Quiz 4: Hawthorne and MacDonald

Part I. Feathertop

The scarecrow totters and almost falls, and Mother Rigby grows angry “at this pusillanimous behavior of the thing which she had taken the trouble to put together.” Pusillanimous means:
1. rude and disrespectful
2. cowardly and feeble Answer
3. clumsy and comical
4. proud and vain
Mother Rigby gives Feathertop “a great deal of brass, which she applied to his forehead.” “With that brass alone,” she tells him, “thou canst pay thy way all over the earth.” Brass is a yellow metal, but here it also means:
1. a cheap metal that people mistake for gold
2. shameless confidence, or nerve Answer
3. a bribe for Justice Gookin
4. a soldier’s rank
As he leaves the cottage, Feathertop says, “I will thrive, if an honest man and a gentleman may!” Mother Rigby is “convulsed with laughter.” Why?
1. He has mispronounced a word that she taught him a moment ago.
2. He is neither honest nor a gentleman, and does not know it. Answer
3. She knows that Justice Gookin will turn him away at the door.
4. He has forgotten to puff on his pipe.
At Justice Gookin’s door, a spectator says, “How dim and faded his lordship looks all of a sudden!” Why?
1. The bright sun has dazzled the spectator’s eyes.
2. His pipe went out, and he is calling Dickon for a new coal. Answer
3. Justice Gookin has broken the spell with a prayer at the door.
4. The crowd has stopped admiring him.
Justice Gookin suspects Feathertop. Why does he introduce him to Polly anyway?
1. He wants a rich nobleman to marry his daughter and inherit his estate.
2. Mother Rigby’s word scares him: he once made a pledge to evil. Answer
3. Polly begs him to let her meet the stranger.
4. He does not notice anything strange about Feathertop at all.

Feathertop destroys himself and falls to the floor as a heap of straw, sticks, and old clothes. Mother Rigby looks at what is left:

“Poor fellow!” quoth Mother Rigby, with a rueful glance at the relics of her ill-fated contrivance. “My poor, dear, pretty Feathertop! There are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world, made up of just such a jumble of wornout, forgotten, and good-for-nothing trash as he was! Yet they live in fair repute, and never see themselves for what they are. And why should my poor puppet be the only one to know himself and perish for it?”

Explain Mother Rigby’s lament. Then connect it to the story’s full title: “Feathertop: A Moralized Legend.”
Model answer

The lament. A coxcomb is a vain man who cares too much about his clothes and looks. A charlatan is a fraud. Mother Rigby says that many of the people the world respects are just like Feathertop: worthless stuff dressed up to look like a gentleman. The difference is that they never see the truth about themselves. Feathertop saw it in Justice Gookin’s mirror, “one of the truest plates in the world and incapable of flattery,” and he could not bear it. So her last question is bitter. “Know thyself” is supposed to be a virtue, but the one figure who knows himself dies of it, and the frauds go on living “in fair repute.” She even decides that he had “too much heart” for “such an empty and heartless world.”

The title. A legend is an old story of wonders, handed down. The narrator says he heard this one “on my grandmother’s knee.” Moralized means that a lesson has been drawn from it and stated. This speech states the lesson outright: the witch’s puppet is a picture of real people. Hawthorne prepares it from the start:
- Mother Rigby sends Feathertop out among “the other men of straw and empty fellows who go bustling about the world,” where “not one man in a hundred” has “more real substance” than he does.
- The town admires his clothes, his star, and his manners, and only “a little child and a cur dog” see a pumpkin.
- Polly practices her smiles in the mirror until she is almost “as complete an artifice” as Feathertop.
So the moral is about society, not magic: the world rewards appearances, and many respected people are as empty as a scarecrow. A strong answer may notice that the moral is turned on the reader. We are the ones who might never see ourselves for what we are.

Part II. The Magic Mirror

“Indeed, the secret of much of that complaisance which recommended him to his fellows, was the thought of his unknown retreat.” Complaisance means:
1. smug satisfaction with oneself
2. an agreeable wish to please others Answer
3. skill with weapons
4. a family’s wealth and noble name
Cosmo “was poor, and prided himself upon the independence that poverty gives; for what will not a man pride himself upon, when he cannot get rid of it?” The narrator means that:
1. Poor men are always prouder than rich men.
2. People take pride in whatever they are stuck with. Answer
3. Cosmo secretly wants to get rid of his pride.
4. Cosmo will soon become rich.
Cosmo thinks that if he could kiss just one of the lady’s feet, he “should be content.” The narrator replies: “Alas! he deceived himself, for passion is never content. Nor did he know that there are two ways out of her enchanted house.” Who is “her”?
1. the lady in the mirror
2. fate
3. passion Answer
4. the princess’s attendant, Lisa
The princess’s attendants say she once disappeared “for a whole hour” and came back “drenched with rain, and almost dead with exhaustion and fright.” What caused this?
1. She went looking for her stolen mirror.
2. Cosmo summoned her through the streets to his room. Answer
3. She walked in her sleep to Von Steinwald’s house.
4. She ran away from the old woman who cursed her.
The old broker who sold Cosmo the mirror is most likely:
1. Cosmo’s father, in disguise
2. a servant of Von Steinwald
3. the old woman who cursed the princess Answer
4. the princess herself, in disguise

Cosmo’s spell has brought the lady out of the mirror and into his room. She kneels before him:

“Cosmo, if thou lovest me, set me free, even from thyself; break the mirror.”

“And shall I see thyself instead?”

“That I cannot tell, I will not deceive thee; we may never meet again.”

A fierce struggle arose in Cosmo’s bosom. Now she was in his power. She did not dislike him at least; and he could see her when he would. To break the mirror would be to destroy his very life, to banish out of his universe the only glory it possessed. The whole world would be but a prison, if he annihilated the one window that looked into the paradise of love. Not yet pure in love, he hesitated.

Explain why Cosmo hesitates. Then explain how the end of the story shows what it means to be “pure in love.”
Model answer

Why he hesitates. The mirror gives Cosmo power over the lady. While he owns it, “he could see her when he would,” and his spell has just forced her through the rainy streets to his room. Breaking it might mean never seeing her again, and she will not promise otherwise: “I will not deceive thee.” So he has to choose between his own longing and her freedom. She asks to be set free “even from thyself,” which means that his love has become one more enchantment holding her. He hesitates because his love is still possessive. It is what the narrator calls passion: the wish to look at her, to have her, to hear her say she loves him. He even says the world would be “a prison” without the mirror, without noticing that the mirror is her prison.

Pure in love. To be “pure in love” is to want the beloved’s good more than your own, even if it costs you the beloved. The ending shows Cosmo learning this:
- His first blow misses, the mirror vanishes, and the lady’s attacks return “with more suffering than ever.” He knows it is “all from his fault.”
- He searches for the mirror only to break it. “Whether he should see the lady again, was now a thought altogether secondary.”
- He breaks the mirror in Von Steinwald’s house and is fatally wounded. On the bridge he asks, “Do I love you a little—truly?” and she answers, “Ah, I know now that you love me.”
So pure love is proved by giving her up, and it costs him his life. The verse in the middle of the story says as much: “Who lives, he dies; who dies, he is alive.” A strong answer may compare the mirror in “Feathertop,” which strips an illusion away. Cosmo’s mirror creates one, and only breaking it sets anyone free.