In regard to the characterization and plot of "The Marble Faun," there
is room for widely varying opinions. Hilda, Miriam, and Donatello will
be generally received as superior in power and depth to any of
Hawthorne's previous creations of character; Donatello, especially,
must be considered one of the most original and exquisite conceptions
in the whole range of romance; but the story in which they appear will
seem to many an unsolved puzzle, and even the tolerant and
interpretative "gentle reader" will be troubled with the unsatisfactory
conclusion. It is justifiable for a romancer to sting the curiosity of
his readers with a mystery, only on the implied obligation to explain
it at last; but this story begins in mystery only to end in mist. The
suggestive faculty is tormented rather than genially excited, and in
the end is left a prey to doubts. The central idea of the story, the
necessity of sin to convert such a creature as Donatello into a moral
being, is also not happily illustrated in the leading event. When
Donatello kills the wretch who malignantly dogs the steps of Miriam,
all readers think that Donatello committed no sin at all; and the
reason is, that Hawthorne has deprived the persecutor of Miriam of all
human attributes, made him an allegorical representation of one of the
most fiendish forms of unmixed evil, so that we welcome his destruction
with something of the same feeling with which, in following the
allegory of Spenser or Bunyan, we rejoice in the hero's victory over
the Blatant Beast or Giant Despair.
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