Arrogance in Hawthorne S Male Protagonists

¶ … Minister's Black Veil" and "The Birth-mark:" Hubris

Many of Nathaniel Hawthorne's works are seen as a critique of Puritan ideology and the dangers of having a judgmental attitude. "The Minister's Black Veil" illustrates the Reverend Hooper's vindictive and narrow-minded attitude not to others but to himself. He punishes himself in perpetuity for some unnamed sin although at the end of his life, right before his death, he proclaims that all human beings wear a black veil of sin, not just himself. "The Birth-mark," in contrast, depicts the dangerous overconfidence of a scientist who is certain that he can render God's creation better than God himself in his attempts to change his wife's appearance. But while Aylmer's actions are more obviously arrogant, both men are essentially acting as judge and jury over others on earth, rather than leaving that judgment to God himself.

At the beginning of "The Birthmark," Aylmer's quest to rid his wife's cheek of the dreaded birthmark is very clearly shown to arise from the desire to improve upon nature, not because his wife wishes to have her beauty improved. He says to her: "Dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection" (Hawthorne 1). Georgina only grows obsessed with his quest because she fears her husband will not love her if she does not become perfect in his eyes. However, the Reverend Hooper similarly wants to improve upon nature, namely his own nature.

Like the Reverend Hooper, Aylmer cannot see that the world is beautiful as it is, he wants to make sure that it engineered by him as he desires. Sexual jealousy of Georgina's previous lovers are also a factor -- Aylmer wants to feel as if his wife is solely his creation, not the creation of God. "Even Pygmalion, when his sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will be," he says, referring to the sculptor who fell in love with his own statue (Hawthorne 3). Aylmer gloats in the power he will have to remove the birthmark: "Believe me, Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will be such a rapture to remove it" (Hawthorne 3). Unlike Georgina's previous admirers who praised this so-called imperfection, Aylmer only loves it because of its ability to allow him to display his prowess.

Just like the hubristic Alymer, the Reverend Hooper clearly strives to set himself above other, mere mortals in terms of how he interacts with them. The veil is disfiguring and unnatural in appearance. "I can't really feel as if good Mr. Hooper's face was behind that piece of crape,' said the sexton" (Hawthorne 2). Aylmer strives to make his wife more perfect as a result of his actions while Reverend Hooper strives to make himself more ugly than God has made him, in punishment for unnamed sins, sins that not even his fellow believes (or God) have accused him. The veil sets him apart from his fellow human beings, to whom he should be ministering, just like Aylmer's obsession with the veil sets him apart from his wife: "Truly do I," says one of the parishioners, "and I would not be alone with him for the world. I wonder he is not afraid to be alone with himself!" (Hawthorne 3).

Hooper's decision to wear the veil creates a divide between himself and the rest of the world. When he buries a young woman, he is seen as more like her -- the dead -- than his living congregants and when he goes to marry a hopeful young couple, the horror his image evokes is terrifying. Even his own wife is terrified and he refuses to reveal to her why he wears the veil: "If it be a sign of mourning ... I, perhaps, like most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a black veil" (Hawthorne 6). Once again, this rejection of humanity seems arrogant and taken upon himself as a way of seeming different rather than a conscious demonstration of true mourning. If it was a lesson that he was teaching himself or others he would reveal why he was wearing the veil but he does not and he does not seem to care that he makes the lives of others unhappier because of the veil.

It is true that while Hooper takes perverse pride in being set apart from ordinary mortals by his self-abasement, Aylmer takes pride in what he sees are his extraordinary gifts above and beyond that of ordinary human beings. However, in his early experiments, before he even performs one on his fiancee, there are hints that Aylmer's ambitions far exceed his actual abilities. For example, when he tries to create a flower that dissolves when plucked: "But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the whole plant suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal-black as if by the agency of fire" (Hawthorne 5). He tries to take Georgina's picture with a kind of primitive photography: "Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been. Aylmer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into a jar of corrosive acid" (Hawthorne 5). This becomes a prophetic incident as Georgina herself will be destroyed, just like the photograph, due to Aylmer's incompetence. He destroys the photograph because it does not speak well of his talents; he does not intentionally destroy his wife but he does so because his determination to make a display of his own intelligence is greater than his ability to realize his own dreams for perfection in the world.

But in his own way the Reverend Hooper seems to desire perfection in this world, both of himself and of others. At the end of the story he says: "When the friend shows his inmost heart to his friend; the lover to his best beloved; when man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasuring up the secret of his sin; then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which I have lived, and die! I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil!" (Hawthorne 9). In other words, all individuals have some secret sin under which they harbor, all individuals wear a black veil. But despite Hooper's insistence that this is the case, there is no evidence of this throughout the story. Everyone else seems genuinely kind and concerned about his initial decision to wear the veil. Even though they shrink from him with horror, it is not entirely without reason given there is something about Hooper's chilling, judgmental personal that makes it difficult for them to enjoy the pleasures of daily life.