The Galatea Complex. A common theme found in both Nathaniel Hawthorne s short story Rappaccini s

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1 Last name 1 Student Name Prof. Themeli English December 2010 The Galatea Complex A common theme found in both Nathaniel Hawthorne s short story Rappaccini s Daughter and Henrik Ibsen s play A Doll s House is how men deliberately taint their perception of women by accepting a fantasy rather than their true reality. In Rappaccini s Daughter, Giovanni is seduced by his own thoughts of Beatrice prior to meeting her and afterwards hates her for the powers she possessed over him; then, Helmer in A Doll s House constantly feeds his ego by painting Nora as a helpless child, a pet, who can not survive without him when in reality, she was simply playing the part for his benefit. In order to notice the inconsistencies between reality and what Helmer and Giovanni perceive, one must first grasp the true nature of their female counterparts. Beatrice, for example, is described as being maiden-like (Hawthorne 380) and having an expression of simplicity and sweetness (Hawthorne 373). Her total seclusion from the outside world has kept Beatrice innocent and ignorant; however, the paradox of her character lies in the fact that she is both poisonous and pure. Though she is poisonous through no fault of her own, it is curious that she should willingly invite Giovanni to become close to her whilst being aware of her affliction. One can assume from the text that Beatrice is aware of her potency and its affect on living creatures. She knows that Giovanni is in mortal danger when visiting her in the poisonous

2 Last name 2 garden and that even her breath could kill him, but she encourages him anyway. The reason behind this decision is what helps define the type of character Beatrice truly is. Because Beatrice protects Giovanni from touching the plant (Hawthorne 380), it is assumed that she does not have any particularly malignant intentions towards him. Rather, she is curious about Giovanni and the world that he comes from, and that visiting with him helps to stave off her own loneliness. The decision may have been unwise but it was not intentionally wicked. Beatrice is a genuine and tender young girl whose complete ignorance as to how Giovanni eventually became poisonous himself makes her a blameless innocent, a prop, created and used to her father s scientific advantage. Nora too was used to the advantage of men, yet she was consciously aware of her role and acted upon it, for the most part, willingly. At first, the marriage between Helmer and Nora seems to be loving and devoted but as the play progresses the audience becomes aware that their marriage is based upon secrets, play-acting and inequality. Though she appears to be a helpless and silly little woman, Nora is actually quite strong and independent. She is capable of taking things into her own hands, (the loan for example) but she must do it all in secret or else risk disturbing the fragile illusion held between her and her husband. She takes up this illusion because it is what her husband and the rest of society have come to demand of her, thus acting became necessary for her survival. Nora s commitment to her play-acting, however, is only skin deep as it is apparent that she still maintains a personality ulterior to her assumed public image. It is true that Nora is ignorant of the outside world, just as Beatrice is and, like Beatrice, she endeavors to be involved with it anyhow and without the permission of the men who own her. Though Nora plays along with this role throughout much of the play, she eventually comes to understand that her

3 Last name 3 relationship with Helmer is no longer worth the sacrifice she makes to keep it. By the end of the play Nora realizes that Helmer never really loved her but that he only thought how nice it was to be in love with [her] (Ibsen 226) and rebels against the injustice of her position, finally deciding to cast off all illusions and live genuinely rather than based on appearances. Then, there are the contrary fantasies that the two girls represent to Giovanni and Helmer. In Giovanni's case, he could only accept Beatrice as being either good or evil and not both. In the story Giovanni finds evidence of each side of her but chooses to acknowledge only the side that pleases him. The first time Giovanni lays eyes on Beatrice is in the night time amidst Dr. Rappaccini's secluded and unnaturally beautiful garden, lending her the mystical quality of a dream. Then, when he sees her next, in the clear light of day, he is struck by [her] expression of simplicity and sweetness as such qualities had not entered into his idea of her character (Hawthorne 373). The conflicting images of what Giovanni expected to see and what he really saw leads the reader to understand the contradiction in Beatrice's person and with what shallowness Giovanni had chosen to see her. Spiritually, Beatrice is innocent and simple, but physically she is lethal and poisonous. She is both good and evil and in reality, Giovanni is both frightened and excited by it. He is frightened because in this world, faith and reason do not support each other (Daly 26), and because of this, he can neither trust what he sees with his eyes nor what Beatrice entreats him to believe. He wants to accept her purity but is inevitably disturbed by her subconscious sexuality. As for his excitement, Giovanni s eagerness and vivid fantasies of Beatrice make it obvious that there is a conscious sexual undertone in his interest towards her. Hawthorne s rich

