It is inevitable, when dealing with Hawthorne, to be infected with
a bit of ambiguity. That is the reason for such an ambiguous title. Of
course I am not referring to his women. I am not interested in his personal
life, but in his artistic creation. However, the temptation was too strong.
The real topic of this paper is a general review on Hawthorne’s female
characters in his short fiction, focusing on some peculiar characteristics
which I considered to deserve special attention. Are his women connected
in some way? Could we find some common features? Do these characters have
a meaning? All these questions and more arose in my mind when I read Hawthorne’s
stories, and then I decided to search more deeply for some possible answers.
That was the "genesis" of this paper, in which I try to know a bit more about these curious characters, sometimes tender, sometimes obscure, sometimes absurd, but always very interesting.
FEMALE CHARACTERS IN HAWTHORNE’S SHORT FICTION
In Hawthorne’s short fiction we find numerous female characters, and they vary considerably. But if we look at them with more attention, we could guess some kind of a general "tendency". The first thing we notice is that these characters are presented by the author as "good", except for some exceptions, which are a minority. The rest reflect the essence of good persons, although their effects could be terrible on other characters. Here we have ambiguity again. This "goodness" becomes, in some cases, difficult to understand by the reader, for its extremity, which appears quite illogical, but, as we will see later, there is always a reason. In Hawthorne’s fiction there is nothing accidental. This trait is what makes so interesting reading him and trying to find out concealed meanings.
It is also interesting to notice that these characters are almost never the main protagonists of the story. It is also curious that his best known protagonist, in long fiction, is a woman, Hester. But in short fiction there are cases in which the female character is just insinuated, like for example, in the case of Wakefield’s wife, or Elliston’s wife, from Egotism. In these cases and in other ones, in which the characters are more developed, their influence are crucial in the story. They represent some human characteristic decisive on the denouement of the story.
This secondary position of women is not strange in a time and a country where the leading and ruling roles were absolutely assumed by men. At this point, we have to remember that after the American Independence, women had been considered as a fundamental part in the new nation, but always reduced to the domestic area. They were important as educators of the future leaders of the country (Republican Mother), but keeping a secondary position. At Hawthorne’s times, women were already fighting for their own rights (Seneca Falls, 1848 Declaration of Sentiments). Hawthorne could have been portraying the social position of women in his times by consigning them to secondary characters, but also their increasing importance in society by giving his female characters a great weight in his stories.
We can observe that these characters have often the function of a counterpoint for the male characters, which are the protagonists. If we could talk of a "pattern" in Hawthorne’s stories, the most usual one would be the one of one or more male characters, which are attributed with all kinds of human weaknesses, surrounded in most cases by a female absolutely lacking those weaknesses, even having the opposite virtues, like in Rappaccini’s Daughter, the Birthmark, or Egotism. In the first story mentioned, Beatrice is surrounded by three male characters: Giovanni, who is vain and dishonest; her own father, Rappaccini, who is ambitious, proud and has no scruples; and finally Baglioni, who is jealous, bad intentioned, sagacious and has less scruples. In the second story, Georgiana is surrounded by her husband, who is again vain, proud and has no scruples; and also by a strange character, whose only physical horrible description presents him as a brute. In the third one, we have an egotistic Elliston in front of a faithful and hopeful Rosina. In this story, we cannot take Herkimer as a character, for he acts as the voice of a secondary narrator.
We also can make here a reference to The Scarlet Letter, for Hester is also surrounded by two men, Dimmesdale, a coward and a hypocrite, and Chillingworth, a proud, resentful manipulator. Cruelty would be a common characteristic to all these men, reason why I have not mentioned it in their individual description.
Hawthorne could have used any other reference to contrast human weaknesses, or he could just have evidenced them, without any contrast at all, but as a lover of extremes and apparent paradox, he chooses the "opposite" sex to act as a counterpoint.
Those weaknesses are sometimes taken by Hawthorne to the extreme. This is not strange, taking into account how much Hawthorne loves exploring those extremes. We have a clear example in the story of Wakefield, where his voluntary isolation becomes absolutely extreme. It is curious to observe how Hawthorne depicts the gradual evolution of Wakefield’s vanity, which seems to have no end. We can feel the tension of someone playing with an uncertain limit, in a point where the next step could be fatal.
