The Gothic, <i>The Marble Faun</i>, and <i>Felix culpa</i>

ABSTRACT Critics suggest that the lack of aesthetic coherence in Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun (1860) is due to the novel’s inability to meaningfully embody the Gothic. Sidelined is the question of how The Marble Faun’s theological vision contributes to the success or lack of success of The Marble Faun as a Gothic novel. This omission is symptomatic of the critical marginalization of theological discourses integral to the formation and conventions of the Gothic. This article argues that The Marble Faun lacks aesthetic coherence as a Gothic text partly because it holds the trademark religious terror of Gothic fiction in abeyance with a sense of hopefulness. Specifically, the novel suggests to a uniquely high degree that the Fall of humankind, allegorized by Donatello’s Fall, catalyzes an incommensurable good. The narrative orients readers toward an eternal blessedness inbuilt in the concept of felix culpa. While this hopefulness conflicts with the Gothic, it does not conflict with Calvinism. The Marble Faun does not become less Calvinist because it loses some of its gloomy branding. Rather, the novel hints toward a rebranding, unsettling the assumption (one that Hawthorne himself perpetuates elsewhere) that Calvinism has upon it an inedible stamp, marking it as a doom-and-gloom theology.