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Karl Bond

American Romanticism

Dr. Kuipers

November 2, 2010

Annotated Bibliography

Cook, Jonathan A. “The Biographical Background to ‘Rappaccini's Daughter.’” Nathaniel

Hawthorne Review 31.2 (2005): 34-73. Literary Reference Center. Web. 28 October

2010.

Cook’s article argues that Hawthorne’s personal life is one of the largest influences on the

short story “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” Cook asserts this by showing the parallels in the characters

in the story to people in his family through first discussing just the biographical aspects and then

moving on to show how they are presented in the story. His purpose is to take the earlier research

of other scholarly authors and show it in a new light and argue that Dr. Peabody, Sophia, and

Hawthorne himself are Dr. Rappaccini, Beatrice, and Giovanni, respectively. I hope to use this

story to show how Dr. Peabody’s unscrupulous methods in dealing with Sophia’s illnesses

influenced the character of Dr. Rappaccini and would have possibly been the most influential

encounter with medical practices that caused him to distrust them.

Crews, Frederick C. The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne’s Psychological Themes.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1966. Print.

Crews uses a psychological approach to analyze Hawthorne’s fiction in his book and a

large part of that psychology revolves around sexual imagery and symbolism. In the chapter on

escapism he states that “Aylmer’s marital love could prevail only by ‘intertwining itself with his
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love of science’” and ties it into the sexual implications of destroying his wife’s birthmark (112).

There is also an entire chapter discussing the sexual imagery of Beatrice’s garden in

“Rappaccini’s Daughter.” I plan to use this as a source of argument for Aylmer’s case by showing

that he did possibly gain a sexual thrill with the unholy union of science and his wife, but also to

argue that his motives were not so simple as a sexual desire relating to her but more towards his

cravings for scientific knowledge.

Jones, Wanda Faye. “Scopolamine Poisoning and the Death of Dimmesdale in ‘The Scarlet

Letter.’" Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 32.1 (2006): 52-62. Literary Reference

Center. Web. 28 October 2010.

Jones article argues that there is enough evidence in The Scarlet Letter and

Hawthorne’s life, specifically during his time as the editor for a scientific magazine, to show that

Arthur Dimmesdale was poisoned by a specific chemical. Jones also uses evidence from

Hawthorne’s other stories to show his fear of mesmerism, the same scientific method that was

used by Dr. Peabody on Sophia as a way to combat her illness. The article provides evidence of

the different ways that scopolamine was used as a way to hypnotize Dimmesdale to get the truth

out of him, that Chillingworth would have had the means and the knowledge to know what the

plant would have done if misused, and how Hawthorne would have known about and feared all

of this. I hope to use this article as further examples of Hawthorne’s distrust of medical practices

as shown in The Scarlet Letter and as further examples of his own personal experiences with

doctors.
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Male, Roy R. Hawthorne’s Tragic Vision. New York City: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

1957. Print.

In Male’s book he discusses the “tragic vision” that Hawthorne’s insight into the world

gave him and how it affected his major works. In one of the chapters he discusses “The

Birthmark” and how Aylmer attempts “to transform the duality of woman into something simple

and pure” by removing her birthmark (11). Male argues that Aylmer was merely a “God of the

new religion of science” and that “his tragic flaw is to fail to see the tragic flaw of humanity”

(81-82). I plan to use this as one of my few sources that deals with “The Birthmark” in more than

passing mention, but to use it as something to argue against and show that Aylmer was not doing

some sort of holy work but was actually perverting nature in his attempt to perfect it.

Mancall, James N. “Thoughts Painfully Intense”: Hawthorne and the Invalid

Author. New York City: Routledge, 2002. Print.

In Mancall’s published dissertation he “argue[s] that Hawthorne never resolved the

questions that nagged at him throughout his career” (xv). He discusses how Hawthorne dealt

with the figure constructed by physicians of that period that he calls the “invalid

author...vulnerable to nervous irritability, breakdown, and paralysis” and how this turned

Hawthorne’s work into a struggle with this medical idea (1). In Chapter 3 of the book he

discusses the short fiction of Hawthorne and has a section devoted to “The Quarrels of

Physicians,” mainly focusing on the link between Sophia’s illnesses and “Rappaccini’s

Daughter” (41). I plan to use this book as another reference to the correlation between

Hawthorne’s encounters with the medical world and his fiction, specifically with “Rappaccini’s

Daughter.”
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Miller, Edwin H. Salem is My Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Iowa

City: University of Iowa Press, 1991. Print.

Miller’s book is a very detailed biographical account of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s life with

great attention paid to nearly every aspect of it. It begins with his childhood and his early

influences and goes on to tell of his courtship and marriage of Sophia Peabody, his writing

career, and his interactions with many of the influential authors of his time. There are entire

chapters devoted to what surrounded each of his books and what went into writing them. I plan

on using this book as a reference point for the general aspects of Hawthorne’s life to understand

where he was and what he was doing at the different periods when he was writing or anything at

all that pertains to the portions of his life that will be discussed in my project.

Wattley, Lesley A. “Male Physicians and female health and sexuality in 19th century English and

American Society.” Journal of Advanced Nursing 8.1 (1983): 423-428. Print.

In her article Wattley analyzes the different attitudes and practices of physicians

regarding female patients in the nineteenth century from a medical point of view. “A constant

theme emerges from many analyses of the writings of doctors about 19th century women, and

Morante (1974) has identified this them as that of ‘woman as victim’” (423). She discusses the

opinion of the physicians of the time as one where the women pretended to be ill as a way to

escape their duties or that “many women’s diseases were viewed unconsciously as a symptom of

failure in being feminine” (426). She also provides many examples of the medical attitudes of the

period’s physicians as being one that was sexually based and almost all of their illnesses came

from their womb. I hope to use this article as background information about the medical world
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regarding women during the period that Hawthorne was writing and how it would have effected

both Sophia and his daughter Una and to show the influence that it would have had on his work.