Huckleberry Finn Appearance Vs Romanticism

Appearance and aesthetics play an important role in day to day life. First impression, facial expressions, and familiar faces are key to one's development within a society. Different societies place different emphasis on the importance and characteristics of a person's appearance. This is the same within in different literary genres. Realism, as a genre, shows the world in a plain and simplistic view. Everything is simply as it seems. Romanticism, as a literary genre, portrays the world in a mystical manner and the audience must read between the lines in order to find the true meaning of a literary piece. Common roles within a novel are often the easiest to find this differentiation and importance placed upon a character's appearance. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, father figures’, love interests’, children, and antagonists’ appearances reflect the differences between the Romantic and Realist literary movements and their depictions of these characters within a novel. In the modern day society, fatherly figures are described as a man …show more content…
The descriptions of the love interests are often solely appearance based. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne is the love interest of the entire novel. Whilst her paramour is hidden, she is not. Hester Prynne is forced to wear her flaws on her chest, with a scartler A plastered upon her chest. Yet Hawthorne focuses upon her natural beauty; “She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off sunshine with a gleam” (Hawthorne 40). This description of Hester Prynne shows the traits of Romanticism as it incorporates a natural aspect into the description. The diction used also reflects the literary genre of Romanticism as it has a creative undertone and leaves an exact colour up to the imagination of the