Hawthorne And The Role Of Women

Hawthorne stories have been most popular, yet criticize a lot through American literature. The stories’ plot takes historical context as well as imagination that keep one thinking after it is read.“The Minister Black Veil” and “The Birthmark” summarize these characteristics into one and develops characters to represent such details. At last, but not least, the topic of this essay: the comparisonand contrast of the roles of women in Hawthorne stories, takes us through to various topics to discuss. As a professor from Smith College, Richard H. Millington, commented:
“In these encounters,male characters-their underlying anxiousness and aggression disguised as ambition or obsession-refuse the invitation to full, complex, and humane life offered by their female counterparts. Theseacts of neurotic refusal punish-and even kill off-the women and yield to the male characters the utterly empty lives they seem all along to seek.”
Comparing the role of women is not so complex inHawthorne stories. Hawthorne never saw women as unimportant or threatening. But more as men’s emotional, intellectual and spiritual partners. This has a lot to do with his personal life because all thewomen he had around were companions. They were never a threat.
This talented author demonstrates that women usually played crucial roles in the development of his stories. The creation of thesecharacters often was inspired by the real women in his professional and emotional life.
We cannot leave behind the strong presence of themes and movements Hawthorne had in his stories. His works apply toromanticism or dark romanticism, tales that were composed of guilt, sin, and evil, being the most important quality for human nature. This quality represents a major topic to express the theme of hisstories. They were settled at a time where the Puritans were around. With these details we can understand more why the women had the characteristics they had at the plots in each story.
The role...