sense, as several critics emphasize:^[45]

"The whole scene was a picture of the condition of New England, and its moral, the deformity of any government that does not grow out of the nature of things and the character of the people"

In a more general sense, the typological comparison of the "two revolutions" is also based on an allegorical method. According to Brumm, Walter Scott was the first to recognize the mythical potential of the story of the "Angel of Hadley". Scott found in it an ancient and widespread material, the myth of the enraptured "king in the mountain", who would one day reappear to his people and lead them back to power and greatness. As Scott knew, one version of this myth was one of the most powerful narratives of the German nationalist movement, namely the legend of the sleeping Frederick Barbarossa, who sleeps in the Kyffhäuser but will one day return and restore "the glory of the empire" (Friedrich Rückert).^[46] Washington Irving, who was a frequent guest at Scott's Scottish country estate during his time in Europe, became acquainted with the Kyffhäuser saga through Scott and also alluded to it in Rip Van Winkle, but rather casually as a patriotic decoration of this more entertaining than political story.^[47] Scott emphasized the mythical, timeless character of the figure of the "Angel of Hadley" in his description of the Indian attack in Peveril of the Peak, but did not make him a hero. As a conservative Tory and newly knighted, Scott had little sympathy for a regicide and therefore concludes the episode with a moralistic discussion of merit and guilt, good and evil.^[48]

The fact that the American king in the mountain is also a regicide on record would have seemed only half as bad to Hawthorne, especially since the United States was born, if not from a murder, then from a rebellion against the British monarchy.^[49] Hawthorne emphasizes the mythical traits of the "angel" even more than Scott by removing almost all of his individual traits - his name is not revealed here, there is not even a reference to his heroic deeds in Hadley. However, he made the historically specific reference to the act of regicide the dramatic turning point of the story, thus giving the legend a new meaning. As an allegorical figure, according to Brumm, the "Gray Champion" thus reconciles the contradictions of the New English character: like the Puritans and later the revolutionaries, he brings down one hierarchy and establishes a new one, questioning authority but at the same time claiming it for himself. For Brumm, "The Gray Champion" is a testimony to the "myth-making activity of a young nation", but at the same time pursues a concrete political goal: at a time when the political center of power in America had shifted to the South, "it reminds the nation that the Puritans of New England were the true pioneers of rebellion and the true representatives of the free and independent spirit."^[50]

Since the 1960s, a growing number of critics have suspected an ironic intention on Hawthorne's part behind the narrator's ostensible patriotic enthusiasm, which is directed both against the Puritans themselves and against their appropriation by nationalist historiography. Frederick C. Crews, in his psychoanalytically influenced study The Sins of the Fathers (1966), is less interested in concrete historical and political statements than in Hawthorne's underlying image of man and society. For him, "The Gray Champion" represents the "hidden unity" or rather similarity of the antagonists, the Puritans are portrayed as no less repressive than their royal oppressors. Ultimately, history shows that authority can only be surpassed by even stronger authority; the "Gray Champion" is, alongside Governor Andros, the King of England and the Pope of Rome, on the other hand, but also Simon Bradstreet and the other Puritan "patriarchs", only the strongest of various father figures competing for the "filial love" of Boston's citizens.^[51] Crews and, a few years later, Newberry (1977) have unanimously traced how irony is embedded in the structure of the story: according to them, although the story begins and ends with a patriotic praise of the Puritans as proto-democratic revolutionaries, typical of the time, their description in the intervening passages stands in marked contrast to this.^[52]

In fact, in the face of the threat, Hawthorne's Puritans show their "strong, gloomy features" even more than usual and, like the first Puritan settlers, again trust that "the blessing of heaven is upon their righteous cause"; he also makes it clear that their self-righteous religious fanaticism repeatedly led to bloodshed:^[53]

"Old soldiers of the Parliament were here, too, smiling grimly at the thought that their aged arms might strike another blow against the house of Stuart. Here, also, were the veterans of King Philip’s war, who had burned villages and slaughtered young and old, with pious fierceness, while the godly souls throughout the land were helping them with prayer."

