The Birthmark (1846), a short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Revelation (1964), a short story was written by Flannery O’Connor, are to be analyzed in this essay. Both of these stories are pearls of American Literature. The writers masterly use the imaginative world of the text to demonstrate which moral values should be followed and illustrate what their transgression them can cause.
Moral standards in the stories
In The Birthmark, the reader meets Aylmer, a prominent scientist who violates some ethical laws and gets punished for it. Aylmer is obsessed with idealistic ideas. In his devotion to science, he forgets about the real values of the world – life, love, goodness. Through portraying the mistakes made by the main character, Hawthorne displays the importance of appreciating a human life as the highest value. He shows that life is a gift and shouldn’t be risked for the sake of any scientific progress or striving for perfection. The birthmark on Georgiana’s cheek serves as a reminder of human mortality and the significance of improving the eternal inner world, rather than focusing on transient external beauty:
It was the fatal flaw of humanity, which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. (Hawthorne 2)
Other ethical themes of this story are love and goodness. The author demonstrates that a person who truly loves will always concentrate on making the life of the beloved person better and happier, rather than on trying to make this person more perfect.
In Revelation, Flannery O’Connor demonstrates the falseness of appreciating people by their social status and origins, instead of paying attention to their morality and deeds. The main character is Mrs.Turpin, an arrogant woman who disrespects people of lower social class and feels superior. The author shows the right perception of people’s significance by opposing Mrs.Turpin’s attitude and statements to the final scene, where the woman sees who is more likely to go to Heaven, poor and dirty people or rich and successful ones:
Upon it, a vast horde of souls was rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. (O’Connor 12)
By introducing such a contrast, the writer tends to convey the right attitude to people’s significance. It is shown that it is immoral to disrespect people because of their low income and slovenly appearance. Till the end of the story, it appears that it is much more important to have a pure soul and respect for every person, rather than to have clean clothes and wrong moral values.
Violation of moral standards and its consequences
In order to make the statement of the right ethical standards more convincing, both writers describe the transgression of these rules by the main characters of the stories and the consequences of it. In The Birthmark, Aylmer pays more attention to his fanatic striving for perfection than to the feelings and needs of his wife. He neglects the duties he has as a husband and concentrates only on his ideas. Aylmer puts the life of the person, who truly loves him, at risk for the sake of his obsession. He forgets about real moral values and gets stuck in the world of his artificial standards. He is ready to sacrifice his wife for embodying his absurd idea to life, the author says, “until now, he had not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go, for the sake of giving himself peace” (Hawthorne 3). Aylmer concentrates on the only imperfection on Georgiana’s body and becomes unable to see the good in his wife. His attempt to remove the birthmark results in his wife’s death. The main character forgets about the most important things in life and, settled down in his wrong beliefs, he loses the only person who can make him happy.
The main character of Revelation also breaks ethical rules. Mrs.Tupin disrespects black workers and poor people and has a wrong self-image. She categorizes people due to their income, social status, and appearance. Mrs.Tupin defines the social status of a person by the clothes and values him/her according to them. She completely forgets about the real importance of one’s inner world, kindness, or acts. She judges people from their external qualities and it leads to her complete ignorance. Her loss of the right perception of people results in a violation of the main moral values. It leads to the conflict with Mary Grace. Later she sees a vision that questions her attitudes and convicts her of wrong beliefs and priorities. The main protagonist “receives a revelation about her misperceived righteousness” (Dumas and Wilson 72). This revelation serves as a punishment, as it leaves Ruby Turpin shocked and ruins her worldview. After seeing it, she should find true values and reestablish her perception of the world.
The Narrative commentary on the moral order
Both of the writers show the transgression of moral values by the protagonists, in order to reveal the narrative commentary on the moral order in the world of text. Keetley states that “Hawthorne is indisputably a moralist, concerned with the ethical implications of his characters’ intentions and actions” (16). The author displays in detail the inner dialog of the main character. In such a way, he provides an analysis of the motives of the actions. The writer contrasts Aylmer’s concentration on Georgiana’s only imperfection to the admiration expressed to the woman by other men. It is obvious that the author’s intent was to oppose Aylmer’s artificial values to real morality. It appears that the main ethical standards in the world of the story depend on the significance of human life and relationships. The writer creates the world which punishes the protagonist for his indifference to the beloved person and his thoughtlessness in risking her life. Longing for eternal perfect beauty, Aylmer failed “to find the perfect Future in the present” (Hawthorne 9). The moral order in the story is also based on the yearning for making the dearest people happy and finding one’s happiness in the present, instead of searching for the absurd ideal future. The story states the highest value of life and love. It shows that by only living for somebody’s good, accepting life with its imperfection, a person can reach happiness in the present.
Flannery O’Connor, in her story, creates the world that resembles Southern society in the times of her own childhood. Headline reveals that “whatever happened to her or whatever she felt, Flannery O’Connor seems to have followed, quite rigidly, the code. Not the code of the Catholic church but the more rigorous code of Southern” (11-12). In the world of text, we can find the prejudice towards people of other classes or even races, which was common in the South during the author’s lifetime. The writer portrayed the unfairness and ignorance of the society she belonged to in the image of Mrs.Tupin. Her world is full of immoral statements and it is opposed to the spiritual world, the vision of which the lady sees at the end of the story. It seems that in Revelation the writer demonstrates two worlds. The first one is the world of people’s social inequality and immorality. It reflects the realities of the writer’s life in the South. The second one is the spiritual one, a place where people are judged for their real moral values, not for their origins or the dress. By comparing these two worlds, the author makes the protagonist determine the true ethical standards.
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Flannery O’Connor use the transgression of moral standards and describe its consequences in order to demonstrate the moral order in the world the protagonists live in. It makes the stories more dynamic and up-to-life. The world created in the stories reflects the writers’ everyday reality and helps to reveal the moralistic problems of the society.
Works Cited
Dumas, Jacky, and Wilson, Jessica H. “The Unrevealed in Flannery O’Connor’s Revelation.” Southern Literary Journal 45. 2 (2013): 72-89. Print.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Birthmark, New York: Penguin, 1897. Print.
Hendine, Josephine. The World of Flannery O’Connor, Oregon, Eugene: Wipfand Stock Publishes, 2009. Print.
Keetley, Dawn. “Bodies and Morals: Hawthorne’s ‘The Birthmark’ and Neil LaBute’s The Shape of things.” Literature/ Film Quarterly 38.1 (2010): 16-28. Print.
O’Connor, Flannery. Revelation, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1964. Print.