Bluegrass Messengers

by Robert Schwartz
Western Folklore, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Jan., 1986), pp. 21-33

 

"Rappaccini's Daughter" and "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter"
Robert Schwartz

In "Rappaccini's Daughter" Hawthorne winds an oblique trail through a number of sources and analogues, none of which brings us to a reasonable or consistent interpretation of the story.[1] In fact, even the most polysemous allegorical approach, even one based on a variety of sources, fails to accom- modate what Frederick Crews pointedly has termed the "absurdities" in the plot that "cry out for some non-literal rationale."[2] But allegory, and even psychology (still the methods of choice despite their problematic dead- ends), are perhaps not the only "non-literal rationales" that might justify, or at least help to explain, features that continue to frustrate the critic in search of a meaning. Crews is certainly correct, considering the difficulties presented by the plot, to look toward the "non-literal" for a point of cohe- sion; but I should like to suggest as a complement to allegory, and also psychology, further and more thorough use than has been made of the multi-levelled framework of folklore study. [3]
 
The symbols of allegory are non-literal because they are not firmly fixed to the constellation of meanings that surround them. Since the symbol in allegory is free to follow an esoteric system of association, its images, but not its meanings, are fluid. In folklore the opposite is the case. The types and motifs of folklore, although they may change through time and from place to place, are rigidly fixed where they have taken shape in traditional, often formulaic patterns. Although perhaps a literal record or view of reality at one time, folklore types and motifs, because they tend to be used for their traditional value, can seem not only "non-literal," but often non-sensical, and sometimes even absurd. Rigid in form and reference, that form may have only the most tenuous relevance to the notion of "meaning" in critical theory.

This is to say that when folklore analogues correlate with elements of structure or character in literature we can assume no more than that their form is such because it is traditional, although we may wish to argue (but certainly this is another kind of activity) a separate contemporary purpose or function for traditional folkloric elements. Considering Hawthorne's own comments to James Fields ten years after "Rappaccini's Daughter" was published--"Upon my honor, I am not quite sure that I entirely comprehend my own meaning in some of these blasted allegories . . ."[4] - we may feel lucky to be able to assume only the former. But to recognize only that traditional materials are used for their value as cultural archetypes is to consider what, in the final analysis, can be the most powerful of structuring influences. Where ideological, historical or psychological patterning seem to fall short of providing a reasonable basis for interpre- tation, a more culturally contextual approach may lead in promising directions.

The plot of "Rappaccini's Daughter" is rather simple: a young man becomes aware of a beautiful and enticing woman in a garden, and is attracted to her; he intrudes into her world by throwing flowers into the garden through a window and speaking to her; he is warned against having anything to do with her; he enters the garden nonetheless, and narrowly escapes the mysterious lady's toxic effects. His attempt to reverse her condition results in her death. A student of the English ballad might recognize the story, several key elements, and even subtle connotations (except for the ending) to be very much like that of the legend of "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter" (Child Ballad 155):[5]

D

1 A' the boys of merry Linkim
War playing at the ba,
An up it stands him sweet Sir Hugh,
The flower amang them a'.

2 He keppit the ba than wi his foot,
And catchd it wi his knee,
And even in at the Jew's window
He gart the bonny ba flee.

3 'Cast out the ba to me, fair maid,
Cast out the ba to me!'
'Ah never a bit of it,' she says.
'Till ye come up to me.

4 'Come up, sweet Hugh, come up, dear Hugh,
Come up and get the ba'!'
'I winna come up, I mayna come [up]

Without my bonny boys a'.'

5 'Come up, sweet Hugh, come up, dear Hugh,
Come up and speak to me!'

'I mayna come up, I winna come up,
Without my bonny boys three.'

6 She's taen her to the Jew's garden,

Where the grass grew lang and green,
She's pu'd an apple reid and white,
To wyle the bonny boy in.

7 She's wyl'd him in thro ae chamber,
She's wyl'd him in thro twa,
She's wyl'd him till her ain chamber,
The flower out owr them a'.

8 She's laid him on a dressin-board,
Whare she did often dine;
She stack a penknife to his heart,
And dressd him like a swine.

9 She rowd him in a cake of lead,
Bade him lie still and sleep;
She threw him i the Jew's draw-well,
'T was fifty fathom deep.

10 Whan bells was rung, and mass was sung,
An a' man bound to bed,
Every lady got hame her son,
But sweet Sir Hugh was dead.

Child D is representative of the main elements of the ballad in its shorter version. But variations only slightly different often add interesting details, such as variant F, where the boy is identified as a scholar, 

                     F
1 'T was on a summer's morning
Some scholars were playing at ball,
When out came the Jew's daughter
And leand her back against the wall ...

or I, recorded in 1814, where the connection is made between the Jew's daughter and the vegetative image of the garden:

 

1 It rains, it rains in merry Scotland,
It rains both great and small,
And all the children in merry Scotland
Are playing at the ball.

2 They toss the ball so high, so high,
They toss the ball so low,
They toss the ball in the Jew's garden,
Where the Jews are sitting in a row.

