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Michael Kadish
10/6/95
.6
One common element found in three of Nathaniel Hawthorne's works, The Scarlet Letter, "The Birthmark," and "The Artist of the Beautiful," is the presence of a man highly gifted in one area who tries to take advantage of his expertise and in the process becomes possessed with his goal, eventually hurting others around him. Furthermore, in each case the men lose the women they truly love. In The Scarlet Letter, this formula is applied when an incredible scientist, Roger Chillingworth, discovers that his wife has had an affair. He does not wish to seek vengeance on his wife, but instead merely on the man who has, in Chillingworth's eyes, abused her.
After Chillingworth learns the identity of the man, hurting this home-wrecker becomes Chillingworth's sole focus in life. The entire goal of this brilliant scientist's life is to slowly destroy his wife's lover. Chillingworth uses his medical and psychological knowledge to cause the life of the unaware Dimmesdale to deteriorate.
"The Birthmark" follows a very similar pattern. We have a man, Aylmer, a profound alchemist, who is fascinated by his gorgeous wife, but who abhors her birthmark. Nothing matters, not even the her health, until this defect is removed. Alymer becomes a fanatic. He must eliminate this blemish no matter who he must also destroy to get his goal accomplished.
The third story, "The Artist of the Beautiful," contains the same pattern but with a different effect. In this work by Hawthorne, a man, Owen, sees beauty in a new light. His view includes the need to look at things in the eye of the beauty contained. This is incomprehensible to the townspeople who think that Owen has just gone insane. He is determined to just to teach his friends, so that they can teach others the importance of beauty to others. To no surprise, he becomes obsessed with this motive. Everything he does is for the sake of Beauty. Deep into his quest, he no longer cares what other people think about him. His work, and even the woman he loves, is sacrificed in Owen's attempt to show his friends just how important art is. He spends over a year of his life making a minute moving sculpture of a butterfly to show the importance of art. In the process, he loses the woman he wanted and is not content until his sculpture is destroyed.
The stories of these men describe their need for their motives to be fulfilled and how eventually their goals overtake their own lives. The men serve only as mere pawns for the advancement of their specific science. In each case all three men lose their loves and the better part of their lives for their art. These stories, possibly reflecting Hawthorne's own life, show what an artist of a science must endure to allow his cause in life to prevail.