Poets and Poems: Jules Jacob, Sonia Johanson, and "Rappaccini's Garden"

In 1844, Nathaniel Hawthorne published a short story entitled “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” It’s a gothic / horror story about a scientist in Padua who grows poisonous plants in his garden. He’s trained his beautiful daughter to tend the garden, and while she’s become immune to the poisons, she herself has become poisonous. But her beauty attracts suitors, including the narrator, a young man visiting the city and staying in a room overlooking the garden. 

The story is more than a gothic or “garden of evil” tale. It also questions the scientist who believes anything (and anyone) is fair game in the pursuit of knowledge. Hawthorne rolled romantic infatuation, scientific infatuation, and evil into one story. What he doesn’t get specific about, except for describing a flower or two, is what kinds of plants were actually in the garden? 

Poets Jules Jacob and Sonja Jackson have an answer: Rappaccini’s Garden: Poisonous Poetry.To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Imagine – poem by Kelly Belmonte at All Nine.

 

“Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Phone Ghazal – Tania Runyan at Every Day Poems. 

Still Possible – poem by David Whyte.

Some Monday Readings

Into Britain’s angry pulpit steps Paula Vennells, who ran the Post Office – to explain why it sent honest people to jail – Marina Hyde at The Guardian.  

Five Instructive Quotes from The Anxious Generation – Chris Martin. 

 

Down the Rabbit Hole: Hunting an Original Letter – Neil Chatelain at Emerging Civil War.

 

The Moral Conservatism of Nathaniel Hawthorne – Russell Kirk at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Privacy – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Jacques Ellul: Prophet for the Information Age – Bronson Long at Current.

 

Higher Education’s Fragmented Morality – Jeffrey Bilbro at The Dispatch.

 

If You Are Stuck – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

Photograph: Nathaniel Hawthorne.

"The House of Seven Gables" by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Still a Fascinating Story

I first read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) 50 years ago. I recently reread it and discovered it was nothing like what I remembered, or what I thought I remembered. Superficially, the book tells the story of a woman in Puritan Boston who gives birth out of wedlock, is shunned and condemned by her fellow citizens, and thumbs her nose at them by embroidering a scarlet letter “A” on her dress. 

The novel is actually much more substantive – the story of a woman of rather independent mind caught between the opposing demands of her lover and those of her husband. It’s an exploration of guilt, love, steadfastness, loyalty, and redemption. 

I wondered if the same thing would be true of Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables, which I first and last read about that same 50 years ago. What I remembered was that it was a ghost story of sorts, not as wild as an Edgar Allen Poe story but in that vein. I reread it last month, and I discovered that memory misled me even more here than with The Scarlet Letter.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: Hawthorne in 1848.

The End of ‘The Scarlet Letter’ – and its Lasting Influence

We’ve come to the end of The Scarlet Letter, and it’s time to consider this journey we embarked upon almost three months ago.

In 1876, George Parsons Lathrop (1851-1898) was editor of The Atlantic Monthly (and at 25 years old, no less). That year, he published A Study of Hawthorne, neither an official biography nor an official literary study, but more a hybrid of the two. Lathrop himself called it a “portrait” rather than a biography. Whatever it’s genre, it remains one of the best studies on the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1809-1864). The book remained a popular study of the author for at least the next quarter century; I have an edition published in 1898.

Lathrop notes that it was The Scarlet Letter that made the author’s reputation when it was published in 1850. The subject was something of a shock and sensation, but the public quickly got over it and the book became a bestseller, selling out the first printing of 5,000 in 10 days. It was not without its contemporary critics; a publication of the Episcopal Church, which fancied itself the authority on all things Puritan, rained harsh criticism on the book, its story, the author, and anything associated with them. The criticism was ignored.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Hawthorne and Suspense

The end is near. Or getting nearer. And the suspense is mounting.

Events in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter are accelerating. It’s been seven years since Hester Prynne sewed the scarlet A on her dress, seven years since Roger Chillingworth began his disguised torment of the Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale, and almost seven years since the birth of Arthur and Hester’s elf-like child Pearl.

The community has reached the point of almost-acceptance of Hester, and she’s just pulled the A from her dress and tossed it in the forest. Dimmesdale encounters Hester in the forest and decides to throw over everything and flee with her and Pearl to Europe; there’s even a ship anchored in the harbor that could take them. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

The Contradiction of Guilt

The deeper I get into The Scarlet Letter, the more I wonder who the novel is really about. It may be less about Hester Prynne and more about the drama unfolding with Roger Chillingworth, the wronged husband on his quest for vengeance, and Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister who’s fathered Hester’s, out-of-wedlock baby.

Chillingworth, in the guise of the trusted doctor, is gradually pushing Dimmesdale toward a crisis or breakdown. He occupies an interesting position in the story – associated with neither the Puritan church and culture nor the Romanticism of Hester and her daughter Pearl. He interacts with both but acts more like a free agent, outside church and conscience.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Image of Dimmesdale, Hester, and Pearl on the platform is from the 1878 edition of The Scarlet Letter.

The Surprise of "The Scarlet Letter"

It’s been 50 years since I read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter in my high school American literature class. What I vaguely remembered was a story about a woman named Hester Prynne in Puritan New England, with a baby born out of wedlock, and the narrowminded colonists who took great pride in displaying their superiority over the sinful, fallen woman. 

As I started reading the book in May, it took me all of the first two chapters to realize that what I remembered, and what had seeped into my head about the book in the past half-century, was superficially right but substantially wrong. It is much more than what I remembered. 

The biggest surprise so far has been the two significant male characters, the Reverend Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale and the man who shows up and calls himself Roger Chillingworth but is actually Hester Prynne’s long-absent husband. (You have to love the names Hawthorne gives his characters, as descriptive as those of Charles Dickens, but then, Hawthorne was writing and publishing about the same time). 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.