3 Then up came one of the Jew's daughters,
Cloathed all in green:
'Come hither, come hither, my pretty Sir Hugh,
And fetch thy ball again.'

4 'I durst not come, I durst not go,
Without my play-fellowes all;
For if my mother should chance to know,
She'd cause my blood to fall' ...

or K, taken down ca. 1810, where in addition to the apple, the Jew's daughter uses a gold ring and a blood-red cherry to tempt the boy: 

                  K

1 It hails, it rains, in Merry-Cock land,
It hails, it rains, both great and small,
And all the little children in Merry-Cock land
They have need to play at ball.

2 They tossd the ball so high,
They tossd the ball so low,
Amongst all the Jew's cattle,
And amongst the Jews below.

3 Out came one of the Jew's daughters,

Dressed all in green:
'Come, my sweet Saluter,
And fetch the ball again.'

4 'I durst not come, I must not come,
Unless all my little playfellows come along:

For if my mother sees me at the gate,
She'll cause my blood to fall.

5 'She showd me an apple as green as grass,
She showd me a gay gold ring'
She showd me a cherry as red as blood,
And so she entic'd me in.

6 'She took me in the parlor,
She took me in the kitchen,

 And there I saw my own dear nurse,
A picking of a chicken.

7 'She laid me down to sleep,
With a Bible at my head and a Testament at my feet;
And if my playfellows come to quere for me,
Tell them I am asleep.'

Child lists eighteen variations of this widely known ballad which achieved and maintained considerable popularity in England, Scotland and America. The ballad, although generally a symptom of centuries of prejudice and fear of Jewish beliefs and practices throughout England and Europe, is based largely on the story of Hugh of Lincoln which appeared in 1255 in the Annals of Waverly, in the Chronica Majora of Matthew Paris, in the Annals of Burton, and elsewhere. Of stories alleging similar cases of Jewish ritual murder and the slaughter of Jews that followed, Child cites over 70 examples from England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Russia, etc., "which come readily to hand without much research" in a list covering the twelfth to nine- teenth centuries that barely scratches the surface of this widespread prejudice. [6]

Striking elements of the ballad are the intrusion into a walled garden often containing a well, many times through a window, by a boy specifically identified- following the annals- as a scholar or schoolboy in some versions (like the "litel clergeon" in Chaucer's Prioresse's Tale, likewise based on this ballad); a strangely passive vampire-seductress-murderess rich with vegetative connotations, often "cloathed all in green," who offers the boy an apple, and often other sexually significant gifts. There are also references to people as flowers, the statement that the boy has been warned to stay away from the garden, and references to the Bible and prayer book.

There is, further, an interesting mingling of detail, normal within the context of the ballad form and the nature of ballad variation, that comes very close at times to the open-ended associations in Hawthorne's story. The Jew's daughter, often said to be clothed in green (Child I, K, J, M, N), sometimes is associated with the apple used in the tempta- tion-called "an apple red and green" (Child A), "baith red and green" (Child E), and even "an apple as green as grass"! (Child M)- when she is described as "All dressed in red and green" (Child G) or, as in H, "All dressed in apple-green." And this fused image-the Jew's daughter and the apple-is merged with a third, that of the garden:

She's gane into the Jew's garden
Where the grass grew lang and green . . . [Child C]

Here it is through the highly formulaic ". . . and green" that the ballad achieves a unified image of woman/apple/garden. Likewise, the flexible image of the flower achieves some importance. In variant D the boy is "the flower amang them a' " and "the flower out owr them a'." This correlation between a person and the flower is underscored in a way still more relevant to "Rappaccini's Daughter" in that among the local titles of American variants has been found the title "The Fatal Flower Garden," [7] which perhaps picks up on the reference in Child M:

They tossed it into the Jew's garden,
Where the flowers all do blow.

These points of comparison lead in two directions, both of which may help us better to understand Hawthorne's story. They provide a clear and deeply rooted traditional structure (however that structure may be explained intrinsically) for the plot and many of its central images, especially those that seem at times ambiguous, and they also bring to the discussion of historical and allegorical interpretations of the plot elements of Jewish history, doctrine, and lore that may have some bearing on the ambiguous resolution of the story.

We may be reasonably certain that Hawthorne knew of "The Jew's Daughter" as well as the context of religious doctrines and prejudices associated with it. The ballad was widespread in America, especially in the eastern states, and so would have been part of that unrecoverable level of culture (that we now call "folklife") known to all regardless of education or social class. Hawthorne certainly saw the ballad in written form in popular anthologies of antiquities, such as Percy's Reliques, which he is known to have borrowed. [8] And versions of the story appear in the popular books on social customs and practices in which Hawthorne was so interested. In William Hone's Every-Day Book, for instance (charged by Hawthorne from the Salem library on September 5, 1835 and again on February 22, 1836), there are references to the ballad's motif of Jewish ritual murder in the case of William of Norwich (also a source for the ballad) and descriptions of the persecution of Jews on this account. Hone in other places extensively describes persecution of Jews in England and also provides an anecdote about a Jew in Connecticut (June 21, 1777). [9]