The most usual counterpoint is egotism vs. generosity. We can see it in stories like Egotism, but it is more frequent finding these two values mixed with others.
Generally, we find that the positive values are associated to the female characters, while the negative ones, or weaknesses, as I have called them, to the male ones. These women are generous, loyal, have a more developed spirituality, as Hawthorne himself tells us in The Artist of the Beautiful: "...for if any human spirit could have sufficiently reverenced the processes so sacred in his eyes, it must have been a woman’s.". They are also honest and ready for sacrifice, as it happens not only in short fiction, but also in The Scarlet Letter. Hester is honest, does not conceal her sin and accepts her sacrifice, in contrast to Dimmesdale, who is a hypocrite and a coward, unable to assume the social punishment for his acts.
Another example of this case in short fiction would be that of Giovanni Guasconti, whose love is not honest, but whimsical, and is not ready to undergo the sacrifice of being different from the rest of human beings for his beloved. His vice arrives to the extreme of cooperating in killing Beatrice, who felt honest love for him and assumed her sacrifice, knowing that she was going to die.
These female characters I am referring to have clear goals in life and have the wisdom to feel satisfied with their lives, while the male ones are never satisfied, they always look for something else. Some of the characters can spend their whole life seeking something, which in some cases does not even exist, like the Seeker in The Great Carbuncle, or are not to be found, like Ethan Brand, from the story of the same name. This idea of the typical nonconformity and curiosity of man is not criticized by Hawthorne, with the exception of when it becomes an obsession, eliminating the possibility of enjoying real life and the things which are really worth in this world. Hawthorne does not show stupid women with no ambitious goals in life, but they do not lose their heads for them. They know what they want and what makes them happy and fight for it, in some cases risking their own lives. If their goals are more or less "valuable" than those of the men, I think is a question that Hawthorne does not answer. I would rather think that he does leave this question open to reflection. We could propose another contraposition: personal life vs. professional ambitions. Almost two centuries later, this question has not been solved yet. It is a common dilemma still nowadays, great admired professionals with disastrous private lives.
This idea leads us to the concept of vanity in Hawthorne’s characters. In the male ones, they pursue to be admired by the whole mankind. In the case of the female, their vanity consist of trying to be loved by the ones they love. It is not for vanity that Georgiana wants her birthmark to be removed, but for the sole idea of seeing her husband satisfied and happy with her. The female vanity is portrayed by Hawthorne as insignificant and harmless. To prove what I say, I have found a sentence in The Great Carbuncle that I think illustrates this idea: "But the little bride, simple as she was, had a woman’s love of jewels, and could not forgo the hope of possessing the very brightest in the world, ...". This is the most extreme example of vanity among these women. Conversely, in the case of men, their vanity, which often is the previous step to pride, has no limits and no barriers, like we can appreciate in the case of Wakefield, that leads him even to sadism. He wants to feed his vanity in such a way, that he is able to observe how his wife is lying to death for the only purpose of checking how important he is for her. Another example of a hawthornian extreme.
Another point of these women if how comprehensive they are. We see it in stories like Wakefield, Rappaccini’s Daughter, The Birthmark, Egotism and in others in a lower degree. In the stories I have mentioned we see women that are extremely comprehensive, they really do forgive their men. This is hardly credible, for these situations of male abuse directly attack basic human dignity, even in the XIX century. But if we look a bit deeper, which is almost always necessary when reading Hawthorne, we see that he does not present those women as submitted and obedient, no, he situates them above those "abusers", they really comprehend the weaknesses that move those men to act in such a way. They look down on them in a paternalistic way, as if they were babies, weak and defenseless. They have not reached the wisdom that enlighten themselves. And now we come to the point. From the beginning I have been mentioning a "type" of women, recurrent in Hawthorne’s short fiction, and I have explained some features they have, but the great question was: How to define all these women? What was the fundamental feature they all have that distinguish them from all other women among Hawthorne’s characters, secondary or protagonists?
