The Marble Faun

The Marble Faun was an exhausting read, as emblematic perhaps as the weighty themes within the novel itself: an exploration of nature versus artifice, good versus evil, Old World Dogma versus New World Morality, Roman Catholicism versus New England Puritanism. Each thesis is explored closely, minutely, intimately: and each becomes a hand-to-hand combat for supremacy over the reader's soul. I'm not convinced that Hawthorne offered resolution to the topics addressed, but participating in the argument was the beginning of a cleansing fire.

Everything is thrown at the reader under the guise of a gothic romance, which, in the end is its weakest motif. It rests behind the larger questions like a wallpaper, moving in tandem with the characters show more and the themes, but blending in the background like nondescript decor. It is such a weak presence, in fact, that Hawthorne even "forgets" to bring resolution to it and offers it, in an epilogue, a bit too neatly, all tied in a pretty ribbon. Had this been done by a lesser author, it would have failed miserably; in Hawthorne, it is easily forgiven, as if the reader too has determined that it's the least important of all the themes. Who really cares about the murder and The Model, in the end, when one is being offered spiritual illumination? (A glib analysis, perhaps, but arguably that was his intent when he penned this book, for finding a "healhty" spirituality had haunted Hawthorne like a bugbear all his life, and his works are laden with it.)

These themes, these questions are as old as man himself. And, in every generation, the prophets, the wizards, the magi, the visionaries, the soothsayers, the philosophers ... rise up and debate the questions again -- as if those questions were all newly hatched. Sometimes it's a sham; and sometimes, as in this case, it's a privilege to dance in the mind of a long-dead philosopher and explore his own version of the songs of innocence and experience, for The Marble Faun is as close as one can come, in prose, to exploring the "mind forg'd manacles" that Blake drew out in rhyme. show less

This was a grind. I really don’t have much time for Hawthorne and this was a bad Hawthorne.

On the surface, this is about a group of USAnian young people who spend time in Italy doing everything but being realistic. Their wealth obviously enables them to avoid the banalaties that the rest of us have to deal with, like cooking, cleaning, and generally earning a living. Thus, they can afford to prance around in art galleries, pursue their belief that the art they do is important somehow and, unfortunately for the reader, spend hours in lofty discourse on love, art, friendship, philosophy, and a whole host of subjects that the rest of us will have time to discuss once we’ve finished the dishes.

Their wealth also gives them, as it does show more for all of us, a falsely romantic notion of rustic poverty and their own importance to society. I could go on to describe what happens to them through the course of the novel, but I simply can’t be bothered. Despite there being a sort of plot, it meandered and ultimately vanished in the sands of the characters’ flowery prose. I wanted to slowly and very deliberately put them all to death.

Hawthorne hasn’t here written a novel where this is only the surface. Unfortunately, I think that, deep down, the novel is pretty much about the same thing i.e. an excuse to philosophise on stuff that will all be very well once we’ve sorted out the Zica virus, the tide of Syrian refugees and why the spare room is in such a state.

For me then, this was the worst form of writing: pointless navel-gazing that lacked reality and therefore relevance. In fact, it was as if he was channeling a deluded character from his previous novel, The Blithedale Romance! I fully understand why Ralph Waldo Emerson described it as “mush.”

Thus ends my reading of Nathaniel Hawthorne. I started with The Scarlet Letter. I should have stopped there, too. show less

Hawthorne disappointed me in The Marble Faun. I had very high expectations after having loved The Scarlet Letter and having recently read and enjoyed both The House of the Seven Gables and The Blithedale Romance, but the Faun does not come together as a compelling narrative. Instead, it is disjointed—-maundering between beautiful, sensitive, intensely felt and described art criticism, panegyrics on the architectural ruins of Rome, complaints of Rome’s modern sordidness, and (at times morosely) depressive imaginings on sin. I am now on page 343 of 362 pages, and want to write this review as the book is fresh in my thoughts.

I strive to be an ideal reader, opening myself to the author’s vision, and allowing the author space in which show more to craft a story without putting constraints of my own making on the text. But Hawthorne in The Marble Faun clearly reveals his sexist prejudices in ways that a woman reader cannot gloss over or ignore, and which must diminish him in my estimation.

Another reviewer here on LibraryThing (LisaMarie_C) notes the extremely disappointing Chapter VI “The Virgin’s Shrine,” which is a long fantasizing over the “virginal” Hilda in which Hawthorne writes:

“It strikes us that there is something far higher and nobler in all this, in her thus sacrificing herself to the devout recognition of the highest excellence in art, than there would have been in cultivating her not inconsiderable share of talent for the production of works from her own ideas. She might have set up for herself, and won no ignoble name; she might have helped to fill the already crowded and cumbered world with pictures, not destitute of merit, but falling short, if by ever so little, of the best that has been done; she might thus have gratified some tastes that were incapable of appreciating Raphael. But this could be done only by lowering the standard of art to the comprehension of the spectator. She chose the better and loftier and more unselfish part, laying her individual hopes, her fame, her prospects of enduring remembrance, at the feet of those great departed ones whom she so loved and venerated; and therefore the world was the richer for this feeble girl.”

My response to this paragraph is to see it as a rationalization of the sacrifices that he sees the women of his time, and his family and acquaintance, making to support the artistic efforts of the men in their lives, including (and possibly, especially) himself—Hawthorne was extremely jealous of his current and posthumous literary reputation. There is a defensiveness in this paragraph that seems to reflect a guilty complicity in the oppression of women in this period of history.

