La Nouvelle Beatrice

Carol Bensick's book is a literary detective story examining Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter." The longest of the Hawthorne tales of its period of composition and the most heavily revised of all his stories (evidence that it was important to him), "Rappaccini's Daughter" has engendered the most critical controversy. While it is agreed that the story is Hawthorne's greatest, until now it has defied convincing interpretation. All the features of Hawthorne's writings figure in its landscape in a concentrated and explosive combination. Bensick suggests that if we can find our way through "Rappaccini's Daughter," we finally may be able to explore more completely the rest of the difficult Hawthorne terrain. Using the methods of new historical criticism, Bensick "unreads" the tale in order to read it. Her major premise is that if we approach the story on a factual level, we will arrive at a better understanding of it. Bensick's stance is that of a criminal investigator or detective, as she examines all the evidence, searching for the smallest clue. The labyrinth she uncovers even the most skeptical reader, first, that the clues are there and that they matter, and second, that they tell us of significant and indisputable dates, names, and places involved in the tale. Bensick also demolishes any notions that the story's author and narrator are one the same and shows us a Hawthorne far more skeptical of Romanticism than his supposed mouthpiece.