30 pages • 1 hour read
Nathaniel HawthorneThe Artist of the Beautiful
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1844A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Dichotomy
A dichotomy is a literary device in which the writer separates two ideas into conflicting parts. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses many dichotomies in his work to tease out contrasts, complexities, and facets of thought. In the story, dichotomies include beauty and utility, matter and spirit, understanding and imagination, man-made mechanism and natural organism, nature and civilization, Puritan thinking and Victorian ideas, idealism and practicality, fragility and strength, isolation and society, and gold and iron. Some of these concepts are antithetical to one another, but others have more complicated relationships.
Hawthorne uses situations, characters, and objects to embody these qualities and the exploration of dichotomies. Dichotomies can provide depth, particularly when they are encapsulated within one character or one situation. Sometimes, they are embodied by two opposing characters or situations which then must clash to create a specific outcome. Consider the sentence: “As if the butterfly, like the artist, were conscious of something not entirely congenial in the child’s nature, it alternately sparkled and grew dim” (27). Several dualities are present in this one sentence: light and dark in the fluctuating pattern the butterfly emits, and the child’s duality as both a willing receptacle of art against his ever-practical heritage.
Personification
Personification is a device in which an author describes something nonhuman as having human qualities. In this story, Hawthorne personifies symbols and values and makes them characters. This is a shorthand of sorts, giving life to certain ideas and allowing them to connect with their audiences more easily.
In “The Artist of the Beautiful,” most of the characters are personifications. Owen Warland represents the artist in search of the perfection of beauty. Peter Hovenden represents skepticism and practicality, the enemy of art. Robert Danforth is the artist’s foil and represents physical force, using his hands and muscles to make his living. Annie represents the force of love, who can both inspire and undo with a simple touch of her finger. The baby is several of the above qualities, with the strength of his father, the faith of a child, and the skeptical nature of his grandfather. Each of the ideals represented by the characters plays a role in creating conflict within this tale between the Artist’s spirit and those who would look down on him.
Symbolism
Symbolism is when an author uses an object to represent an idea. In “The Artist of the Beautiful,” Hawthorne uses symbols to create meaning and emotion that readers can easily understand. One symbol of note in this story is the butterfly, as it represents not just the artistic ideal, but the human soul and the creative process. Watches and clocks represent the regularity and practicality of a society that shuns Owen Warland, while iron represents Puritan ideals brought forth into a later age. Certain characters have their own symbols, like Robert Danforth’s iron, anvil and sledgehammer.
Allegory
Readers over the years have called this story an allegory of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s life, but there are other allegorical elements present in this story—specifically, the pursuit of beauty and self-control versus obsession, all part of the artist’s romantic life, embodied in the person of Owen Warland. Allegory gives this story a multi-layered narrative, and the additional symbolic portrayals of characters and actions allow readers to interpret beyond the literal story. In a way, Hawthorne invites complicated readings of his tale through the devices he uses, rending his stories somewhat dense and open to many different types of analysis.
Irony
Irony is a literary device in which something happens in a narrative that defies the reader’s expectation. “The Artist of the Beautiful” is infused with irony. Evidence of irony is apparent in the way Hawthorne describes Owen’s pastime, as well as his work of art—which is also a mechanistic object. He claims to not have any “mockery of the useful” (7) yet takes people’s watches and etches them with fanciful images. He refuses any association with useful things, like windmills and cotton mills, and is physically ill when presented with a steam engine, which hints at mockery after all. Viewed in this light, the butterfly is strange, in that it is both mechanical and artistic—reflecting Owen’s skeptical self as well as his physical frailty. There is certain irony in some of his polarities too, such as when he gets sick and becomes fatter, not skinnier, and with signs of utility and reality that are robust and solid while his more admirable (in his eyes) toy creature is much more fragile.
In the end, both the artist and society at large seem victorious; the Hovendens and Danforths because of the destruction of the butterfly, and Owen Warland because he does not need the butterfly as a physical manifestation of his reward—the reward comes from within. This is an ironic, and somewhat unresolved, victory for both, and is an odd and incomplete reflection on the purpose of art itself, which usually needs others to perceive it to succeed as art.
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