INTRODUCTION

The aim of this paper is to elaborate on the position of women in some pieces by Nathaniel
Hawthorne. In particular, the work intends to provide some considerations regarding the
relationship which the characters of some stories by Hawthorne share with the symbolic spaces they
inhabit. More specifically, we shall attempt to extend to other stories by Hawthorne the
considerations which Teresa Goddu advances about women both in the private and public sphere in
The House of the Seven Gables to arrive at an overview of the woman-garden pattern in the same as
well as in “Rappaccini's Daughter”. These two pieces that discard the prejudiced critical opinion
which sees Hawthorne's female characters as passive subjects, by demonstrate their part of active
mediators and “translators of cultural models”, together with “The Minister's Black Veil” and its
message that links faith with interpretation, will serve as a starting point to develop a reflection
about the problem of interpretation and cultural translation in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The Concrete Side of Allegory: Women and Hawthorme's Gardens of Eden

As Goddu writes in her essay “The Circulation of Women in The House of the Seven Gables”,
the democratic model advanced by Hawthorne in the novel “depends upon the proper circulation of
women within society” (Goddu 119). Namely, Goddu argues that Hepzibah, Alice and Phoebe
Pyncheon represent three different modes of circulation of values – incest, forced exchange and
alliance – which cooperate to present Hawthorne's “conservative vision of social change” (Goddu
120). To support her claim, Goddu calls the reader's attention on Hepzibah, defined by Hawthorne
as the “perfect picture of prohibition” (Collected Novels 461), an aristocrat shaped by the attempt to
resist the evolution of society, accumulating goods which she doesn't share with societty outside the
Pyncheon. As Goddu points out, Hepzibah is unwilling to engage in social interactions and enter the
market-place, refusing to touch money with bare hands when poverty forces her to open a cent-
shop, and locking her heart to everyone except her brother Clifford, for whom she hoards all
affection.
If Hepzibah therefore represents “a static, sterile order that adds nothing to the functioning of
society” (Goddu 122), it must be noticed how Hawthorne counterpoints her attitude with that of
Alice and Phoebe Pyncheon, who represent “openness” and are ready to engage both in monetary
trade, as well as on the marriage market. This disposition of the two characters becomes all the
more evident when we consider that Goddu may be exaggerating in her depiction of Alice as a
representatieve of “forced exchange” (which equates to her rape in the novel). In fact, it is Alice
who first displays an attraction to “the remarkable comeliness, strenght and energy of [Matthew]
Maule's figure” (Collected Novels 525), signalling thus that the control later exerted by Maule over
her is nothing but the fulfillment of her own desire, which instinctively impells her to enter the
marriage-market and fulfill her active role as a subject of the democratic social contract. This
propensity to exchange is even more evident in Phoebe Pyncheon, “the consumate shop-keeper”
(Goddu 121) who relieves Hepzibah behind the counter, reversing the disastrous economic situation
which the she initiated. We find it essential to remark with Goddu how Hawthorne poses Phoebe,
with the model of alliance which she represents through her marriage with Holgrave, as a mediator,
a winning compromise between Hepzibah's withdrawal from trade and Alice's “forced acquisition”.
Because of her role of mediator, Hawthorne often allegorically links Phoebe to the garden of the
Pyncheon manor. Phoebe is associated with natural elements every time she appears, and
Hawthorne's definitions of her as “the flower of Eden” (Collected Novels 610) or “a ray of
sunshine” (Collected Novels 411) recur throughout the whole text. Even more relevant to our point
is the fact that Phoebe literally appropriates herself of the Pyncheon Garden, making it the center
and main interest of her daily routine, constantly tending to it and keeping each plant in good
health.
At this point of our work, before we proceed any further in the discussion, it may not be
amiss to pause in order to define what we intend when we speak of “the concrete side of allegory”.
If allegory, as it is usually defined, consists in the employment of a term which refers to the
concrete and sensorial sphere of perception but is used to allude to an abstract concept, it may be