4 Last name 4 and intoxicating diction further inspires the reader to perceive even Giovanni s mild gestures to be comprised of innuendo. Take, for instance, the moment Giovanni was compelled to thrust his head quite out of its concealment in order to gratify the intense and painful curiosity which she excited (Hawthorne 373). The careful ordering of erotic words such as thrust, concealment and gratify bring to mind the act of masturbation. Giovanni is aroused by Beatrice's sexuality, however unconscious she is of it, and the fact he had been so effortlessly captured within the influence of an unintelligible power (Hawthorne 374) gives him reason to be afraid. While awake, Giovanni can convince himself into believing that his eyes deceive him, but as he sleeps his dreams reveal the fact of Beatrice's physical evil, a fact he continues to dismiss and ignore (Pubworth 21). When Giovanni finally comes in contact with Beatrice he finds that, unlike his subconscious fears, she is so pure and ignorant that he responded [to her] as if to an infant and felt a sense of wonder that he should be conversing with Beatrice like a brother (Hawthorne 379). This description gives the impression that a calm, sexless, and spiritual relationship has begun to form between them. But, no matter her ignorance, the fact remains that Beatrice is poisonous because she is sexually stimulating and that her sexuality has, in effect, poisoned Giovanni. Then a time comes when, at last, he can no longer ignore that fact. Once he realizes that Beatrice had poisoned him and, in doing so, expressed power over him, Giovanni vehemently seeks to re-establish his own power over her by degrading her as a vile and evil creature even when he knows she is spiritually pure. In his last attempt to establish some form of control over her, he offers an antidote that he believes will 'purify' her from evil. Giovanni s inability to accept Beatrice completely is what ultimately causes her death and in effect she chooses to die all herself, exposing his cruelty in her dying words, O, was there not, from the first, more poison in thy nature than in mine? (Hawthorne 389).

5 Last name 5 As for Torvold in A Doll's House, he only saw Nora as his ideal little wife instead of her own individual being. Torvold Helmer, based upon the fact that his idealistic perception of Nora fitted his own personal needs, is characterized as a brutal and petty-minded egoist (Moi 261). By teasing Nora with pet names like my little squirrel or my little sky-lark (Ibsen 168), Helmer demonstrates both possessiveness and degradation. Not only does he place her in the status of a simple animal but he must also comment upon its small stature in effect making himself seem large and powerful. Helmer does this constantly; by patronizing Nora he establishes his intellectual superiority and indispensability. By constantly reminding Nora of how lost she'd be without him, Helmer uses her to feed his ego while remaining totally oblivious to the sacrifices she must to make in order to maintain his selfish illusion. The truth however, is that Nora is neither stupid nor helpless but instead inspired by a selfless love to sacrifice every inch of her integrity to make Helmer happy. But, to be honest, Nora, for the entire play, never establishes her own identity. It is only at the very end that she even decides to have one. Instead, her character was molded by selfish kindness, petted and spoiled for thirty years of dwarfed existence into being a pretty, playful, amiable, and apparently happy little doll (Gosse). Nora existed solely to bring pleasure to her father and husband, dependent upon them for emotional subsistence. Not unable to form her own opinions, she chose to base her every decision in congruency with what would please them over what would please herself. She found happiness in pleasing them and they found happiness in using her. Even if it wasn't real, this false happiness was better accepted then real hardship. Everything about the relationship between Helmer and Nora is founded on appearances. As a wife, Helmer requires that Nora be able to perform the ideological work of managing the class question and displaying the signs of the family s status. A married woman s role is, in the

6 Last name 6 house, relative to a man s role in business. She is the guardian and the creator of a material reality (Langland 291). By giving Nora financial privileges, he expects her to use them to further their reputation as a well-kept and stable family. So, by providing the necessary signs of wealth and harmony, Nora demonstrates the family's well-being and stability. This is all but an elaborate facade made to lull one into believing that just because things seem to be perfectly in balance that they must be. But to Helmer, his sense of beauty admits no distinction between aesthetics and ethics (Gosse). If his wife and children are lovely and beautiful, then they are inevitably pure and good as well. His love for goodness and beauty leads him to despise all ugliness and makes him intolerant to the necessary ugliness of reality. To Helmer, such base characters like Krogstand would fill him with apprehension and disgust. But while Krogstand's ugliness is not personally associated with Helmer, the ugliness of domestic instability and divorce are, without doubt, inexplicably horrific! So much so that he is willing to go on as though nothing ever happened even after Nora reveals that their marriage was a total lie. Helmer would rather pretend to be happy and in love, than to admit the cold, ugly truth that he never really loved nor knew Nora at all. It is not uncommon, even today, for men to see and use women as they please. There are many women, for that matter, who enjoy self-perpetuating the ideal woman. Some make a living out of it advertising beauty, weight-loss, anti-aging and body sculpting products. Girls all over the world are encouraged to envy full but trim figures, seductive dispositions and flawless features. Now that technology has added to the mania it is now possible to sculpt yourself into a living Galatea. But, it does not make much difference. A pretty face does not make you happy and happiness means nothing if it is not real. What is worse is that we fool ourselves into believing that this is what we truly want instead of realizing and appreciating who we truly are.

7 Last name 7 Works Cited: Daly, Robert. Fideism and the Allusive Mode in Rappaccini s Daughter. Nineteenth-Century Fiction 28 (Jun 1973): Gosse, Edmund. Ibsen s Social Dramas. Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism 37 (1991): Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Rappaccini s Daughter. Portable Legacies: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Nonfiction 4 (2009): Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll s House. Portable Legacies: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Nonfiction 4 (2009): Langland, Elizabeth. Nobody s Angels: Domestic Ideology and Middle-Class Women in the Victorian Novel. PMLA 107 (March 1992): Moi, Toril. First and Foremost a Human Being : Idealism, Theater, and Gender in A Doll s House. Modern Drama 49 (Fall 2006): Pebworth, Ted-Larry. The Soul s Instinctive Perception : Dream, Actuality, and Reality in Four Tales from Hawthorne s Mosses from an Old Manse. The South Central Bulletin 23 (Winter 1963):