Nathaniel Hawthorne

Name: The Wives of the Dead
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Wives of the Dead

Summary

“The Wives of the Dead”, is a work by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It explores elements such as Mary, lamp and Margaret.

Quotes from The Wives of the Dead (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Wives of the Dead

“ But then she remembered that Margaret would awake to thoughts of death and woe, rendered not the less bitter by their contrast with her own felicity. She suffered the rays of the lamp to fall upon the unconscious form of the bereaved one. Margaret lay in unquiet sleep, and the drapery was displaced around her; her young cheek was rosy-tinted, and her lips half opened in a vivid smile; an expression of joy, debarred its passage by her sealed eyelids, struggled forth like incense from the whole countenance.
“My poor sister! you will waken too soon from that happy dream,” thought Mary. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Wives of the Dead

“ Two vacant arm-chairs were in their old positions on opposite sides of the hearth, where the brothers had been wont to sit in young and laughing dignity, as heads of families; two humbler seats were near them, the true thrones of that little empire, where Mary and herself had exercised in love a power that love had won. The cheerful radiance of the fire had shone upon the happy circle, and the dead glimmer of the lamp might have befitted their reunion now. While Margaret groaned in bitterness, she heard a knock at the street door. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Wives of the Dead

“ Sleep did not steal upon the sisters at one and the same time. Mary experienced the effect often consequent upon grief quietly borne, and soon sunk into temporary forgetfulness, while Margaret became more disturbed and feverish, in proportion as the night advanced with its deepest and stillest hours. She lay listening to the drops of rain, that came down in monotonous succession, unswayed by a breath of wind; and a nervous impulse continually caused her to lift her head from the pillow, and gaze into Mary’s chamber and the intermediate apartment. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Wives of the Dead

“ Happy is it, and strange, that the lighter sorrows are those from which dreams are chiefly fabricated. Margaret shrunk from disturbing her sister-in-law, and felt as if her own better fortune had rendered her involuntarily unfaithful, and as if altered and diminished affection must be the consequence of the disclosure she had to make. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Wives of the Dead

“ It is difficult to be convinced of the death of one whom we have deemed another self. The knocking was now renewed in slow and regular strokes, apparently given with the soft end of a doubled fist, and was accompanied by words, faintly heard through several thicknesses of wall. Margaret looked to her sister’s chamber, and beheld her still lying in the depths of sleep. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Wives of the Dead

“ The brothers and their brides, entering the married state with no more than the slender means which then sanctioned such a step, had confederated themselves in one household, with equal rights to the parlor, and claiming exclusive privileges in two sleeping-rooms contiguous to it. Thither the widowed ones retired, after heaping ashes upon the dying embers of their fire, and placing a lighted lamp upon the hearth. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Wives of the Dead

“ The rainy twilight of an autumn day,—a parlor on the second floor of a small house, plainly furnished, as beseemed the middling circumstances of its inhabitants, yet decorated with little curiosities from beyond the sea, and a few delicate specimens of Indian manufacture,—these are the only particulars to be premised in regard to scene and season. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Wives of the Dead

“ Two young and comely women sat together by the fireside, nursing their mutual and peculiar sorrows. They were the recent brides of two brothers, a sailor and a landsman, and two successive days had brought tidings of the death of each, by the chances of Canadian warfare and the tempestuous Atlantic. ”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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