Critical Commentary Related to "Old Esther Dudley"

Mirror like Esther Dudley’s (courtesy of The Beverly Historical Society)

In their introduction to Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition, John L. Idol, Jr. and Melinda Ponder note Hawthorne's sympathetic view of older and impoverished women. (courtesy of University of Massachusetts Press) In his Hawthorne and the Historical Romance of New England, Michael Davitt Bell considers the meaning of the contrast drawn between Esther Dudley and John Hancock. (courtesy of Princeton University Press) Michael Davitt Bell also suggests one of the similarities between "Old Esther Dudley" and The House of the Seven Gables. (courtesy of Princeton University Press)

• In his book The Province of Piety: Moral History in Hawthorne's Early Tales, Michael Colacurcio suggests the real office to be fulfilled by Old Esther Dudley as a historian of the colonial past. (courtesy of Dr. Michael J. Colacurcio)