The Light of the Beautiful Anonymous College

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Artist of the Beautiful” follows a watchmaker’s spiritual and emotional journey of creating the physical form of his idea of beauty, a butterfly. Light imagery plays out throughout the short story and its perception and effect on Owen Warland, the watchmaker, shift in accordance to his stage in his journey. Owen’s journey often leads him to a lonely place, shown in Hawthorne’s use of other characters who follow the tradition family life to contrast Owen’s solitary existence. Owen’s main love interest, Annie Hovenden, is the daughter of the antagonist past boss of Owen, Peter, and wife of Owen’s earthly nemesis, Robert Danforth. Though at first, Owen uses Annie as his muse for his creation of the beautiful, only after he loses her to Robert is he able to finally create his vision of the beautiful. Using heavy emphasis on light in the description of Owen’s final invention and throughout the short story, Hawthorne has light represent triumph, and in Owen’s case, enlightenment.

Owen Warland is first introduced to the story when Annie and her father “emerged from the gloom of the cloudy evening into the light that fell across the pavement from the window of [Owen’s] small shop” (248). His introduction is...