surprising to discover that symbols such as the Pyncheon garden possess an allegorical value in
their own right, by their simple physical existence. In other words, if a garden is nothing but a
mediator between Nature's wilderness and the artificiality of human civilization, then the Pyncheon
Garden, with its Edenic referent, is inextricably linked to Phoebe as a mediator between the old
aristocratic and conservative vision of society that characterizes Hepzibah, and Jaffrey Pyncheon's
modernity, which is a world of trade and commerce. Thus, the garden aids Hawthorne in his attempt
to propose Phoebe as an example of reform which stands in stark opposition both to Hepzibah's
conservatorism and the Maules's violent revolution.
Until this moment, we have purposefully ignored the process of cultural association which
links the Pyncheon Garden with the Garden of Eden, examining only the allegorical values and
symbolisms that connect with its physical qualities, the concreteness of its material existence – the
“thing-in-itself”, as Kant may call it, Sartre's “existing-thing”, the “garden-as-a-garden”, if we may
allowed to call it so. Now only can we return to the Garden of Eden with an increased critical
awareness, in order to form a full picture of how Hawthorne employs spacial allegory in The House
of the Seven Gables. But before doing so, we need to recapitulate Hawthorne's view of American
society as it emerges from the novel.
Despite challenging traditional perspectives by granting to Phoebe and Alice the role of
active subjects in the democratic social contract, we believe that the picture of American society
which the novel ecourages us to envision is still a conservative one. Evidence to sustain this claim
can be drawn not only from Phoebe's marriage with Holgrave – which, as Goddu demonstrates,
allows the Pyncheons to form a binary system where they can keep their riches within family limits,
sharing them only with the Maules, and not with the rest of society - but also from Hawthorne's
incapacity to conceive any radical change, any alternative to a patriarchal system. Because at its
bottom, the America envisioned by the novel is still a patriarchal society where the Pyncheons keep
their riches and women, in spite of characters like Phoebe and Alice, are still regarded as goods to
be exchanged in a society dominated by men. It is therefore not surpring that – as anticipated above
– of all the qualities possessed by Phoebe, one of those which the reader remembers the most is her
readiness to handle money. Nor do we find it surprising that Hawthorne, elaborating on the same
leit-motif in Alice's episode, explicitly associates Alice Pyncheon with money, since her father
literally sacrifices her to the witchcraft of Young Matthew Maule in exchange for the Pyncheon land
grant! Nor, in the end, do we find it surprising to discover, when approaching the novel's
conclusion, that Alice is also strictly associated with the Pyncheon Garden, where she planted some
posies of which Phoebe currently takes care.
This pattern of woman-garden-money appears everywhere in The House of the Seven Gables.
However, it is not a new pattern in Hawthorne, since it has appeared in the most unsuspectable story
of all his literary production. In fact, “Rappaccini's Daughter”, despite featuring a garden with a
woman – Beatrice – who, like Phoebe and Alice, mediates between the world of man and the world
of nature, has apparently nothing to do with the theme of monetary exchange. And yet, we must
remember that Giovanni has to bribe old Dame Lisabetta, his landlady and the servant of Dr
Rappaccini, in order to gain access to the beautiful, luxurious, Eden-like garden where his daughter
Beatrice is taking care of the plants, and where “many a young man in Padua would give gold to be
admitted” (Tales and Sketches 989). Moreover, to confirm Hawthorne's association of Beatrice with
money we need not look farther than the title of the story, which defines Beatrice as nothing else but
“Rappaccini's Daughter”, implying – as Sharon Deykin Baris rightly suggests in her essay
“Giovanni's Garden Hawthorne's Hope for America – that Dr Rappaccini, Professor Baglioni and
Giovanni – who does not narrate the story, but still characterizes it with his point of view – consider
Beatricee almost like an object, their personal and rightful property, or just another plant in the
garden. This gerarchical structure in which a group of men looks down in judgement on a woman is
in fact another element which “Rappaccini's Daughter” shares with The House of the Seven Gables,
as it is mirrored by the triangle at the the center of Alice's story.

