The Marble Faun

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s final major romance, *The Marble Faun* (also published in Britain as *Transformation*), appeared in 1860. The story takes place in an imagined version of Italy and blends elements of fable, pastoral, gothic fiction, and travel writing. Its four central characters are Miriam, Hilda, Kenyon, and Donatello.

Miriam is a painter whose past remains mysterious; throughout the novel she is likened to Eve, Beatrice Cenci, Judith, and Cleopatra. A threatening, unknown man—her “evil genius”—pursues her. Hilda, an innocent copyist, is compared to the Virgin Mary and a white dove. Her rigid moral code can make her harsh despite her gentle nature. Miriam and Hilda are frequently set in opposition. Kenyon, a sculptor, embodies rationalist humanism and feels a romantic attachment to Hilda. Donatello, the Count of Monte Beni, is frequently compared to Adam and loves Miriam. He bears a striking resemblance to the marble Faun of Praxiteles, and the novel plays with the possibility that he might be a descendant of that ancient creature, though Hawthorne never confirms this, even in the final chapters or postscript.

After finishing *The Blithedale Romance* in 1852, Hawthorne—then nearing fifty—accepted a political post as American Consul in Liverpool, serving from 1853 to 1857. In 1858, he and his wife Sophia moved to Italy, where they spent a year and a half as tourists. That same year, seeing the Faun of Praxiteles in Rome’s Palazzo Nuovo inspired him to write the romance. He began the manuscript intending to finish it at his Concord home, The Wayside, but instead returned to England, where he stayed until July 1860 and completely rewrote the book. In an October 1859 letter to his American publisher, James T. Fields, Hawthorne noted that his wife liked what she had read, adding that if she liked the author less, he would be more encouraged by her praise. He confessed to admiring the work “exceedingly, at intervals,” but also to suffering “cold fits” during which he thought it “the most infernal nonsense.” Sophia wrote to her sister that her husband’s reaction was typical: he regularly despised each of his books upon finishing them.

Hawthorne struggled to settle on a title, considering options such as *Monte Beni; or, The Faun: A Romance*, *The Romance of a Faun*, *Marble and Life; a Romance*, *Marble and Man; a Romance*, and *St. Hilda’s Shrine*.