Fideism vs. Allegory in "Rappaccini's Daughter"

Abstract

B ECAUSE it offers two opposing concepts of its title character, Rappaccini's Daughter remains one of Hawthorne's most problematic tales. What begins as a seemingly unmistakable erotic allegory, with Beatrice characterized by contrasting phenomena of her father's garden (purple-flowering shrub and pure fountain water), becomes a fideistic denial of her perceptible attributes and thus a rejection of her allegorical portrayal. Hence two incompatible ideas of Beatrice emerge in this tale, one maintained by her potential lover, Giovanni Guasconti, and the other by the tale's narrator and, at times, Beatrice herself. While Giovanni somewhat waveringly interprets Beatrice allegorically, associating the fountain water with her angelic spirit or pure, childlike essence and the purple flower with her potent sensual allure, the narrator and Beatrice eventually insist that she must be judged by something truer and more real, than what we can see with the eyes, and touch with the finger.' Sensory data, while establishing an allegorical association between horticultural and feminine attributes, lead to mistaken fantasies and the sullying of Beatrice's true angelic nature. It has become fashionable to interpret these conflicting ideas of Beatrice in light of Transcendental epistemology and to