Hawthorn’s “The Birthmark” and “Rappaccinni’s Daughter” and the pursuit of perfection
Failed attempts to attain perfection are a frequent subject in Hawthorne’s short stories; these attempts at perfection fail because Hawthorne’s protagonists are misguided and their own innate imperfections cloud their judgments. Hawthorne’s short stories “The Birthmark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” both feature a male protagonist who desires to recreate a woman into their own view of perfection. However, a person’s desires often tell more about themselves than others: the belief that something is imperfect reflects the believer not the thing. Judith Fetterly, in her essay “Women Beware Science: ‘The Birthmark,’” argues that Hawthorne’s portrayal of women’s imperfections in “The Birthmark” and other short stories says less about the women than the men who fixate on these imperfections and try to reshape them. A more Freudian approach by Frederick Crews focuses on the birthmark and the garden as icons of feminine sexuality.
Separation of the individual in Hawthorn’s writing
Through the short stories “The Man of Adamant”, “The Birthmark” and “The Minister’s Black Veil”, Hawthorne’s presents three ways that people control the external forces — society, nature, and the public self — that affect the internal self and illustrates the totality of an individual’s attempt to place themselves above or beyond the reach of others, but in doing so, it warns that the individual also separates themselves from the intrinsic parts of being human. Each of these three stories illustrates the destructive effects of a particular form of separation: “The Man of Adamant” focuses on the separation of the self from society, “The Birthmark” focuses the separation of science and nature, and “The Minister’s Black Veil” separates the inner and external self.
The flaws portrayed by Aylmer in “The Birthmark” and Digby in “The Man of Adamant” are fairly straightforward, but Hooper, in “The Minister’s Black Veil”, portrays one central theme with an infinite number of explanations which, by comparison, makes Aylmer and Digby seem rather simplistic and one dimensional in their behavior.
