Owen Warland In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Artist Of The Beautiful

Much as his name suggests, Owen Warland wages a battle on society in The Artist of the Beautiful by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Throughout the story, he strives to create the Beautiful, a lifelike butterfly, and overcomes many setbacks to succeed briefly, only to have it destroyed in the story’s final paragraphs. Owen wishes to transcend the material world and rise to the spiritual through his creation of art- the Beautiful- and his abject rejection of the material world. However, the material world fights back and refuses to accept his search for spirituality; in the characters of Robert Danforth, Annie Hovenden, and Peter Hovenden, Hawthorne creates symbols of physical strength, love, and practicality that combat Owen’s dreams of reaching a higher

This allows Hawthorne to show his readers that staying with the community trumps any artistic genius that can possibly be invented. Objectively, Owen does not succeed: “but, while it still hovered in the air, the little Child of Strength, with his grandsire's sharp and shrewd expression in his face, made a snatch at the marvellous insect, and compressed it in his hand” (Hawthorne 20). The child, the physical offspring of Annie and Robert, also possesses similar characteristics to his grandfather; this ultimate combination of love, strength, and materialism, Owen’s greatest obstacles in creating the Beautiful, defeats the artist in the end. In fact, Hawthorne himself foreshadows Owen’s inevitable failure when he writes: “Thus it is, that ideas which grow up within the imagination… are exposed to be shattered and annihilated by contact with the Practical” (Hawthorne 6). This emphasizes Owen’s defeat even early on in the story, saying that the material world consistently crushes the artistic. However, Urban writes of a deeper failure on Owen’s part, “whatever Owen's final artistic achievement, neither it nor his position as the Artist of the Beautiful should be viewed as possessing genuine transcendent superiority” (Urban 4). He should instead be viewed as a radical extremist, soundly rejecting even love and community because they are of the material world; Hawthorne implores his readers to consider if this choice is worth the beauty one can potentially create. Sarah Wright brings up a good point when she writes, “Hawthorne does not suggest, in this tale, that one who is hostile to everyday problems and practical concerns is therefore an artist (Wright 4).” This brings into question Owen’s artistry in general and asks the reader to decide if his rejection of the material world makes him the