Critical Commentary Related to "Rappaccini's Daughter"

Beata Beatrix by D.G. Rossetti (courtesy of the Tate Gallery, London)

John L. Idol, Jr., and Melinda M. Ponder in Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition, describe the heroines in "The Birth-mark" and "Rappaccini's Daughter" as "victims" who are penalized by men who try to re-make them. (courtesy of University of Massachusetts Press)

• David Kesterson in "Margaret Fuller on Hawthorne" from Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition quotes Margaret Fuller's description of Beatrice's perfect love and femininity. (courtesy of University of Massachusetts Press)
  
  
• In "Rappaccini's Garden and Emerson's Concord: Translating the Voice of Margaret Fuller " from Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition, Thomas R. Mitchell connects Giovanni's passion and horrified fascination with Beatrice to Hawthorne's complex relationship with Margaret Fuller. .(courtesy of University of Massachusetts Press)
  
  
• In "Stowe and Hawthorne" from Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition, James D. Wallace describes Harriet Beecher Stowe's portrayal of a young man who delights in "Rappaccini's Daughter" and escapes from his masculine world by entering the enchanted garden and connecting to the mysterious Beatrice. (courtesy of University of Massachusetts Press)
  
  
• Carol Bensick in "Re-Allegorizing 'Rappaccini's Daughter'" from New Essays on Hawthorne's Major Tales argues for the benefit of reading "Rappaccini's Daughter as an allegory in light of the issues raised through an examination of intellectual history. (courtesy of Cambridge University Press)
  
  
• In Nathaniel Hawthorne: a Study of the Short Fiction, Nancy Bungee comments on a thematic issue at the center of the tale. (courtesy of Twayne Publishers)
  
  
• In her analysis of Hawthorne's story in The Student Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne, Melissa McFarland Pennell discusses the complexity of Beatrice's character . (courtesy of Greenwood Press)
  
  
• In her lecture "Work and Money in Hawthorne's Fiction," Claudia Durst Johnson comments on the nature of male ambition in "Rappaccini's Daughter."
  
  
• In his lecture "The Meanings of Hawthorne's Women," Richard Millington poses a literary experiment considering how "Rappaccini's Daughter" might differ had it been written by Margaret Fuller.
  
  
• Richard Millington also comments on the continuing presence and effect of male ambition in many of Hawthorne's stories.