Comparing Pursuit of Perfection by Poe and Hawthorne and the Realism of

Pursuit of Perfection by Poe and Hawthorne and the Realism of Melville and Jacobs One of the elements of love affair is the pursuit of graven image. While Poe and Hawthornes characters strive in vain for the perfect woman (or rather her perfect attribute) or the utterly engineered person, Melville already knows that perfection is an illusion. Melville paints a more realistic portrait of the imperfections of society. The women writers look at Melvilles assessments of the world and the human condition even further. Phelps and Jacobs know first-hand about the misconceptions of perfection and the inability to capture that image. The burden of seamless domesticity wears on the women in these stories. Jacobs fiction carries the heaviest burden of all being undermined by the repression of women and the hardships of slavery. In Poes Ligeia the narrator is capture by his wifes beauty and intelligence, with which he becomes obsessed. He is particularly attracted to the dear practice of medicine of her low sweet voice. Her rare and immense learning makes her funny and intriguing. However, because her knowledge was such(prenominal) as the narrator had neer known in a woman she is a threat. Johanyak says that, Poes intellectual heroines are first consider and then feared or misunderstood by men who fail to record or accept their quest for knowledge (63). The narrator admits that he had never known her at fault. In essence, he is conceding that she was in fact the perfect woman. In the fateful pattern of Poes female characters, such perfection must be punished. She dies and the narrator agonizes over his loss. It is not until this retelling of their jointure that the narrator truly appreciates all that she was and all that ... ... Dayan, Joan. The Identity of Berenice. Studies in Romanticism 23.4 (1984) 491-513. Holly, Carol. Shaming the Self in The Angel Over the Right Shoulder. American lit 60.1 (1988) 42-60. Johanyak, Debra. Poesian Feminism Triumph or Tragedy. CLA Journal 39.1 (1995) 62-70. Morgan, Winifred. Gender Related Differences in the Slave Narratives of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass. American Studies 35.2 (1994) 73-94. Rosenberg, Liz. The Best that Earth Could Offer. The Birth-Mark a Newlyweds Story. Studies in diddle Fiction 30.2 (1993) 145-51. Rowland, Beryl. Sitting up with a Corpse Malthus According to Melville in Poor Mans Pudding and Rich Mans Crumbs. Journal of American Studies 6 (1972) 69-83. Zanger, Jules. speech production of the Unspeakable Hawthornes The Birth-Mark. Modern Philology 80.4 (1983) 364-71.