380
PARTISAN REVIEW
"That sounds like a bitter gibe," said Hilda, with the tears
springing to her eyes. "But I cannot help it. It does not alter
my perception of the truth.
If
there he any such dreadful mix–
ture as you affirm-and which appears to me almost more shock–
ing than pure evil,-then the good is turned to poison, not the
evil to wholesomeness."
It is against such pharisaical moralism as Hilda displays
that Hawthorne reacted in creating the figure of the dark lady, yet
he could never muster the resolution to repudiate Hilda openly.
Hence the dark lady, too, is inevitably stricken down by the same
minatory code. Miriam pleads that the crime joining he:r; to Dona–
tello was "a blessing in disguise" in that it brought "a simple and
imperfect nature to a point of feeling and intelligence which it
could have reached under no other discipline." But her pleas are
of no avail-in the end she is destroyed. And how illusory is the
crime of which she is accused, with its horror-romanticism of the
murder of a timeless wizard who has in some inexplicable way
gained an ascendency over her. And this in what is presumably a
serious novel of crime and punishment! One might claim, of
course, that the failure of actuality at this crucial turn of the plot
is nothing more than a defect in the story-teller's art, a carryover
from the obsolescent Gothic technique. But it is precisely Haw–
thorne's persistent reliance on this technique which is so revealing
of his real situation. It seems to me that he is unable to authenti–
cate Miriam's guilt for the quite obvious reason that her beauty
and love of life already sufficiently condemn her in his eyes. In
other words,
it
is not her deeds {Jut her very existeru;e which
is
the
supreme provocation
roul
the supreme crime.
The critics of the school of 'original sin' have for some years
now tried to present Hawthorne as a kind of puritan Dostoevsky.
But this comparison will not stand the test of analysis. In their
eagerness to make ideological capital out of
Hawthorne~s
"tradi–
tionalism," these critics overlook one vital distinction: whereas in
Dostoevsky's case the awareness of sin flows from a mighty effort
to regain a metaphysical and religious consciousness, in Hawthorne
this awareness is at the point of dissolution. What is behind it is
no genuine moral passion nor a revival of dogma but a fear of
life induced by narrow circumstances and morbid memories of
the past. The faith of his forefathers had lost its rational appeal,