The Puritans were most incensed by the sight of the Anglican priest in his vestments, which appeared to them to be a paragon of papist presumption and idolatry. However, they themselves unwittingly succumbed to this sacrilege because, as the narrator remarks, they treated their own clergy "with the greatest reverence, as if their very garments were sacred".^[54] Significantly, they disregard their most dignified patriarch, "good old Governor Bradstreet", who exhorts them to keep calm and "submit to constitutional authority."^[55] For Crews, the irony of these passages is "overwhelming", and both Newberry and Colacurcio see them as inconsistent with the democratic-patriotic rhetoric of the introduction. In their interpretation, however, the irony does not only arise in retrospect from a modern understanding of history; rather, it is Hawthorne's fundamental authorial intention. Several critics see subtle hints in Hawthorne's choice of title that point to the ambiguity of the story. It is no coincidence that the old fighter is neither white nor black, but gray, making him difficult to identify. Moreover, "The Gray Champion" is the first of the Twice-Told Tales, which perhaps only reveal their meaning at second glance.^[56] G. R. Thompson explains the dual nature of these stories with a model of reception aesthetics. For the unsuspecting "average" reader, the story functions entirely in line with his expectations as patriotic edification literature. The ideal implicit reader, on the other hand, is able to recognize the author's subtle ironic hints and the contradictions of the narrative.^[57] He sees the narrator figure, who so succinctly jubilates over the genocide of the Indians, for example, as a parody in the tradition of Swift's A Modest Proposal (1729).^[58]

As Newberry points out, the ambiguity is often inherent in Hawthorne's precise choice of words, as in the allegorical interpretation of the street scene, when, according to Newberry, Hawthorne's narrator deliberately speaks not of the evil of this very special government, but of "any government" that disregards "nature"; the accusation thus applies equally to Andros and the Puritans.^[59] Colacurcio draws attention to a further subtle ambiguity: towards the end of the story, the narrator exclaims about the gray champion: Long, long may it be, ere he comes again! The "may" can be understood here as a cautionary suggestion - it could be a long time before the gray champion reappears - or as an optative: "Long, long" may it be, according to the narrator's wish, before the repressive "spirit of the forefathers" makes itself felt again.^[60] Newberry and Colacurcio also point out that the "gray champion" is repeatedly associated with the devil: When the voice in the crowd fears that now "Satan will strike his master-stroke presently," it is obviously warning of an imminent act of violence by Andros and his soldiers, but immediately after this exclamation the gray champion appears in the street, and Bullivant sneers down from his steed at the supposed old dodderer: "Doubtless, he thinks to put us down with a proclamation in Old Noll's name!" In support of his thesis of the gray champion as an emissary of Satan, Newberry also refers to Scott's example, who at least hints that the angel of Hadley, as a regicide, is in league with evil.^[61]

Hawthorne's narrator also seems to quietly criticize the historical picture on which the story is apparently based; when some hysterical voices fear that Andros is planning a new St. Bartholomew's Day, he remarks dryly:^[62]

Neither was this rumor wholly discredited, although the wiser class believed the Governor’s object somewhat less atrocious.

According to Colacurcio, Hawthorne is also parodying the almost paranoid scoffing and self-mortification that Perry Miller, the founder of modern Puritan studies, identified a good century later as the defining motif of Puritan lamentations ("jeremiads") of the late 17th century.^[63] For Newberry and Colacurcio, then, The Gray Champion is ultimately by no means a contribution to the nationalist mythologization of the past, but rather deconstructs it through an ironic imitation of an ideological historical misrepresentation that attempts to whitewash irreconcilable contradictions.^[64] Thompson further underlines the significance of this distinction: she makes a teleological distinction between the belief in progress (especially the American "Manifest Destiny") and an ultimately senseless and lawless course of world history.^[65]

