Compare and Contrast Pieces of Literature Term Paper

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Hawthorne and Poe, both authors depict women who struggle and suffer at the hands of masculine stereotypes. In Hawthorne's "Rapaccini's Daughter" and The Scarlet Letter, and Poe's "Ligeia" the depiction of women characters illustrates each authors sensitivity to the plight of women in the 19th Century.

Considering that Nathaniel Hawthorne lived and wrote in the radical cultural milieu of Concord, Massachusetts, alongside such women's rights luminaries like Emerson, the Alcott sisters, and of course, Margaret Fuller, it is not surprising to find in his literary works a treatment of women that demonstrates, above all, an immense sensitivity to the plight of women struggling for freedom in a man's world. Yet In both "Rappaccini's Daughter" and The Scarlet Letter, published before and after the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, Hawthorne's women characters suffer because of masculine notions of feminine beauty and character.

In Rappaccini's Daughter" Hawthorne tells a stark tale of a woman manipulated by her father's selfish ambitions.

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Her father, Rappaccini, is "not restrained by natural affection from offering up his child in this horrible manner as the victim of his insane zeal for science." Beatrice is described at the end of the story as "a poor victim of man's ingenuity," destroyed by the unwieldy hand of man, her father's as well as Giovanni's. Both men thrust upon her their notions of femininity. Giovanni's desire for a woman of beauty is the catalyst for Beatrice's downfall. If he had never invaded the privacy of her garden, the tragedy would have never occurred. As Beatrice says to Giovanni as she is dying, "was there not, from the first, more poison in thy nature, than in mine"

Her father desired, ironically, to create a strong woman not "exposed to all evil and capable of none," and yet she suffered from the one evil….....

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