The Snow-Image: A Childish Miracle
1850
The Snow-Image: A Childish Miracle
1850
In a quiet New England garden on a winter afternoon, two children build a snow figure and believe in it so fiercely that it wakes. This is the improbable, aching premise of Hawthorne's most tender story, a tale he seemed to write as proof that wonder could still exist in his otherwise haunted imagination. Violet and Peony labor over their snow-sister with the complete conviction that only children possess, and somehow, impossibly, their faith is rewarded. The snow-image steps down from its pedestal and plays with them, laughing in the brittle sunlight. But when their father insists on bringing this magical companion indoors to show his dinner guests, the inevitable happens: she melts. The story does not punish the children for believing. It simply shows them what Hawthorne knew intimately, that the world is not kind to delicate things, and that the warmth of adult reality dissolves what the cold of childhood preserved. This is less a children's tale than a grief written for anyone who remembers when they could make snow come alive, and who knows they can never do it again.
