Many years ago now, in June 2012, at the Nathaniel Hawthorne Conference in Florence, I delivered a paper “From Hester to Hilda: Hawthorne’s Reconceptualization of the Madonna.” It was a fortuitous coincidence that I would be able to view, during my first visit to Florence, the beautiful paintings of the Madonna, many that Hawthorne had seen during his stay in Florence and commented on passionately in his Italian Notebooks, and many to which I referred in my presentation. I recalled also Rose Hawthorne Lathrop’s observation in Memories of Hawthorne: “Religious art can only grow under conditions known only to the heart that is Catholic” (1897). Ironically, after a lifelong struggle with spirituality accompanied by a fascination with ideas embodied in the Roman Catholic Church, Hawthorne would end up spawning a Catholic (and later in life, a nun) in his youngest daughter, Rose. Hawthorne spent much of the life of...
