English 251: American Lit. (1600-1865)

Assignment 20:
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (Part 1)

Hawthorne's story "Rappaccini's Daughter," published in the December, 1844, issue of The Democratic Review, illustrates one of the most significant social developments in the literary history of early America: the American magazine as a popular phenomenon. Remember that in the 1720's Benjamin Franklin could count on one hand the number of printing presses in cities like Boston or Philadelphia. Remember also that, from the 1730's on, Franklin would make a tidy fortune from issues of Poor Richard's Almanac. One hundred years later, the American publishing industry had made extraordinary strides to capitalize on that market. By the time of Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, and others, the monthly magazine offered readers a great range of materials for reading: essays on politics, history, geography, travel, fashions of dress and manners; as well as stories, poems, serialized novels, and critical essays on literature. Usually printed in a two-column format, with scarcely any advertisements to break up the flow of pages, they increasingly adorned them with lithographic illustrations. Later in the 19th century the development of photo-lithographic processes would enable magazine publishers to print black-and-white reproductions of photographs, paintings, and other illustrations. Magazines like Harper's and The Atlantic (both still published today) were launched during this period. Some magazines, such as Godey's Ladies Book, were targeted specifically toward women; others, like Frederick Douglass' antislavery journal The North Star, addressed specific social issues; still others, like Putnam's and Scribner's, were the in-house magazines of important book publishers who used the monthly journals to promote their writers.

The great age of American magazines had begun, and a writer could conceive of making a living editing or writing for them. With the growth of the American magazine, then, came the growth of writing as a profession. Edgar Allan Poe served as editor of the Southern Literary Messenger. Emerson did a sizable amount of work for the magazines. Herman Melville published a range of short fictions in Putnam's and similar magazines. Hawthorne carefully cultivated his work for various New England women's magazines; many of his short stories, like "Rappaccini's Daughter," appeared in magazines before being collected in book form.

"Rappaccini's Daughter"

Hawthorne begins the story with a description of the work of "M. de l'Aubepine" (i.e., "Mr. Hawthorne"). What are the essential characteristics of Aubepine's work? In what ways are those characteristics found in "Rappaccini's Daughter"?
The story's central symbol is its title character, Rappaccini's daughter Beatrice. She functions primarily as a symbol because Hawthorne does not develop her as a character. Instead, he focuses on Giovanni's perceptions of Beatrice. Mark passages in the story where Beatrice is described or where Giovanni contemplates ways to interpret her. What patterns do you notice in those descriptions? What do those patterns tell us about what Hawthorne is saying about women (or about men's perceptions of them)?
A recurring figure in Hawthorne's work is the scientist. (In your next assignment, The Scarlet Letter, you will encounter his most famous scientist, Roger Chillingworth). In "Rappaccini's Daughter" Hawthorne offers two feuding scientists, Rappaccini and Baglioni, for our consideration. Taking into account the results of their work, what does Hawthorne seem to be saying about scientists and their relationship to other people, nature, and life in general?
The narrator wonders whether Rappaccini's garden is "the Eden of the present world" (1288). The idea of Eden was important to many early immigrants from Europe to the New World; they speculated that America was an unfallen Eden, a second chance for humanity. How does Hawthorne develop the Eden in this story? What seems to be Hawthorne's opinion of the possibility of an Eden in "the present world?"

"The Custom-House: Introductory to The Scarlet Letter"

Hawthorne served as a custom-house officer, or "Surveyor of the Revenue" in Salem, Massachusetts, during the Democratic administration of James K. Polk (1845-49), but was unexpectedly ousted from it when the Whig candidate, Zachary Taylor, was elected in November, 1848. Hawthorne first related the story of his custom-house work in an introductory essay for his 1846 collection of stories, Mosses from an Old Manse. The version printed as an introductory essay to The Scarlet Letter was heavily revised.

Critics have long commented on the fact that readers must literally pass through Hawthorne's "Custom-House" in order to get into the mainland of his novel--the story of Hester Prynne. That metaphor is worth pausing over. According to it, stories are like salable commodities brought to consumers by authors who, like ship captains, must pay a certain tax to pass it through customs, where evaluators judge it according to established standards of worth. This extended metaphor is itself evidence of the professionalization. The metaphor also underscores another point about the main story: that it pretends not to be Hawthorne's, for he would have us see it as a found object, a pre-existing tale that he merely dusted off; and that he is merely, therefore, the customs officer who serves to validate its authenticity and pass it along to us. But what defines its authenticity? What "customs" of literary form and fashion does The Scarlet Letter adhere to, in order to establish its claims to value in the first place? What "tax"--or custom--must be paid upon it? In fact, are "customs," now in the broadest sense, perhaps one of the main subjects of the novel?

Well: all at once a simple "Introductory" essay to a novel begins to seem more complex, and complexly related to the story it introduces. Time to take up specific questions.

Hawthorne's first paragraph meditates on the problems of literary audience, and specifically the potential of a writer to address "the many," or "the few," or even just "the one." What does Hawthorne foresee, along this continuum, as a "true relationship" between author and reader(s)? Why? Discuss.
The early paragraphs spend a fair amount of time on facts of genealogy, which Hawthorne refers to as the "old trunk of the family tree," and in particular his "grave, bearded, sable-cloaked, and steeple-crowned progenitor" upon that tree. What contrasts, lessons, symbols does he derive from such facts?
As a writer, what are the benefits that Hawthorne says he derives from the years of custom-house work; and, by contrast, what are the deficits he details, in thinking back on "the effect of public office"?
In what specific ways is Hawthorne's work as "Surveyor of the Revenue" comparable to the work of a writer?
How does Hawthorne say that the story of Hester Prynne came into his hands; why are those facts of its discovery significant; and how do they then propel him out of the "Custom-House" (both the actual place, and the introduction we're reading) and thus into the novel?

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