![]() ![]() When Maria finds the fictional Hathorne in Salem, he exiles her to a hunting cabin in the woods with her baby, echoing “The Scarlet Letter,” written by the actual Hathorne’s great-great-grandson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who added the "w" to his surname, perhaps to escape the infamy of his stern forbear.Įven though Maria and her baby are sidelined to the woods, she survives by making soap and carries herself proudly in the village. John Hathorne was a historical figure, a magistrate and merchant who became one of the most famously relentless judges in the Salem witch trials. An open man and a talkative storyteller, Samuel falls in love with his healer, but Maria is determined to find the father of her baby. She uses the herbal knowledge she learned from Hannah to cure him. She gains passage, with her baby Faith, on a ship whose captain is a Sephardic Jew who escaped the Spanish Inquisition, and whose son Samuel is ill with what Maria recognizes as dengue fever. Maria has a baby out of wedlock, ending her indentured service. Hathorne leaves after several days to return to his home in staid Salem. Toward the end of her servitude, at 15, she is seduced by 37-year-old John Hathorne, a successful trader from Massachusetts, arrived in this “land of oddities and miracles” for business. Once on the Caribbean island, she will work as a family’s indentured servant for five years. ![]() Not so attached to his newly acquainted daughter, he sells Maria in exchange for her boat passage to Curaçao. ![]()
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