The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne
"The Marble Faun" is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s final novel, exploring themes of guilt, identity, and the impact of foreign cultures on American values. Set in 1850s Rome, the story centers around a group of artists, particularly focusing on Miriam, a painter with a troubled past, and Donatello, her Italian lover. Their lives are irrevocably altered after a tragic act of violence, leading Donatello from a carefree existence to a deeper understanding of human nature through his feelings of remorse. The narrative also includes Kenyon, an American sculptor, who provides insight into the cultural challenges faced by expatriates and reflects on the splendor of Italian art and Catholicism, which contrasts with the Puritanical roots of characters like Hilda, who grapples with the fallout from the murder. As the characters navigate their intertwined fates, Hawthorne examines the complexities of guilt and the loss of innocence, ultimately questioning whether their experiences lead to growth or punishment. The novel serves as a meditation on the nuances of identity and the psychological toll of living between cultures, making it a compelling study of American expatriate life.
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Subject Terms
The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne
First published: 1860
The Work
The Marble Faun, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s final novel, examines two of the problems that interested its author late in his career: the complications of living abroad and the possible benefits of human suffering. Considered by some to be less successful than his earlier works, the novel nevertheless offers a unique picture of the effects of a foreign culture upon American lives and values.
The story follows the movements of a group of artists living in Rome in the 1850’s. Miriam, a beautiful painter with a mysterious background, is haunted by a strange man from her past. In a moment of passion she allows Donatello, her Italian suitor, to murder the stranger by throwing him from the cliff once known as the Traitor’s Leap. From this point Hawthorne’s interest in the ability of guilt to bring about changes in identity guides the novel. Donatello, happy but shallow before the murder, soon develops a more profound understanding of human nature through the sympathy created by his feelings of remorse. His relationship with Miriam also deepens, though his shame at their mutual secret soon drives him into isolation at his family home in Tuscany. There Donatello finds himself unable to appreciate the natural beauty he loved as a boy. Having gained wisdom and experience, he has lost his youth and innocence. Donatello is guided through this difficult period by Kenyon, an American sculptor who acts as observer and partial spokesman for Hawthorne. Not only does Kenyon express many of his creator’s ideas about Italian art and architecture but also he speculates about the effects of Italian life and culture on uprooted New Englanders such as Hilda, a young copyist he secretly loves. The depth of history, the power of Catholicism, and the overwhelming beauty of European art all pose threats to their Puritan heritage. Furthermore, Hilda, as a witness to the murder committed by Donatello and Miriam, faces the additional difficulty of keeping the crime a secret and so sharing in the guilt of the couple. Like Donatello, her remorse gradually changes her understanding of human nature, and by the book’s end her harsh purity has softened into a greater sympathy for human weakness.
In his journals of the period Hawthorne speculates about the effects of living in a foreign country too long, and at the end of The Marble Faun he repeats his concerns. To live too long on a “foreign shore,” the narrator notes, is to “defer the reality of life” until “between two countries, we have none at all.” This desire to protect their American identity sends Kenyon and Hilda back to New England. Miriam and Donatello, forever linked by their experience, remain to suffer the punishment that their own guilt demands. Whether their fall, like that of Adam and Eve, was “fortunate” or not is one of the book’s enduring questions.
Bibliography
Carton, Evan. The Marble Faun: Hawthorne’s Transformations. Boston: Twayne, 1992. Discusses biographical details that relate to The Marble Faun, indicates the importance of the admittedly flawed novel, and surveys the major literature that deals with the novel.
Herbert, T. Walter, Jr. “The Erotics of Purity: The Marble Faun and the Victorian Construction of Sexuality.” Representations 33 (Fall, 1991): 114-132. Reasons that purity is sometimes not admirable, as when Hilda arouses but frustrates Kenyon, is shocked by Miriam’s sensuality, and ignores the representative human being who is stained by knowledge.
Idol, John L. “‘A Linked Circle of Three’ Plus One: Nonverbal Communication in The Marble Faun.” Studies in the Novel 23 (April, 1991): 139-151. Analyzes the interactions among Hawthorne’s characters through body movements, facial expressions, and maintaining of physical distance. The author’s examples include Hilda’s avoidance of Miriam’s embrace, Miriam’s ocular order to Donatello to commit murder, and Kenyon’s sculpting Donatello’s sin-altered face.
Liebman, Sheldon W. “The Design of The Marble Faun.” New England Quarterly 40 (March, 1967): 61-78. Dismisses the conclusion of previous critics that the structural principle of The Marble Faun is the human “fall” and transformations. Describes the structural principle as residing in the carved sarcophagus, which is symbolic of everybody’s “dance, pilgrimage, and corpse.”
Stern, Milton R. Contexts for Hawthorne: “The Marble Faun” and the Politics of Openness and Closure in American Literature. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Analyzes Hawthorne’s pull toward closure (as seen in his classical conservativism, preference for past and present, and aesthetic control and unity) and his push toward openness (as reflected by his romanticism, revolutionary tendencies, repudiation of the past, and preference for future expansionism).