Revisiting Nathaniel Hawthorne in Young Goodman Brown and other Short Stories reveals what you probably didn’t see when reading this collection in junior high. Hawthorne’s unease with the body (the female body in particular) sex, and sensual pleasure, is the overriding orientation of nearly all these tales.
Take the story “The Birth-Mark,” ostensibly about the failed quest for human perfection, it also reveals a crippling sense of unease regarding women as embodied creatures -- fully human and therefore fully flawed.
Read with an adult eye, these stories take on a whole new, menacing tone.
Take the story “The Birth-Mark,” ostensibly about the failed quest for human perfection, it also reveals a crippling sense of unease regarding women as embodied creatures -- fully human and therefore fully flawed.
Read with an adult eye, these stories take on a whole new, menacing tone.
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