A Game of Interpretation

But let us readdress the issue from a more proper point of view. In fact, as Deykin Baris
explains, finding “the proper point of view” (Tales and Sketches 975) from which to observe
Beatrice may well be the main issue at stake in the story. The Preface is very instructive in this
sense. It depends on us whether we decide to read the tale with the French title which Hawthorne
associates to his alter-ego Monsieur de l'Aubépine (“Beatrice, ou: la Belle Empoisonneuse”) or its
English one, “Rappaccini's Daughter”. Thus, Hawthorne makes it our own choice whether to look at
Beatrice from the window, like Dr Rappaccini, Professor Baglioni and – at least initially –
Giovanni, or to descend down in the garden and acquire a real understanding of her. As to Dr
Rappaccini, Hawthorne is very adamant about his (lack of) connection with the plants of his garden
and – by extension – with Beatrice:

The distrustful gardener, while plucking away the dead leaves or pruning the
too luxuriant growth of the shrubs, defended his hands with a pair of thick
gloves. Nor were these his only armor. When, in his walk through the
garden, he came to the magnificent plant that hung its purple gems beside
the marble fountain, he placed a kind of mask over his mouth and nostrils,
as if all this beauty did but conceal a deadlier malice. (Tales and Sketches
979)

Here we can again observe what we noticed before in our discussion of the “concrete side of
allegory”, and more precisely of the woman-garden connection in The House of the Seven Gables.
The Doctor, “affected with inward disease” (Tales and Sketches 979) – as if his considering the
plants poisonous had poisoned him in turn – turns to his daughter Beatrice for help, and Beatrice,
like every garden, mediates between the wilderness of Nature and the coldness and rationality of her
father's scientific approach.
Furthermore, to quote again from Deykin Baris's article, in this passage there may also be
noticed the presence of many traditional symbolic elements which refer to the Garden of Eden. As
an example, Baris indicates the fountain, which also appeares in an episode of Spenser's Fairie
Queene. The whole story is interspersed with references to many Biblical and mythological gardens
that call to mind the famous medieval maxim which says that “one must be able to read the Book of
God's Work in order to undertand his Work” (qtd. in Deykin Baris 80). Indeed, as Deykin Baris
points out, “Rappaccini's Daughter” is a game of interpretation where the reader and all the male
characters must figure out the real nature of Beatrice, discovering their true self along the way. “Oh,
was there not, from the first, more poison in thy nature than in mine?” (Tales and Sketches 1005), a
dying Beatrice asks Giovanni, the student who – not brave enough to look beyond her human
imperfections – decides to remain in the ivory tower of Rappaccini and Baglioni's cold, rational,
objective and objectifying point of view.
We find it essential to insist on the objectifying quality of the look cast by the three men upon
Beatrice, since – as we have already remarked – it constitutes another similarity with Alice's
situation in The House of the Seven Gables. The only slight difference between the novel and the
short story is that, while in the former the objectifying look derives from the distance between
social classes (Young Matthew Maule is a simple carpenteer who has inherited decades of hate
against the Pyncheons and is understandably unable to see through Alice's seemignly proud
attitude), in Giovanni's case there is a strong geographical element at play. In fact, Hawthorne –
who accordind to John Chesley Matthews had an extensive and thorough reading background about
Italy, and had read Guicciardini's History of Italy from a copy belonging to the Salem Public
Library, as reported by Marion Louise Kesselring – places great emphasis on Giovanni's
geographical origin (who arrives to Padua from Naples to study bothanics), and his “ardent southern
temperament, which rose every instant to a higher fever-pitch” (Tales and Sketches 986). If at the
beginning of the story he feels ill at ease in the cold north of Italy, missing the warm Neapolitan
sunshine, as the tale unralvels we find him grow more and more accustomed to the physically as
well as psychologically cold climate, until the point where he is infected by “a fierce and subtle
poison into his system” (Tales and Sketches 987). Here Hawthorne is again very clear:

How often is it the case, that, when impossibilities have come to pass, and
dreams have condensed their misty substance into tangible realities, we find
ourselves calm, and even coldly self-possessed, amid circumstances which it
would have been a delirium of joy or agony to anticipate! … So was it now
with Giovanni. … There was a singular and untimely equanimity within his
breast. (Tales and Sketches 1990)