The answer was not easy to find. It took me days and days of solitary thinking. I knew I wanted to write about "those" women, the kind of woman that everybody who has read Hawthorne immediately thinks of. But, what made them distinct? The answer to my search was simple, basic, like them, but also illogical and incomprehensible, like them. And this answer not nothing else nor less than "love". Love was what made them the way they were. Love made them loyal, honest, comprehensive, ready for sacrifice, wise, serene, generous.
The clue, as usual, was given to me by Hawthorne himself. I found it in his story The Artist of the Beautiful. In this story, the protagonist has already realized that his beloved is the only one person in the world capable of understand him. But in the passage I will refer to, he thinks he has been deceived by her, that she does not deserve the honor to be admitted to his secrets. And then, the narrator discovers to us the great truth: "...Even Annie Hovenden, possibly, might not have disappointed him had she been enlightened by the deep intelligence of love." That was the reason. That is what all these women share. All of them were in love. Deeply in love. And deep is the intelligence of love. Now everything makes sense. If we look to our heroines, we see that all of them, Beatrice, Georgiana, Rosina, Wakefield’s wife, even Hester, were in love. And it was love what made them strong, brave, wise, serene and comprehensive.
I have not mentioned some women in love on purpose, because although they could join the group of the tender enlightened ones, they have not been used as a counterpoint, like the ones mentioned above. That is the case of Edith, the Lady of the May, from the Maypole of Merry Mount, whose husband was as enlightened by the deep intelligence and as ready for sacrifice as herself. That would also be the case of Hannah and Matthew, from the Great Carbuncle, that are presented as equal in their feelings and wisdom.
The fact that the enlightened ones are women (with the exceptions mentioned above), leads us to the question that men are possibly unable to love deeply, the way women do. They are egotistic, they worship their egos and relegate their love for wife and family, even in the case of Owen, the Artist, presented as a sensitive and spiritual character, he prefers to fight for the Beautiful than for Annie’s love. Or Wakefield, presented as a loving husband who prefers to satisfy his vanity than his wife’s and family company. Or Aylmer, who prefers his wife’s death to a subjective imperfection on her face. And so on. All these characters and all these stories make us wonder if men are capable of loving someone apart from themselves.
But this is also ambiguous, because we have the two cases mentioned above of loving, brave, protective husbands. Thus, we cannot think that men are incapable of "unselfish love", as Hawthorne writes describing Rosina’s love for her husband in Egotism, for there are some enlightened ones. And again I searched for the characteristics that made those two exceptional husbands special. The answer was youth. In both cases we talk about young boys who have recently entered the world of marriage. If we connect the idea of novelty, for they are newlywed, with the one of youth, we have a different concept of male character. We have seen in many stories, in which the transition to maturity was the main point, how it affected and alienated the young men. Thus, we have all the ambiguities solved. Hawthorne admires and highlights this absolutely unselfish love, which only pure hearts are able to feel, like women, may be for their maternal instinct, for that extreme comprehension showed by Hawthorne’s female characters has some traits of maternal affection. But also pure heart men, who have not yet been corrupted by maturity, which is the way that Hawthorne represents society, social rules and social responsibilities.
However, the weight of this "deep intelligence" falls mainly upon female characters, as we have already widely observed. And among these characters, I have distinguished two of them which appeared to me as the most representative of this "type" or "stereotype" that has been long discussed. These would be Beatrice and Georgiana, from Rappaccini’s Daughter and The Birthmark respectively. I would like now to analyze them a little bit deeper in their stories and look for their similarities and differences.
BEATRICE AND GEORGIANA
I have chosen them because I think they perfectly fit the stereotype we have been discussing.
They are two young women, beautiful and with a pure heart. But we should make some remarks. In the case of Beatrice, we do not know if her beauty is natural, only enhanced by her father experiments, or all her beauty is nothing more than the result of a series of experiments.
In the case of Georgiana, she is naturally beautiful, but has her special token, the birthmark, which makes her for some people more gracious and for others less charming.
As we see, both beauties are highly relative, each one in its particular way. About their pure heart, in both cases it was inherent to them, and even heightened when they were enlightened by the deep intelligence of love.
