Making pictures out of sunshine

Hiya. Channeling the spirits of the scholars today.

“My sober occupation, so far as I have any, is with a lighter material. In short, I make pictures out of sunshine.” [1]

By making Holgrave a daguerreotypist in a story set in 1848 (according to Charles Swann)—or written in 1851—Hawthorne places him on the cutting edge of modern technology. We can see this particularly, as Lara Langer Cohen points out, when Holgrave is alone with the dead judge and decides to take his picture. Throughout the book, he fervently desires for the present to supersede the past, and in using his technology to exert power over the corpse, he literally and symbolically “conquer[s] the Dead Man” [2].

Daguerreotypy is also a very democratic occupation for Holgrave to have. Charles Swann points out that practitioners of the art/science of daguerreotypy often came from the working class or the margins of society and were thus able to “exploit the social fluidity of mid-century America” [3]. When Holgrave calls his occupation his “humble line of art” [4], Swann suggests that he “emphasizes his democratic commitment (and his commitment to the democracy of nature)” [5]. Even Ralph Waldo Emerson claimed daguerreotypy as “the true Republican style of painting” because “the Artist stands aside & lets you paint yourself” [6].

However, daguerreotypy has a darker aspect, which places Holgrave into the role of a character in a Gothic romance. Swann writes that daguerreotypists were “frequently connected with other not always respectable sciences (or pseudo-sciences) such as phrenology (and, no doubt, mesmerism)” [7], while Cohen goes further in asserting that “The frequency with which daguerreotypists were represented as magicians was only matched by the frequency with which their products were represented as magically animate” [8]. In her article "What's Wrong with This Picture? Daguerreotypy and Magic in The House of the Seven Gables," Cohen claims that Holgrave must have used supernatural means when photographing the dead judge, because the room would have been too dark to do it otherwise. Assuming this interpretation, she says that “Holgrave’s photographic magic signals … the ascension of the Dead Man over Holgrave’s will,” which undermines his apparent appeal to technology and modernism [9].  

For Holgrave, daguerreotypy is a way of bringing out the truth. He tells Phoebe, “There is a wonderful insight in heaven’s broad and simple sunshine. While we give it credit only for depicting the merest surface, it actually brings out the secret character with a truth that no painter would ever venture upon, even could he detect it” [10]. Thus, for him, being a daguerreotypist is an artistic pursuit that contributes to human understanding.

Holgrave’s occupation as a daguerreotypist serves as a Hawthornian “type” for his whole complex character. The daguerreotypist is both modern and magical, mechanical and artistic. As a democratic seeker of truth, he is an idealistic American, and his work complements his political beliefs. It places him in the right social group—part of being in the hipster “club” is engaging with art and technology. Being technologically savvy makes him modern. Being a seeker of truth makes him a transcendentalist. Being democratic makes him American. And being a magician of sorts places him in the romantic or Gothic tradition that Hawthorne is working in.

[1] Hawthorne 62

[2] Cohen 58

[3] Swann 8 

[4] Hawthorne 63

[5] Swann 9 

[6] quoted in Swann 9

[7] Swann 8

[8] Cohen 59 

[9] ibid 59 

[10] Hawthorne 63