Robin Molineux and the Young Ben Franklin: a Reconsideration

Extract

Although one feels reluctant to increase the volume of commentary on ‘My Kinsman, Major Molineux’, the work is so rich that it insists on being continuously re-interpreted. And there is one aspect of it in particular which seems to me not to have received adequate attention – namely, its relationship to Franklin's account in the Autobiography of his first arrival in Philadelphia. A few years ago Julian Smith pointed out several of the resemblances, and he convincingly demonstrated the likelihood that the one work had an influence on the other. But he did not go any further than this, and really only began to describe the nature of the relationship. For the most important thing about all of the similarities is that they are accompanied by very suggestive differences. And what I want to argue in this essay is that in writing ‘My Kinsman’ Hawthorne not only remembered Franklin's account of his arrival in Philadelphia, but also sought implicitly to criticize the vision of reality which is embodied in the Autobiography.