bosom-serpent

Updated: June 8, 2025

Certainly, as a general thing, we are struck with the ingenuity and felicity of Hawthorne's analogies and correspondences; the idea appears to have made itself at home in them easily. But in such things as The Birth-Mark and The Bosom-Serpent, we are struck with something stiff and mechanical, slightly incongruous, as if the kernel had not assimilated its envelope.

Henry James - Hawthorne: (English Men of Letters Series)