Emerson talked in proverbs, and Hawthorne in parables. The finest sketches in this collection are parables. “The Birth Mark,” “Rappacini’s Daughter,” “A Select Party,” “Egotism,” and “The Artist of the Beautiful.” “The Celestial Railroad” is an allegory, a variation on “Pilgrim’s Progress.”
“The Birth Mark” and “Rappacini’s Daughter” are like divergent lines, which originate at an single point; and that point is the radical viciousness of trying experiments on human beings. It is bad enough, although excusable, to vivisect dogs and rabbits; but why should we attempt the same course of procedure with those that are nearest and dearest to us? Such parables were not required in the time of Tiberius Cæsar and men and women grew up in a natural, vigorous manner; but now we have become so scientific that we continually attempt to improve on Nature,—like the artist who left the rainbow out of his picture of Niagara because its colors did not harmonize with the background.
The line of divergence in “The Birth Mark” is indicated by its name. We all have our birth-marks,—traits of character, which may be temporarily suppressed, or relegated to the background, but which cannot be eradicated and are certain to reappear at unguarded moments, or on exceptional occasions. Education and culture can do much to soften and temper the disposition, but the original material remains the same. The father who attempts to force his son into a mode of life for which Nature did not intend him, or the mother who quarrels with her daughter’s friends, commits an error similar to that of Hawthorne’s alchemist, who endeavors to remove the birthmark from the otherwise beautiful face of his wife, but only succeeds in effecting this together with her death. The tragical termination of the alchemist’s experiments, the pathetic yielding up of life by his sweet “Clytie,” is described with an impressive tenderness. She sinks to her last sleep without a murmur of reproach.
“Rappacini’s Daughter” might serve as a protest against bringing up children in an exceptional and abnormal manner. I once knew an excellent lady, who, with the best possible intentions, brought up her daughter to be different from all other girls. As a consequence, she was different,—could not assimilate herself to others. She had no admirers, or young friends of her own sex, for there were few points of contact between herself and general society. Her mother was her only friend. She aged rapidly and died early. Similarly, a boy brought up in a secluded condition of purity and ignorance, finally developed into one of the most vicious of men.
Hawthorne has prefigured this by a bright colored flower which sparkles like a gem, very attractive at a distance, but exhaling a deadly perfume. He may not have been aware that the opium poppy has so brilliant a flower that it can be seen at a distance from which all other flowers are invisible. The scene of his story is placed in Italy,—the land of beauty, but also the country of poisoners. Rappacini, an old botanist and necromancer, has trained up his daughter in the solitary companionship of this flower, from which she has acquired its peculiar properties. A handsome young student is induced to enter the garden, partly from curiosity and partly through the legerdemain of Rappacini. The student soon falls under the daughter’s influence and finds himself being gradually poisoned. A watchful apothecary, who has penetrated the necromancer’s secret, provides the young man with an antidote which saves him, but deprives the maiden of life. She crosses the barrier which separated her from a healthy existence, and the poison reacts upon her system and kills her. The old apothecary looks out from his window, and cries, “O Rappacini! Is this the consummation of your experiment?”
The underlying agreement between this story and “The Birth Mark” becomes apparent when we observe that the termination of one is simply a variation upon the last scene of the other. In one instance a beautiful daughter is sacrificed by her father, and in the other a lovely wife is victimized by her husband. There have been thousands, if not millions, of such cases.
There is no other writer but Shakespeare who has portrayed the absolute devotion of a woman’s love with such delicacy of feeling and depth of sympathy as Hawthorne. In the two stories we have just considered, and also in “The Bosom Serpent,” this element serves, like the refrain of a Greek chorus, to give a sweet, penetrating undertone which reconciles us to much that would otherwise seem intolerable. The heroines in these pieces have such a close spiritual relationship that one suspects them of having been studied from the same model, and who could this have been so likely as Hawthorne’s own wife. {Footnote: Notice also the similar character of Sophia in J. Hawthorne’s “Bressant."}
The theme of “The Bosom Serpent” is a husband’s jealousy; and it is the self-forgetful devotion of his wife that finally cures his malady and relieves him of his unpleasant companion. The tale ends with one of those mystifying passages which Hawthorne weaves so skilfully, so that it is difficult to determine from the text whether there was a real serpent secreted under the man’s clothing, or only an imaginary one,—although we presume the latter. Francis of Verulam says, “the best fortune for a husband is for his wife to consider him wise, which she will never do if she find him jealous”; and with good reason, for if he is unreasonably jealous, it shows a lack of confidence in her; but mutal confidence is the well-spring from which love flows, and if the well dries up, there is an end of it.
“The Select Party” is quite a relief, after this tragical trilogy. It is easy to believe that Hawthorne imagined this dream of a summer evening, while watching the great cumulus clouds, tinted with rose and lavender like aerial snow-mountains, floating toward the horizon. Here were true castles in the air, which he could people with shapes according to his fancy; but he chose the most common abstract conceptions, such as, the Clerk of the Weather, the Beau Ideal, Mr. So-they-say, the Coming Man, and other ubiquitous personages, whom we continually hear of, but never see. The Man of Fancy invites these and many others to a banquet in his cloud-castle, where they all converse and behave according to their special characters. A ripple of delicate humor, like the ripple made by a light summer breeze upon the calm surface of a lake, runs through the piece from the first sentence to the last; and the scene is brought to a close by the approach of a thunder-storm, which spreads consternation among these unsubstantial guests, much like that which takes place at a picnic under similar circumstances; and Hawthorne, with his customary mystification, leaves us in doubt as to whether they ever reached terra firma again.
There is one proverbial character, however, whom Hawthorne has omitted from this account; namely, Mr. Everybody. “What Everybody says, must be true;” but unfortunately Everybody’s information is none of the best, and his judgment does not rise above his information. His self-confidence, however, is enormous. He understands law better than the lawyer, and medicine better than the physicians. He is never tired of settling the affairs of the country, and of proposing constitutional amendments. Is it not perfectly natural that Everybody should understand Everybody’s business as well as or better than his own? He is continually predicting future events, and if they fail to take place he predicts them again. He is omnipresent, but if you seek him he is nowhere to be found,—which we may presume to be the reason why he did not appear at the entertainment given by the Man of Fancy.