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Article: "A frail structure of our own rearing": The Value(s) of Home in The Marble Faun.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- ATQ (The American Transcendental Quarterly)
- Article date:
- June 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 University of Rhode Island. 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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[W]hen people insist on building indestructible houses, they incur, or their children do, a misfortune analogous to that of the sibyl, when she obtained the grievous boon of immortality.
Nathaniel Hawthorne The Marble Faun
In many ways Hawthorne's The Marble Faun, which was written while he was far from home and which ends with the artist Kenyon asking Hilda to lead him home, examines the methods by which we construct our "homes." The homes within the novel are many and metaphoric: physical dwellings, ideological homes, moral homes, and artistic homes. From his early stories and sketches to this last completed romance, Hawthorne explored the significance ...