Hands at Our Throats, Nails in Their Heads: The Holy Vengeance of Women in Hawthorne and Gentileschi

Abstract

ABSTRACT Deeply informed by the work of Artemisia Gentileschi, Hawthorne wrestles with narratives of female vengeance found in canonical and deuterocanonical sources as he moves from his earlier romances to his final published oeuvre, The Marble Faun. His allusions to biblical women seeking retribution in The Blithedale Romance are magnified when he moves from transcendental New England to Catholic Italy. In the Book of Judith and the Book of Judges, female figures of holy vengeance wield weapons of righteous anger to redress the repeated violations they are forced to endure. When Hawthorne encounters these figures painted on canvas in the Uffizi, he reconsiders the art of recrimination for women who have been wronged by men who have political, religious, or artistic power. The aesthetic restraint of Gentileschi inspires an even more audacious approach from Hawthorne in The Marble Faun. Where Artemisia works to contain her retaliation within the canvas, the figure of Miriam rejects such boundaries, insisting instead on holy vengeance outside the studio. Painted treatments of revenge spill into real-life acts of bloody retribution. Hawthorne then insists on one more radical shift, from parricide to piety, taking the hands of death in Judith, Jael, and the works of Gentileschi and transforming them into the hands of life. In the figure of Miriam, Hawthorne converts the fatal vengeance of violated women into the wellspring of their spiritual possibility.