However, this interpretation has not gone unchallenged. Against Colacurcio's remark that Hawthorne's narrator had read too much Cotton Mather and too much George Bancroft, George Dekker, for example, argues that this could just as well be applied to Hawthorne himself, and that the desire for a "subversive" Hawthorne makes Colacurcio's reading all too biased; ultimately, however, Dekker also agrees with the view that the story leaves room for both interpretations.^[66] Alison Easton acknowledges the irony of the story, but says it is so subtle that it is barely perceptible; thus, for most readers, the story does no more than reproduce the nationalist ideology of the 19th century.^[67]

The first edition of the Twice-Told Tales can be found digitized on the pages of the Internet Archive:

• Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1837). Twice-Told Tales. American Stationers' Co., Boston.

The modern standard edition of Hawthorne's works is The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (ed. by William Charvat, Roy Harvey Pearce et al., Ohio State University Press, Columbus OH 1962-1997; 23 volumes). The Gray Champion can be found here in volume IX (Twice-Told Tales, 1974), edited by Fredson Bowers and J. Donald Crowley, pp. 9–18. Numerous anthologies of Hawthorne's short stories contain the tale; a widely used reader's edition based on the Centenary Edition is:

• Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1982). Tales and Sketches. Edited by Roy Harvey Pearce. Library of America. New York. ISBN 1-883011-33-7.

English Wikisource has original text related to this article:

The Gray Champion

• Michael Davitt Bell: Hawthorne and the Historical Romance of New England. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1971, ISBN 0-691-06136-X.
• Ursula Brumm: A Regicide Judge as “Champion” of American Independence. In: Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien 21, 1976. S. 177–186. Deutsche Fassung: Ein „Königsmörder“ als „Champion“ der amerikanischen Unabhängigkeit. In: Ursula Brumm: Geschichte und Wildnis in der amerikanischen Literatur. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-503-01636-8. pp. 119–134. (=Grundlagen der Anglistik und Amerikanistik 11)
• Michael J. Colacurcio: The Province of Piety: Moral History in Hawthorne’s Early Tales. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1984. Reprint: Duke University Press, Durham NC 1996, ISBN 0-8223-1572-6.
• Frederick C. Crews: The Sins of the Fathers. Hawthorne’s Psychological Themes. Oxford University Press, New York 1966. Reprint: University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles 1989, ISBN 0-520-06817-3.
• George Dekker: The American Historical Romance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990. (= Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture 23) ISBN 0-521-33282-6.
• Neal Frank Doubleday: Hawthorne’s Early Tales: A Critical Study. Duke University Press, Durham NC 1972.
• Horst Kruse: Hawthorne and the Matrix of History: The Andros Matter and ‘The Gray Champion’. In: Winfried Fluck (ed..): Forms and Functions of History in American Literature: Essays in Honor of Ursula Brumm. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1981, ISBN 3-503-01660-0.
• John Probasco McWilliams: Hawthorne, Melville and the American Character: A Looking Glass Business. Cambridge University Press, 1984. (= Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture 3) ISBN 0-521-25900-2.
• Frederick Newberry: 'The Gray Champion‘: Hawthorne’s Ironic Criticism of Puritan Rebellion. In: Studies in Short Fiction 13, 1976. pp. 363–370.
• Frederick Newberry: Hawthorne’s Divided Loyalties: England and America in His Works. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Rutherford NJ 1987, ISBN 0-8386-3274-2.
• Lea Bertani Vozar Newman: A Reader’s Guide to the Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne. G. K. Hall & Co., Boston 1979, ISBN 0-8161-8398-8.
• G. Harrison Orians: The Angel of Hadley in Fiction. In: American Literature 4:3, 1932. pp. 257–269.
• G. R. Thompson: The Art of Authorial Presence: Hawthorne’s Provincial Tales. Duke University Press, Durham, N.C. 1993, ISBN 0-8223-1321-9.