Hawthorne's Allegory of Science: "Rappaccini's Daughter"

Abstract

R APPACCINI'S DAUGHTER is of the major unsolved enigmas work. The problem, difficult as it has been to solve, is easy to define. The knowledgeable reader looks for a clear pattern of second meanings a Hawthorne story. In this one, as if to ensure the expectation, Hawthorne made prefatory remarks about his inveterate love of and the fact that if his tales are not taken in the proper point of . . . they can hardly fail to look excessively like nonsense. Few readers would reject Rappaccini's Daughter as nonsense; on the other hand, none has seemed to find precisely the proper point of view to unravel its mysteries. Many of the best analyses of the tale hang fire on uncertainties or discrepancies likely allegorical patterns, and as a result critics have disagreed whether it is below its author's highest art or one of greatest tales.' The purpose of this essay is to contribute to a clearer reading and more settled estimate of the story by proposing a consistent allegory underlying its admittedly complex narrative. The interpretation to be developed here is grounded on two assumptions about donne'e. First, the title establishes the center of meaning Beatrice Rappaccini, and specifically her capacity as her father's child. Second, the opening sentence establishes the narrative point of Giovanni Guasconti, and specifically his capacity as a student.2 The focal point and the frame 1The judgments belong respectively to Austin Warren, ed., Nathaniel Hawthorne: Representative Selections (New York, I934), p. 367, and Mark Van Doren, Nathaniel Hawthorne (New York, I957), p. 13I. Some of the frustrations good recent studies may be seeui Richard Harter Fogle, Fiction: the Light and the Dark (Norman, Okla., I952), p. 92; Hyatt H. Waggoner, Hawthorne, a Critical Study (Cambridge, Mass., i955), pp. iI5-ii6; Roy R. Male, Tragic Vision (Austin, Texas, I957), p. 55. 'Critical differences about the story are generally reducible to divergence on these fundamental points. Traditional interpretation has placed central emphasis on Rappaccini (e.g., Warren, loc. cit.). More recent critics favor Beatrice (e.g., Fogle, Waggoner, and Male), or sometimes Giovanni (F. L. Gwynn, Hawthorne's 'Rappaccini's Daughter,'