Michael Colacurcio makes the most in-depth study of "Lady Eleanore's Mantle" in his book Province of Piety. In the chapter entitled "Plague, Pox, Pride and Corruption," he looks at how the smallpox crisis and other contextual events shaped Hawthorne's story, as well as its allegorical implications. (courtesy of Dr. Michael J. Colacurcio)

The allegory of "Lady Eleanore's Mantle" looks disarmingly simple (426).

. . . In the first of the four scenes, we seem to see Pride arriving in the New England colonies, but minor ironies abound (431).

. . . But though Lady Eleanore has brought with her Imperial Self enough Pride to doom herself and plague a purer people, and though she proceeds, melodramatically, to wrap herself ever more fatally in the mantle of her Pride, still the world she enters is already contaminated. Or if that is too strong, a world far from immune (432).