Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose wife Sophia was herself a painter, wrote a popular novel called The Marble Faun that treated women artists as mere copyists, doomed to tragedy. (Hawthorne had even less respect for women writers, telling his publisher, “All women as authors are feeble and tiresome. I wish they were forbidden to write on pain of having their faces deeply scarified with an oyster shell.” To which, if I might interject, the only possible response is, Screw you, Nate.)