Later onwards, when Giovanni violently reproaches Beatrice for his involuntary poisoning,
his words are full of “venomous scorn and anger” (Tales and Sketches 1002). The contagion is
complete. The distance which Giovanni bridged physically, travelling from Naples to Padua, from
the warm South to the cold North, he is entirely unable to bridge psichologically to come to the
rescue of Beatrice. Let us emphasize this point, because interpretation is a displine concerned with
bridging distances. As Deykin Baris points out, at the outset of “Rappaccini's Daughter” Hawthorne
is very careful to establish Giovanni as a student, a learned interpreter of symbols, writing that “[the
garden] would serve as a symbolic language, to keep him in communion with Nature” (Tales and
Sketches 981). Thus, Hawthorne seems to suggest that Giovanni the student, as well as Baglioni and
Rappaccini the University Professors, fail in their attempts to interpret the Beatrice because all the
three characters find it impossible to escape from the traditional rationalist schemes of their cold
scientific pespective.
If we therefore read “Rappaccini's Daughter” from the perspective of a failed attempt at
interpretation marred by the characters's impossibility to abandon their rationalist perspective, the
only parallel with which we can come up in Hawthorne's production is the story of Father Hooper in
“The Minister's Black Veil”. The parallels are sriking: in both stories Hawthorne connects
interpretation with the problem of faith. For what is Beatice's plea to Giovanni, if not – like faith – a
plea to go beyond the dictates of common sense, the limited voice of human reason, and discover
her divine origin under her seemingly poisonous aspect (“though my body be nourished with
poison, my spirit is God's creature, and craves love as its daily food!”, Tales and Sketches 1003)?
And what is Reverend Hooper's intent in masking his face, if not to force the faithful of his
congregation to look beyond what they see with their eyes, dicovering the secret of true faith in the
paradoxical nature of its irrationality? Thus, by revealing “on every visage a Black Veil” (Tales and
Sketches 384) like his own – by bringing to the fore through a cleverly contrived parable the secret
sins that men commit in the dephts of their utmost intimity – Reverend Hooper paradoxically
shows by concealing, and compels each and everyone of us to act as interpreters between the
rationality of man's surface and the private sphere of our subconscious desires.
These arguments seem strong enough to sustain a comparative reading of the two stories. To
those who may object to the comparison due to their apparently contrasting morals, we reply that
the difference is only superficial. Admittedly, while “Rappaccini's Daughter” Hawthorne insists on
the presence of goodness and the divine beneath our human imperfections, in “The Minister's Black
Veil” the emphasis is on our tendency to disguise sin under a respectable façade. However, in our
opinion such a coincidental difference is not enough to argue for the difference in the morals of the
two tales, since both share a strong emphasis on allegory and interpretation as an inwardly-drawn
movement of self-discovery, an act of revelation of what we are, to understand what we want to be.
 CONCLUSION
Unveiling the Black Veil: Hawthorne and the Problem of Interpretation

The problem of interpretation, as we hope to have proven throughout this brief investigation,
has always been a matter of great concern for Nathaniel Hawthorne. We have followed his
reflections on the topic in The House of the Seven Gables, where Phoebe and Alice Pyncheon
occupy the position of interpreters and mediators between the family's old aristocratic values and
the modern democratic world of commerce. Then, our discussion of the impact of interpretation has
led us again to the issue of faith, and to the link between faith and interpretation, implicitly
established in “Rappaccini's Daughter”, and openly addressed by Hawthorne in “The Minister's
Black Veil”. What still remains to be done, as far as we know, is to develop these sparse reflections,
expanding them to produce a work with a systemic vision of the multiple ways in which
interpretation relates to these and many more stories in Hawthorne's literary production.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary sources:

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The House of the Seven Gables”. Collected Novels. New York: Literary

Classics of the United States, Inc., 1983.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Rappaccini's Daughter”. Tales and Sketches. New York: Literary Classics

of the United States, Inc., 1982

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The Minister's Black Veil”. Tales and Sketches. New York: Literary

Classics of the United States, Inc., 1982

Secondary sources:

Deykin Baris, Sharon. “Giovanni's Garden: Hawthorne's Hope for America”. Modern Language

Studies 12. 4 (1982): 75-90

Chesley Matthews, John. “Hawthorne's Knowledge of Dante”. Studies in English 20 (1940): 157-

165

Goddu, Teresa. “The Circulation of Women in The House of the Seven Gables”. Studies in the

Novel 23. 1 (1991): 119-127.

Kesselring, Marion Louise. Hawthorme's Reading, 1828-1850: A Transcription and Identification

of Titles Recorded in the Charge-books of the Salem Athenaeum. New York: New York

Public Library, 1949