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The Surveillance of Woman's Body in Hawthorne's Short Stories

2004; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 33; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00497870490267188

1547-7045

Monika Elbert,

American and British Literature Analysis

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 Hester also descends from English aristocracy, though the decaying mansion of her parents suggests it is fallen aristocracy. Though her paternal home was “a decayed house of gray stone with a poverty-stricken aspect,” it “retained a half-obliterated shield of arms over the portal, in token of antique gentility” (SL 167). 2 Many feminist critics have noted Hawthorne's association of women with social stability: Louise DeSalvo shows how Hawthorne felt that “any deviation from these prescribed [gender] roles would result in the total collapse of the order of society” (12). Joyce Warren also feels that Hawthorne finally capitulates to the “conventional image of female behavior” (189). Nina Baym feels that like the feminists of his time, Hawthorne realized that women were imprisoned, but she feels that Hawthorne is sympathetic to women and tried to reveal the folly of male myths that distorted women's psyches. 3 Joel Pfister recently came up with a similar conclusion about the woman's body in “The Birth-mark.” He feels that the anxiety about woman's body in the story reflected “common social anxieties or ambivalence about women's behavior in biological terms. This was a pattern of displacement within the larger middle-class effort to control and reform bodies” (33). Pfister points to the prevalent belief in phrenology and the preponderance of advice manuals to discuss the culture's fascination with the body. Pfister goes on to say that the compulsion to control woman's body was related to the desire to control her social role: “this discursive management of the way women envisioned their womanhood was crucial to the ideological production of middle-class identity in uncertain times” (58). Nicholas K. Bromell and Cindy Weinstein see woman's body in the Hawthorne canon somewhat differently (in a less sexualized way) by focusing on the dynamics of labor in Hawthorne—and on Hawthorne's anxiety about writing as his labor, his profession. To Bromell, Hawthorne evinces anxiety about the different types of manhood corresponding with mental and manual labor, and Hawthorne “situates the female body at the center of his dramatizations of problems of work because for him, as a male artist, woman's body epitomizes a kind of creativity—labor—which at once attracts and repels him” (112). Cindy Weinstein also sees the centrality of labor in Hawthorne's tales and explains Hawthorne's anxieties as a male writer in the literary marketplace: “The allegorical sign of the birthmark constitutes the site upon which the drama of visible and invisible labor, or non-alienated and alienated labor, of dispossession and possession is staged. At stake […] is not so much what the birthmark signifies but who gets to claim ownership of it” (70). 4 Toni Morrison eloquently points to the black presence in nineteenth-century fiction, even if the presence is subtle: “Explicit or implicit, the Africanist presence informs in compelling and inescapable ways the texture of American literature” (46). She also asserts that “Black slavery enriched the country's creative possibilities. For in that construction of blackness and enslavement could be found not only the not-free but also […] the projection of the not-me.” (38). African-Americanism became “a fabricated brew of darkness, otherness, alarm, and desire that is uniquely American” (38). I would add that middle-class notions of female sexuality and of underclass (im)morality are also mixed in this “fabricated brew of darkness.” 5 Cf. Cindy Weinstein, who believes that Aylmer tries to make both Georgiana and Aminadab “invisible.” Although Aylmer tries “to construct his gender relations along the same lines as those of class, Georgiana proves far more difficult to manage than Aminadab” (74). I think it is significant, though, to see that gender seems easier to eradicate than class, as Georgiana has the last word (shortly before dying), but Aminadab has the last laugh. 6 The erotic triangle ostensibly vying for the power over a woman becomes a central focus for many of Hawthorne's stories; see my forthcoming essay, “Wharton's Hybridization of Hawthorne's ‘Brand’ of Gothic: Gender Crossings in ‘Ethan Brand’ and ‘Bewitched’,” American Transcendental Quarterly (Dec. 2003). Though in “Rappaccini's Daughter,” there are three men (Giovanni, Baglioni, and Rappaccini himself) vying for possession of Beatrice, the dynamics that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick presents in Between Men, regarding the triangle between two men and one woman are certainly manifest in Hawthorne's fiction, though that is not her intended subject. Indeed, in her introduction Sedgwick bases her paradigm on the love match by various suitors for Scarlett O’Hara. Woman is ultimately of no consequence; the triangle shows the bourgeois attempt to control woman for keeping the status quo of patriarchal power intact. Scarlett has to adhere to “the role of ‘lady’,” a role that does take its shape and meaning from a sexuality of which she is not the subject but the object” (8). I feel that Sedgwick's commentary about Scarlett's need to distance herself from her sexuality to survive can be applied to Hawthorne's sexualized women as well: “For Scarlett, to survive as a woman does mean learning to see sexuality, male power domination, and her traditional gender role as all meaning the same dangerous thing” (8). 