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   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   One of the elements of Romanticism is the pursuit of perfection. While Poe and Hawthorne's characters strive in vain for the perfect woman (or rather her perfect attribute) or the perfectly engineered person, Melville already knows that perfection is an illusion. Melville paints a more realistic portrait of the imperfections of society. The women writers take Melville's 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' story carries the heaviest burden of all being undermined by the repression of women and the hardships of slavery.   Ã‚  Ã‚   In Poe's Ligeia the narrator is captivated by his wife's beauty and intelligence, with which he becomes obsessed. He is particularly attracted to "the dear music of her low sweet voice". Her "rare" and "immense" learning makes her unique and intriguing. However, because "her knowledge was such as" the narrator had "never known in a woman" she is a threat. Johanyak says that, "Poe's intellectual heroines are first idealized and then feared or misunderstood by men who fail to understand 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 Poe's female characters, such perfection must be punished. She dies and the narrator agonizes over his loss. It is not until this retelling of their marriage 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 Literature 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 Newlywed's Story." Studies in Short Fiction 30.2 (1993): 145-51. Rowland, Beryl. "Sitting up with a Corpse: Malthus According to Melville in Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs." Journal of American Studies 6 (1972): 69-83. Zanger, Jules. "Speaking of the Unspeakable: Hawthorne's The Birth-Mark." Modern Philology 80.4 (1983): 364-71.