Hawthorne’s Beautiful Women and Hideous Men: Ecofeminism in “The Birthmark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter”

This paper aims to compare Georgiana and Beatrice’s beauty through an Eco-feminist lens. It examines how the men in each story set unrealistic beauty standards for women in order to be dominant. The men use science to create these standards and destroy nature or the women’s natural beauty and they kill them in the process. This paper argues that Hawthorne addresses Eco-feminist ideas within “The Birthmark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” through the destruction of Georgiana and Beatrice. The paper includes background information, a definition, and other key ideas involved with Ecofeminism. The paper focuses on the association of men with society and science in regards to the eradication of nature. It also focuses on the association of women with nature and the need to preserve it. Both Georgiana and Beatrice’s stories are similar, so comparing each of the stories strengthens the argument and shows parallels to concerns Hawthorne has in each story. There is analysis of language used to describe the female characters through the men and through the narrator and how those descriptions differ. The paper also includes rebuttals throughout the text that address the concerns with an argument comparing Ecofeminist ideas to Hawthorne’s text being a stretch. There are not many sources that contain these two stories in comparison to ecofeminist ideas, so this paper aims to make connections with ecofeminist ideas through sources that contain information about feminism or ecology in regards to each of these stories