Hawthorne: Individual vs. Community in Wakefield and The Ambitious Guest

Introduction: Hawthorne's Central Theme

The nineteenth-century American author Nathaniel Hawthorne's most famous literary work, The Scarlet Letter, dramatically illustrates the tension between an individual's desire for love and the community's social constraints and faith-based ideals. Hawthorne's short stories "Wakefield" and "The Ambitious Guest" also highlight this tension. In these stories, Hawthorne suggests that all individuals desire independence and, to some extent, wish to live outside social constraints — yet there is always a simultaneous desire for community and companionship that cannot be overcome. Of the ambitious guest it is said: "The secret of the young man's character was a high and abstracted ambition. He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not to be forgotten in the grave" (Hawthorne 300). Ultimately, both Wakefield and the ambitious guest strive for individualistic lives marked by distinction, but each ends his existence in a futile, thwarted way.

Wakefield's Ambiguous Retreat

The story of "Wakefield" is told as a speculative tale in which Hawthorne, as the unnamed narrator, wonders how the imagined figure of Wakefield could have constructed a subterfuge in which he lives near his wife yet never sees her: "The man, under presence of going a journey, took lodgings in the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or friends, and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment, dwelt upwards of twenty years" (Hawthorne 1). The narrator imagines the character's motivation: "He was now in the meridian of life; his matrimonial affections, never violent, were sobered into a calm, habitual sentiment; of all husbands, he was likely to be the most constant, because a certain sluggishness would keep his heart at rest, wherever it might be placed" (Hawthorne 1). In other words, the desire to be unfaithful to Mrs. Wakefield was not part of his motivation.

The narrator takes the voice of conventional morality, calling Wakefield a fundamentally foolish man: "The crafty nincompoop takes to his heels, scared with the idea, that, among a thousand such atoms of mortality, her eye must have detected him. Right glad is his heart, though his brain be somewhat dizzy, when he finds himself by the coal-fire of his lodgings" (Hawthorne 2). However, by identifying with Wakefield, the narrator also suggests that there is a common resistance within all human beings to the conventional boundaries of their existence. Wakefield clearly desires a way out of his marriage, but he is not brave enough to leave it outright — instead, he dwells in a kind of in-between world.

Wakefield's motivations are never explained, which gives the story an eerie, almost mysterious quality it would otherwise lack if he had simply abandoned his wife for a mistress. He does not appear to be testing her in any way, and he watches her suffering from a distance with a kind of detached fascination. This illustrates Wakefield's complex motivations: he wishes to be a part of society yet also to retain his individualism and stand outside of it. He seems to wish to be married and not married simultaneously. Wakefield's feelings are more ambiguous than those of "The Ambitious Guest," whose protagonist simply desires fame — but both clearly want an escape from their present circumstances and are unsure how to secure it.

The Wife's Perspective and Parallel Fantasy

Hawthorne also suggests that Mrs. Wakefield herself at times doubts whether her husband is dead, hinting that she may have sensed trouble in the marriage: "But, long afterwards, when she has been more years a widow than a wife, that smile recurs, and flickers across all her reminiscences of Wakefield's visage" (Hawthorne 2). Just as her husband engages in a fantasy life, so does she: "In her many musings, she surrounds the original smile with a multitude of fantasies, which make it strange and awful; as, for instance, if she imagines him in a coffin, that parting look is frozen on his pale features; or, if she dreams of him in Heaven, still his blessed spirit wears a quiet and crafty smile" (Hawthorne 2).

The divide between husband and wife is dramatically illustrated in this exchange. Both seem to be conducting relationships with people who are not truly present — the wife imagining her husband dying in dramatic fashion even while she subconsciously suspects he is still alive, and the husband still fantasizing that he has a wife even though he cannot bring himself to return to her until it is nearly too late. Like the ambitious guest, Wakefield lives in a fantasy world where he desires a larger and more expansive life than his current existence but is unable to realize his dreams in reality.

The Ambitious Guest and the Pull of Fame

Wakefield symbolizes the alienation people feel from their fellow human beings. The titular figure of "The Ambitious Guest" likewise symbolizes the tension between the individual's desire for distinction and the pull of community standards and security. The guest admits that he has achieved very little, yet he harbors great aspirations: "as yet, I have done nothing. Were I to vanish from the earth to-morrow, none would know so much of me as you." His ambition stands in stark contrast to the family with whom he stays. "It is better to sit here by this fire," says the young daughter, "and be comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks about us" (Hawthorne 302).

The family is portrayed as a group of individuals who place no great expectations on life and want nothing more than the world immediately around them. "A slate gravestone would suit me as well as a marble one," says the father — but the stranger misses his point entirely, replying: "it is our nature to desire a monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a glorious memory in the universal heart of man" (Hawthorne 303). This exchange neatly encapsulates the story's central conflict: the family's contented anonymity versus the guest's restless hunger for a lasting legacy. Hawthorne's treatment of this theme connects to broader American Romantic preoccupations with self-reliance, ambition, and the costs of individualism.

Conclusion: The Necessary Balance

Some form of social life is necessary, and without it people will not be remembered after they die — it will be as if they never existed. However, Hawthorne is also acutely conscious of the fact that there seems to be a deep human need for individualism, and if that need is not satisfied, people will lash out — either passively, as Wakefield does through his absence, or openly, as the ambitious guest does by challenging the complacency of the family with whom he stays.

It is also worth noting that by simply conforming to how things have always been done, both the guest and the family die in "The Ambitious Guest." The choice between individuality and community is never a simple either/or, and Hawthorne suggests that there must always be a balance between the two. Neither pure withdrawal from society nor passive submission to its conventions leads to a fully realized life — a tension that remains as relevant to modern readers as it was to Hawthorne's nineteenth-century audience.

Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Ambitious Guest." Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tales and Sketches. The Library of America, 1982: 299–307.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Wakefield." 1–4.