Poe and Hawthorne's search for perfection and the realism of Melville and JacobsOne of the elements of romanticism is the search for perfection. While Poe and Hawthorne's characters struggle in vain for the perfect woman (or rather her perfect attribute) or for the perfectly built person, Melville already knows that perfection is an illusion. Melville paints a more realistic portrait of society's imperfections. Women writers take Melville's assessment of the world and the human condition even further. Phelps and Jacobs know firsthand the misconceptions about perfection and the inability to capture that image. The burden of a seamless domestic life weighs on the women in these stories. Jacobs' story carries the heaviest burden of all, being undermined by the repression of women and the hardships of slavery. In Poe's Ligeia the narrator is fascinated by the beauty and intelligence of his wife, with whom he becomes obsessed. He is especially attracted by the "dear music of her low, sweet voice." Its "rare" and "immense" culture makes it unique and intriguing. However, because "her knowledge was such" that the narrator had "never known in a woman," she poses a threat. Johanyak states that "Poe's intellectual heroines are first idealized and then feared or misunderstood by men who cannot understand or accept their quest for knowledge" (63). The narrator admits that he "never knew her to blame." Essentially, he's admitting that she was actually the perfect woman. In Poe's fatal model of female characters, such perfection must be punished. She dies and the narrator grieves her loss. It is only after this account of their marriage that the narrator truly appreciates all that she was and all that... middle of paper... Dayan, Joan. "The identity of Berenice." Studies in Romanticism 23.4 (1984) 491-513. Holly, Carol. “Shaming the Self in The Angel Over the Right Shoulder.” American Literature 60.1 (1988): 42-60.Johanyak, Debra. "Poetic Feminism: Triumph or Tragedy." CLA Journal 39.1 (1995): 62-70.Morgan, Winifred. “Gender-Related Differences in the Slave Narratives of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass.” American Studies 35.2 (1994): 73-94.Rosenberg, Liz. "The best that Earth has to offer. The birthmark: the story of a newlywed." Studies in Short Fiction 30.2 (1993): 145-51. Rowland, Beryl. "Sitting with a Corpse: Malthus According to Melville in The Poor Man's Pudding and the Rich Man's Crumbs." Journal of American Studies 6 (1972): 69-83. Zanger, Jules. “Speaking of the unspeakable: the Hawthorne birthmark.” Modern philology 80.4 (1983): 364-71.