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“The White Old Maid” by #NathanielHawthorne is his most tantalizing narrative experiments.
The tableau is memorably #gothic: illuminated by moonlight, through the window of a mansion, the corpse of a young man who lies upon his bed, flanked by two beautiful young women—one “proud and stately,” whom he had not chosen, “and the other, a soft and fragile thing,” who was destined to be his wife. The second—and final—tableau shows us the same two women reunited in old age.
