Summary Of The Haunted Mind

The author that I chose to research is Nathaniel Hawthorne. The short story that I found is located in Hawthornes book Twice-Told Tales, called The Haunted Mind. Hawthorne’s short story The Haunted Mind Closely relates to things that we have covered in class. The two main connections between The Birth Mark, The Artist of the Beautiful, and The Haunted Mind are transcendency and acceptance of imperfections in humanity. In the Birthmark we see these themes in Aylmer’s views on women. He sees women as an ideal that makes women beautiful but not useful in todays world, he sees them in a bodiless transcendent world. By Aylmer removing his wife’s birthmark, which ultimately represents her humanity, he is removing the one thing that ties her down
to her body. Aylmer also describes transcendency in the place where he would ideally keep his wife. He describes the place where she would ideally be kept as a place where she can be kept and preserved in an un-earthly way, a place that is private and concealed, but he could still see. Another example of the transcendence in the story is when the flower dies. By killing the flower, it kills her mensuration and fertility, which is another form of Aylmer's attempt at stripping her humanity and creating disembodiment. Aylmer essentially wants to create a touch free, non-birthing, bodiless world of translucency. Also comparable is Hawthornes story The Artist of the Beautiful, where it is brute vs artist in the battle for love. In the ending, Owen’s artistic piece turns into a butterfly, a symbolism of the artists essence transcending from the body. The butterfly representing the humanity and freedom in the story drawn from love and heart. Just like The Birth Mark and The Artist of the Beautiful, the theme of The Haunted mind shares the theme of translucency