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Fantasy/SF Micro-essay #5: Hawthorne
Tuesday, August 28th, 2012 09:10 pm[Dammit, missed the deadline again. I read EEST as EST, so thought the Coursera software had failed to take my timezone preferences into account and I still had several hours to go before the deadline. Note this time instead of a cognitive linguistic approach, I indulge my penchant for corpus linguistics ;-)]
Like Mary Shelley, Nathaniel Hawthorne was concerned with the dangers of science. In Mosses From an Old Manse, the word "science" or a derivative form occurs forty-five times. Interestingly, though, "magic" (or a derivative) also occurs eight times. A large number of these occurrences are in the first story, "The Birthmark". At first glance it seems no more than a ludicrously Gothic account of a botched beauty treatment: a distinguished scientist/doctor has a beautiful wife with a birthmark; he obsesses over it, persuades her to share his revulsion for the innocuous pigmentation and finally treats it with an experimental medicine that kills her. The same story could be a soap opera set in Beverly Hills.
What makes it rather more interesting is the how the character of Aylmer reveals attitudes to science. Aylmer is introduced in the first sentence as "a man of science" and is also said to "have deep science,"[1] something he shares with another "man of science" Dr. Rappacini.[2] What this language points to is that science is a calling that defines those called to it as "men of science" (there are, of course, no "women of science" here) but it is also something that one possesses, like magical power. Of course in Hawthorne's day there was less of a distinction between "science" and "knowledge" but the knowledge he is talking about is still somewhat occult and related to the character of the person possessing it. This is emphasised by references to occultists such as Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Roger Bacon, who stood half way between the old magic and the new science. To cap it all, Aylmer has a daemonic assistant, Aminadab, half way between Prospero's Caliban and Frankenstein's Igor.
Science is dangerous, in Hawthorne's view, because, like the dark arts, it can rob us of our humanity. Aylmer first rejects his "chemical" love for a "spiritual" one but cannot help returning to his scientific obsessions; he tries to apply alchemy to love and loses his wife. Rappacini regards humans as mere subjects for his experiments.[3] Both are like evil magicians. Science and magic are not polar opposites for Hawthorn; rather, they are dangerously close.
1. Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Birthmark," in Mosses From An Old Manse And Other Stories (Project Gutenberg) n.p.
2. "The truth is, our worshipful Dr. Rappaccini has as much science as any member of the faculty" (Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Rappacini's Daughter," in Mosses From An Old Manse And Other Stories (Project Gutenberg) n.p.).
3. "[T]his man of science is making a study of you. I know that look of his … a look as deep as Nature itself, but without Nature's warmth of love" (ibid.).
Like Mary Shelley, Nathaniel Hawthorne was concerned with the dangers of science. In Mosses From an Old Manse, the word "science" or a derivative form occurs forty-five times. Interestingly, though, "magic" (or a derivative) also occurs eight times. A large number of these occurrences are in the first story, "The Birthmark". At first glance it seems no more than a ludicrously Gothic account of a botched beauty treatment: a distinguished scientist/doctor has a beautiful wife with a birthmark; he obsesses over it, persuades her to share his revulsion for the innocuous pigmentation and finally treats it with an experimental medicine that kills her. The same story could be a soap opera set in Beverly Hills.
What makes it rather more interesting is the how the character of Aylmer reveals attitudes to science. Aylmer is introduced in the first sentence as "a man of science" and is also said to "have deep science,"[1] something he shares with another "man of science" Dr. Rappacini.[2] What this language points to is that science is a calling that defines those called to it as "men of science" (there are, of course, no "women of science" here) but it is also something that one possesses, like magical power. Of course in Hawthorne's day there was less of a distinction between "science" and "knowledge" but the knowledge he is talking about is still somewhat occult and related to the character of the person possessing it. This is emphasised by references to occultists such as Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Roger Bacon, who stood half way between the old magic and the new science. To cap it all, Aylmer has a daemonic assistant, Aminadab, half way between Prospero's Caliban and Frankenstein's Igor.
Science is dangerous, in Hawthorne's view, because, like the dark arts, it can rob us of our humanity. Aylmer first rejects his "chemical" love for a "spiritual" one but cannot help returning to his scientific obsessions; he tries to apply alchemy to love and loses his wife. Rappacini regards humans as mere subjects for his experiments.[3] Both are like evil magicians. Science and magic are not polar opposites for Hawthorn; rather, they are dangerously close.
1. Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Birthmark," in Mosses From An Old Manse And Other Stories (Project Gutenberg) n.p.
2. "The truth is, our worshipful Dr. Rappaccini has as much science as any member of the faculty" (Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Rappacini's Daughter," in Mosses From An Old Manse And Other Stories (Project Gutenberg) n.p.).
3. "[T]his man of science is making a study of you. I know that look of his … a look as deep as Nature itself, but without Nature's warmth of love" (ibid.).