Notwithstanding their pure hearts, they both bear an assumed sin in their souls. In the case of Georgiana it is manifested by the birthmark on her face, and in the case of Beatrice it is manifested by her poisonous nature, which she ignores to be such, for she had been her whole life isolated from the rest of the world. In the same situation is Georgiana, who ignores her birthmark to be a token of sin and a disagreeable vision, until she is said so by her husband.
Another similarity between them is that none of them are guilty for the sins they are assumed to bear in their souls. In the case of Beatrice, the real sin would be her father’s pride when he dares to manipulate nature. In the case of Georgiana, the sin would be her husband suspiciousness, that makes him see defects where there is none, and his vanity and pride to think of himself as the only one able to repair nature imperfections.
There is also an ambiguity in the possible interpretation by others of the marks of their alleged sins. Beatrice’s bright beauty can be seen as pure and wonderful beauty, that is, something positive, but also on the contrary, as unnatural and diabolic, which is terribly negative. Georgiana’s mark can also be interpreted, and indeed it is so in the story, as a gracious adornment to her beauty, or conversely as a horrible mark that destroyed the effect of her beauty. In both cases, Beatrice’s beauty as well as Georgiana’s birthmark were considered as something mysterious, and the consequences are quite obvious, mystery attracts some ones and repels some others.
Another very interesting similarity between those two characters is that they are both victims of a character which represents the figure of the romantic scientist, the scientist that observes nature without respect, attacking it, the scientist that violates nature. This figure is very important in Hawthorne’s stories and he was greatly concerned with it.
In these two cases, they try to improve nature. Rappaccini raises his child among poisonous creatures, with the result of her becoming poisonous too. His sole objective was to manipulate nature to create more fragrant, vivid, rich, beautiful creatures: Improving the originals. In the case of Aylmer, he wants to create perfection out of a natural imperfection: Also improving the original. But the question that raises in my mind is, is it really necessary improving the original? Do human beings need more exuberant flowers, plain and perfect faces? Until what point those violators are not creating the necessity of new discoveries? Their experiments are fruitless, their subjects of experimentation are systematically destroyed. What are they useful for? Are they not justifying their own existence, the object of their pleasure?
As I said above, both characters are victims of romantic scientists. They both died poisoned by scientists, although in the case of Beatrice she is first a victim of her father, and then of another scientist. The medicine to cure their supposed defects results in a poison that kills both of them. Baglioni makes the antidote for Beatrice and gives it to her, and Aylmer does the same thing to Georgiana. The difference is that while Georgiana’s defect was natural, Beatrice’s one was provoked by another scientist, her own father.
Both women die completely conscious of the facts that lead them to death. They die just for love. They offer their lives to their beloved, for to be loved by them was the only and real reason of their lives. In both cases they accept the conditions of their lovers. Beatrice accepts to have the antidote, for it is the only possibility she has to save her love story. Giovanni does not want to share with her an uncertain future, he does not want to be supernatural. Beatrice has to choose between being hated by his beloved or renounce life. That life will have no sense if it will not be shared by Giovanni. Georgiana has the same problem. Her husband does not accept her the way she is anymore. He offers her a possibility, which is the only one she has to keep him by her. She must accept being the subject of his experiments. She knows the risks, but accept them as well, for her life will have no sense if she is hated by her husband.
We see in their reactions a common attitude of acceptation of their fate. They are absolutely aware of their fate, their death in the hands of their beloved and because of their vain selfishness. But they do not rebel, they do not try to escape their fate. They assume it with great serenity. Here we see again the deep intelligence of love. They show a wisdom improper of their age. They know there is no other way to solve the situation. They have experienced the quality and quantity of their lovers’ love and their death is a sort of "assisted suicide", for they do not oppose the least resistance.
They both have been disappointed by their respective lovers, which is another sad point in common and, as it is said above, the most probable cause for their death. In spite of the immense love, Beatrice is greatly disappointed by Giovanni, when she hears him say horrid words to her, accusing her bitterly of his poisoning, and calling her horrible names, such as "accursed one", "hideous monstrosity", and "hateful, ugly, loathsome and deadly". After that she finds death nothing compared to these words, for they are a much harder punishment than death itself.
