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Article: 'Villette' and 'The Marble Faun.'
- Article from:
- Studies in the Novel
- Article date:
- September 22, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 University of North Texas. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Commenting on Nathaniel Hawthorne's problem of casting an imaginative glow over bleak New England, "so provokingly raw and deficient in harmony," Leslie Stephen compares his task to that of Charlotte Bronte in painting the rugged life and topography of Yorkshire. After explaining that Bronte's "marvellous effects are obtained by the process which enables |an intense and glowing mind' to see everything through its own atmosphere," he examines two specific parallels between Villette and Hawthorne's novel The Transformation, known to American readers as The Marble Faun.(1)
The first parallel--that of a Protestant heroine confessing to a Roman Catholic priest--has ...