Comparing Women in Rappaccinis Daughter, Prophetic Pictures, Lady Elea

The Role of Women in Rappaccinis Daughter, The Prophetic Pictures, Lady Eleanors Mantle, and The Birth-Mark When researching criticism on Hawthornes works, I ran across an interesting piece that dealt with the feminist take up of The Birth-Mark. The article, write by Fetterly, explores the relationship between Aylmer and his married woman, and how this relationship is a typical male-dominated situation. Although in that location is the fact that the story deals with the failure of the scientist, t here is an underlying current here of how Aylmer views his wife in a negative manner. This view towards women can be seen in several(prenominal) of the works of Hawthornes - among them Rappaccinis Daughter, The Prophetic Pictures, and Lady Eleanors Mantle. While this view of women is not always at the forefront of the piece, it is certainly worth exploring how they be treated by the men in each. In The Birthmark, Aylmer sets about the toil of ridding his wife of the one imperfection s he has. By onslaughting to perfect her, the readers get the imagination that somehow Georgiana is not adequate and this inadequacy lies in her demeanor. The message to the readers seems to be that women hire to be perfect on the outside as hearty as on the inside, which Aylmer claims is flawless. Aylmer decides he is going to fix Georgiana. Feminists port at this as a male control issue. There atomic number 18 several mentions of Georgiana as being otherwise so perfect, in both appearance and soul - save for this birthmark. This idea of having to have the most beautiful wife is very degrading view of women. It plants the idea in our minds that men are superior to women, and that men are the ones who can fix young-bearing(prenominal)s in the attempt to bring them up to the level of me... ...hadow of death falling over the female characters in each of these stories. This would fit into what Fetterly describes as the great American conceive of of eliminating women. It seems t hat the role of the men in these pieces were chiefly to try and control their wives/ esteem interests/daughters in the attempt to get an upper hand in the involvement of the sexes. There are not any productive male-female relationships seen here, and feminists would conclude that this stems from the need to dominate women, probably because men are afraid of the power of women. We cant do whats going on in the minds of these men, but it certainly is interesting to look at the relationships they have with the main female characters. Works CitedHawthorne, Nathaniel. Rappaccinis Daughter. Nathaniel Hawthornes Tales. Ed. James McIntosh. newfangled York W. W. Norton and Company, 1987.