“[T]he electric incitement of Eros”: Electromagnetism, Sexuality, and Modernism

Abstract

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birth-mark” (1843) opens with the observation that “the comparatively recent discovery of electricity… seemed to open paths into the region of miracle” (764). In fact, as one historian has observed, “During the mid-nineteenth century no force in nature was more intriguing to the popular mind than electricity….