Excerpt from Hawthorne and Women Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition Ed. John Idol and Melinda M. Ponder (courtesy of University of Massachusetts Press) (Excerpt taken from the introduction to the bibliography)

How women fared in their relationships as daughters, sweethearts, wives, and mothers caught his attention, perhaps no where more pointedly than in "The Birth-mark" and Rappaccini's Daughter," both written after his marriage, the first appearing in 1843, the second in 1844. Here women are victims and suffer death because the men in their lives cannot accept them as they are."