7 Gender critics have discussed Beatrice's sexuality as threatening to Giovanni. Baym calls the story “an allegory of sex” and asserts that her “poison is her sexuality,” which is associated with “the deadly erotic flower” (108). Pfister associates Georgiana's “crimson stain” with Beatrice's “colorful features” and notes that the “unnatural, sexual quality” of the plants is similar to Beatrice's “monstrous” sexuality: “Monstrosity is a metaphor for female ambiguity, desire, and power in the eyes of males” (64). There is a sense that the too colorful, too lively quality of Beatrice is associated with the tarnish of the underclass. The Transcendentalist minister Theodore Parker lectured about the dangers of the underclass and pointed to their excessiveness as a telltale mark of their corruption. Their error lies in an “unintentional violation of a natural law” (287). In some ways, Rappaccini who experiments with genetics can be perceived as being such a criminal type. Parker also says that there is a class of criminal who commit crimes out of an “abundance of life and energy” (287). Beatrice, in her resplendent sexuality, seems to possess this unnatural liveliness and energy. 8 As critics sometimes point out, these stories may have reflected Hawthorne's own anxieties about female sexuality, as he had recently married (in 1842). But the fears of sexuality are not just imagined. Conjugal sexuality probably was not as frightening as failed pregnancies, the possible upshot of sexuality. Before daughter Una was born in 1844, it is alleged that Sophia, Hawthorne's wife, suffered a miscarriage. Certainly, the fears of bringing a “monstrosity” into the world haunt the pages of the stories I discuss dating from the Old Manse period—and Hawthorne's “honeymoon” years. 9 This emphasis on Annie's feminine beauty as portrayed in the town-crier's description is eerily similar to Harriet Jacobs’ ad posted by her master, Dr. Norcom, who also focused, almost lasciviously, on the beautiful features of his escaped slave. Certainly, the narrator has already focused on these telltale signs of beauty even earlier in the narrative; this repetition reinforces his attraction to her physical beauty. 10 Motherhood has been seen as both a liability and as a source of redemption for Hester. See my earlier essay on how Hester uses her maternity in a subversive manner to counter the negative assessments of the townspeople. Though she does adhere to many of the traditions of gentle nurturing, she redefines the maternal experience as part of her rebellion. I feel that Hawthorne affirms the centrality of maternity as part of the female experience—indeed, the novel may be seen as a tribute to his recently deceased mother. Franny Nudelman reads Hester's maternity as a failure in that her offspring Pearl misbehaves badly and appears demonic. Leland Person has recently read “black” motherhood into Hester's maternity: “Hester's abject dependence upon patriarchal sufferance for her mothering rights links her to her slave sisters, but her ability to mother at all marks her feminist difference from slave mothers like Harriet Jacobs” (44). John Gatta notes how conflicting pagan and Christian elements enter into the picture of Hester's maternity but that ultimately, though not “the Divine Woman in any literal sense” but rather “only the town counselor-in-residence” (19), she does “fulfill a prophetic office as agent of revelation” (19). Perhaps the most damning feature of Hester's maternity is shown in the manner by which the narrator eradicates her passion, so that she moves from passion to reason. She is totally desexualized in the process, so that the initial maternal/sexual energy of the first scaffold scene is replaced by an austerity of thought. Significantly, her female sexuality is denied her as “her rich and luxuriant hair had either been cut off, or was so completely hidden by a cap” (258). The coldness seems striking in comparison to the initial picture we have of her juxtaposed with Divine Maternity: “there seemed to be no longer any thing in Hester's face for Love to dwell upon; nothing in Hester's form, though majestic and statuelike, that Passion would ever dream of clasping in its embrace; nothing in Hester's bosom, to make it ever again the pillow of Affection” (258–59). Being deprived of all that is allegorically feminine, Love, Passion, and Affection, Hester is robbed of her womanhood: “Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman” (259). Though she has “assumed a freedom of speculation” and has thought revolutionary ideas, the narrator does not make it seem as if the (s)exchange is positive. Using the Foucauldian paradigm, one can see, on the one hand, that her dangerous sexuality has been punished and negated for the good of the patriarchal bourgeois status quo. On the other hand, Hester's “marble coldness” is attributed to the fact that she has moved “from passion and feeling, to thought” (259); in some ways, this makes Hester immune from men's power of possession (Dimmesdale's and Chillingworth's) because she has altered the terms of her femininity. She has moved away from woman's conventional sphere to men's freer realm of thinking. Dimmesdale, in contrast, becomes feminized, as he is rendered the victim of Chillingworth's machinations (in Chillingworth's rivalry for his affection, or power over him). 11 Though Hester's maternity saves her, Hepzibah's virginity or spinsterhood does not redeem her. In the next novel Hawthorne would write, The House of the Seven Gables (1851), Hawthorne shows the more immediate danger of keeping woman's sexuality and social class structure inviolate: Hepzibah, though chaste, is portrayed as grotesquely barren and non-nurturing. It is only through her renunciation of class consciousness, as she enters the laboring class as the owner of a cent-shop, that she can be assimilated into the community. The commingling of classes finally does not seem as threatening in this novel as it does in Hawthorne's short stories. Phoebe is the redemptive woman; though her father is a Pyncheon, her mother is a commoner, so she can break the curse of the feuding families. When she marries Holgrave, a descendant of the wronged underclass Maules, she not only brings the families together, but she compensates for the sexual atrocity committed by the mesmerist Matthew Maule against her forebear, Alice Pyncheon. See also Teresa Goddu's essay on The House of the Seven Gables, which discusses the significance of exchanging or circulating women almost as commodities to reconcile class conflicts.