Georgiana is deceived as well when she sees her husband involved in such fruitless experiments, to which he had dedicated his life, keeping apart from herself. The man she admired, for she thought him to be a brilliant scientist, had now turned into a poor maniac, sunk in the blind stubbornness of his impossible fancies. He pretended he could cure the cause of their despair, for what he only counted with was the useless experience in his laboratory and a brute-like assistant. Georgiana is deceived by the scientist and by the man, who is able to risk her life, just for a little bit of private fun.
These disappointments and the lack of hope lead Beatrice and Georgiana to death without resistance. If we look at these events from the point of view of our reality, we could easily consider those two characters as stupid victims, but it is curious to observe that the tone of the narration does not permit it. The tragic tone of both stories makes us follow the events, with the sensation that these two girls are condemned by others, and in no case that they are stupid to die for two whimsical idiots. Such is the genius of Hawthorne. He makes us believe in incredible characters, situations, places, facts and makes us try to solve tremendous ambiguities.
One of these ambiguities was the one concerning the nature of Beatrice. Is she good or evil? It was a cause of debate in a discussion group.
Well, as I said above, Hawthorne makes us try to solve his constant ambiguities, and he does so, because he always leaves some tracks. That is the way of keeping interest. If his ambiguities were insoluble, no one would take any pains in trying to solve them. In this case, we have a clue almost at the end of the story, immediately after Giovanni’s accusations, Beatrice says: "For, Giovanni believe it though my body be nourished with poison, my spirit is God’s creature, ...". We already know for the story that Beatrice is an honest character, and always tells the truth. And also that she is enlightened by the deep intelligence of love. Thus, we have to believe that her heart is pure, that she is good and not an evil creature. Another clue we find when Giovanni starts to doubt about his feelings and his heart debates between fear and attraction for that splendorous creature. Even if he is so deeply doubting, the narrator put a sentence in his mind that will help us in our research. It says: "...whatever mist of evil might seem to have gathered over her, the real Beatrice was a heavenly angel." In this sentence, Hawthorne is telling us about the real nature of Beatrice, no matter what Giovanni thinks of her.
But the decisive clue starts at the very beginning of the story, when Hawthorne makes an allusion to Dante, the great Italian poet, author of the Divina Commedia. Shortly after the beginning, he mentions Eden and immediately the name of the female character, Beatrice. Dante’s muse was called Beatrice. He mentions her quite often in his works, but in his masterpiece, the Divina Commedia, he clearly situates his Beatrice in the third stage, which is the Paradise, clearly connected with the garden of Eden, which is the earthly Paradise. Only the election of the name of Beatrice and the reference to Dante, gives us the clue. Beatrice is located by Dante in Paradise among the saints and the Holy Virgin and helps Dante save the human kind in his way across the Inferno. It is then indisputable the holy nature of our poor Beatrice.
As a conclusion, I would say that these two characters have many similarities, many more than their differences, as we have seen, and they are also more relevant to the analysis of the characters. They have pure hearts, they love honestly, and are victims of the male weaknesses and the egotism that "disable" those male characters to love openly. They die for love and accept their fate. And what is more important, they are the perfect sacrificed representatives of the enlightened with the deep intelligence of love woman.
CONCLUSIONS
More than any conclusion, the results of this work would be to have approached the female characters of Hawthorne, specially the ones in love. We have seen how important love is for Hawthorne, while in a superficial reading we might only notice his "great" concerns, such as Puritanism, isolation, individual vs. society, Romanticism, etc. We have discovered his tender face, when he admires the excellent qualities, the absolute renounce, that those women in love develop.
We could affirm that he finds women as more appropriate candidates for this improved nature which love confers. I do not think that he is insinuating that men are bad or unable to love, but that their selfishness, their egotism and their meanness makes it much more difficult than in the case of women. The clue might be the maternal instinct, which makes women more suitable for sacrifice and renunciation.
My final conclusion is that Hawthorne is just calling our attention towards the important and significant things in life, the things that make people happy, not successful nor satisfied, for we have already seen that there is never a complete satisfaction, but that the highest happiness simply resides in being loved, and I absolutely agree with him.
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