The remainder of the chapter is taken up with an obsessive idealization of Hilda as a virgin in white, surrounded with purity (and white doves) and unstained by the realities of life, the “angel in the house,” whom Hawthorne has allowed in this novel to briefly escape her captivity and experience freedom in Rome to pursue her own muse. Nevertheless, Hilda’s muse forsakes her, and leaves her as only the “best copyist” in Rome. I wait to see whether in the end of the novel Hilda will come to a deeper understanding of human nature or will return to America and the safe domesticity which Hawthorne seems to hold in store for her character.

There are many potentialities which Hawthorne does not fully develop, especially in the characters of, and relationship between, Miriam and Donatello, but it can be a trap to talk about lost opportunities in a literary work, so I won’t dwell on that. Miriam is a compelling character, and an interesting contrast to the cold sculpture Kenyon. Kenyon only begins to approximate a human in the last third of the novel.

Do I recommend The Marble Faun? Yes, first for the beauty of the prose describing Rome, its art and architecture—-these passages brought back many of my remembrances of my visit to Rome 20 years ago, during which I spent just as much time as Hawthorne appears to have done in the churches and cathedrals. Second, for the challenge to the reader of a difficult work which is not easily assimilated. There is something of worth here which I will perhaps not understand until I read it again. It evokes memories from my reading of Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, and it may be worthwhile comparing them. I think I’ll give myself a few years before I return to this novel. show less

I loved Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables; I thought both had brilliant characters and writing. In the case of Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter, I loved her strength and abiding compassion. And in The House of Seven Gables I loved the old maid Hepzibah and her cousin Phoebe. I got through Blithedale Romance and found the character Zenobia fascinating at first, although disappointing in the end. I even got through Fanshawe, a none-too-good first novel Hawthorne disowned. But Fanshawe was little more than a hundred pages, and the other two novels two hundred odd pages--The Marble Faun is 402 pages, and by page 150, I was feeling it was going on forever.

Mind you, I rather loved Miriam--rather rare to have a show more strong female Jewish character in 19th Century fiction. Perhaps Hawthorne took a page from Sir Walter Scott's Rebecca in Ivanhoe? For that matter it was refreshing to see two women artists who were living--and making a living--independently. But then Hawthorne rather reversed that strong depiction of women with passages like this:

Hilda’s faculty of genuine admiration is one of the rarest to be found in human nature; and let us try to recompense her in kind by admiring her generous self-surrender, and her brave, humble magnanimity in choosing to be the handmaid of those old magicians, instead of a minor enchantress within a circle of her own.

The handmaid of Raphael, whom she loved with a virgin’s love! Would it have been worth Hilda’s while to relinquish this office for the sake of giving the world a picture or two which it would call original; pretty fancies of snow and moonlight; the counterpart in picture of so many feminine achievements in literature!

Riiight. That's how we should describe Hawthorne's distaff contemporaries Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot--as writers of pretty fancies of snow and moonlight who'd have done better to be handmaidens to their better halves. I heard that song before with Zenobia. And many of the descriptions of Rome and of the art is lovely--but what does it say that I found such digressions more interesting than the main narrative so transparently about a modern retelling of the Fall of Adam. And if how Hawthorne depicts Jews is commendable for his time, how he portrays Catholics is just abominable--even if understandable for his time. And worst of all is the "marble faun" of the story, Donatello. If ever a metaphor was overdone...

So, yeah, count me as not a fan of this. show less

As a mystery, this is a bit of a dud. As a psychological novel, it's not much better (while the characters grapple with some interesting questions/problems, they still feel a bit cardboardy).

But it is an interesting meditation on the ambiguities of apparently clear-cut categories like civilization, art, morality, purity, etc. And the descriptions of Rome are wonderful, as is the loving satire of the mid-nineteenth-century American art scene there.

Parts of it I give five stars (there is some really spectacular stuff here), but other parts were a torture to slog through (particularly the stagnant middle section with its unaccountable focus on the insipid Hilda). Might actually have worked better as a nonfiction travel book on show more contemporary Rome, but he must have needed to pad it out with a dose of melodrama to attract readers. show less

(#41 in the 2007 book challenge)

After being burned badly by The Scarlet Letter in high school, I didn't read any more Hawthorne until we went to Salem last year, and I surprised myself by enjoying it. I confess I mostly picked up The Marble Faun because it came with this recommendation on the back: "This long-overlooked novel is 'must reading' for anyone who relishes crimes of passion set against the picturesque details of Old World landmarks." For some reason, that just slayed me. I mean, I never consciously thought of myself as a person who relished crimes of passion set against the picturesque details of Old World landmarks, but after this book pointed it out, what's not to relish? Anyway, it's about three ex-pat artists living in show more Italy who become involved with a most foul murder.

Grade: A
Recommended: In addition to the relishers of Old World landmarks as mentioned above, this would be good for people who like books set in Italy (quite a bit of the narration is dedicated to describing the landscape and landmarks of Rome and Tuscany), and for people who like those wacky 19th century Americans abroad stories. show less

Interesting tale, but ultimately did not stand the test of time in its current form. This might be a decent work if abridged, or better yet made into an intrigue movie. Nothing of actual terror in it. Would require a little more substance and little less descriptive filler. Often takes paragraphs or even pages to describe something that adds nothing to the plot or point, and then tends to repeat himself again and again once you already have his point. Found myself skimming through and only reading the start or middle of each paragraph to get on with it. Not something I usually allow myself to do.