What Hawthorne had in mind, either consciously or subconsciously, in drawing from such a body of material remains, of course, a puzzle still. We may want to posit no more than that the ballad tale as an archetype of character impressed itself on Hawthorne's mind, because of its strange and mysterious story, and that he sought merely to repro- duce its eerie sense of the boy's inevitable attraction to the garden and his fate at the hands of an exotic and mysterious woman. [10] Certainly Hawthorne's abiding interest in such a female character is well recog- nized. She is, in fact, what Gloria Erlich calls "The common denomi- nator of a surprisingly large number of Hawthorne's works . . . the dark woman, the voluptuous, passionate, Oriental, Jewish (anything but Christian) embodiment of Eve." [11] Such a character is Beatrice, but also Miriam of The Marble Faun, who was said to be the daughter of a Jewish banker and who is recognized by Donatello to be the figure in the paint- ing of a youthful woman of "Jewish aspect."

Beatrice, critics have long noticed, is a most strange amalgam of the "seductively dangerous and innocently pure-minded," at once tainted with evil but with a soul that is, in the end, "heaven-bound." [12] Yet it is precisely this dual quality that the Jew's daughter of the ballads, in virtually all variations regardless of time and place, seems to embody. Clearly deadly, tainted completely but only by being the Jew's daughter, the woman of the ballad is not particularly aggressive, brutal or vile. In fact descriptions of her are normally pleasant, even cheerful, right up to her deadly effect. Why this is so we cannot really say. However, Tristram Coffin has pointed out that in American versions the emphasis on religion is almost entirely absent. [13] There is the religious slur, but apparently any active or personal prejudice has worked its way out of the ballad. What we are left with, even in eighteenth and nineteenth century English versions, is a story that establishes the grotesque stero- type of a vampire yet refuses to condemn the woman personally for what she does, while the boy, after only a brief and highly formulaic objection, seems strangely acquiescent to his fate. The Jew's daughter is unmistakably an embodiment of Eve,

'How will I come up? How can I come up?
How can I come to thee?
For as ye did to my auld father
The same ye'll do to me [Child A]

but is, at the same time, a victim only of her sinful parentage.

Clearly the moral ambiguity of the Jew's daughter resembles that of Beatrice, but this paradox leads to one still more problematic: the fascina- tion with yet revulsion toward inter-racial contact. As Charles Boewe has pointed out, Hawthorne held "the common folk suspicion of mixed breeds . . . and he inclines to the belief that half-breeds, if not biologically inferior, are inferior to purebreds at least in character. This attitude was a common one toward Indian-Caucasian half-breeds . . ." [14] We find the biblical injunction against hybridization in Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:9, but more firmly stated in Jewish tradition. In his Jewish Antiquities (c. 66 AD) Josephus, known as "the Greek Livy," records Jewish practice: "Let your seeds be pure and without mixture, and sow not two or three kinds together; for nature delighteth not in the conjunction of things dissimilar. Neither shall ye mate beasts that are not of kindred nature; for it is to be feared that from this custom a disregard for the law of the breed may pass even into the practices of humanity. . . . ." [15] What is noteworthy is that although Hawthorne was, as Boewe says, "more than a little squeamish about unusual bio- logical mixtures," this apparently "has nothing to do with contemporary race prejudice; indeed, he was sympathetic with Negroes and Jews.''[16]

Given the traditional nature of the narrative and the moral issues that accrued to it, we may want to ask, then, to what uses does Hawthorne put this constellation of ideas? Does he re-tell and modify the story to point out that its stereotypes are unfair, or to vindicate its racial and moral judgments? Or, perhaps, to do both? That a young Hawthorne fascinated by mysterious beauty might find it at least novel to come close to taking the lady's part, we may suppose. But this explanation gives all the more reason for engaging the issue, with its psychological, historical and racial controversy, since, as Cecil Roth has pointed out, the Quakers, a group perhaps more likely for Hawthorne's scrutiny, were also accused of the kind of ritual murder associated with the Jews and the ballad." And indeed, in "The Gentle Boy" Hawthorne shows keen interest in religious persecution of the kind practiced on the Jews, and even applies to the Quakers the image of the ostracized wandering Jew. Later in the story, Hawthorne makes a suggestive reference to the motif in many of the "Sir Hugh" variations of the child who strays from his mother to be ritually murdered.

To ask these questions-to judge Hawthorne's intentions in the story -is to bring us back to the traditional allegorical association of Beatrice with Eve. But this time, through the context of Jewish lore invoked by the ballad, the range of meanings to which the allegory may attach itself is considerably greater. For Beatrice (her name, incidentally, is already associated with the ballad, since it is known to have been the name of Hugh of Lincoln's mother[18]), who seems both to be and not to be Eve, brings to mind the figure in Jewish and Babylonian-Assyrian legend of Lilith, "the first Eve," who was according to Rabbinical writing Adam's wife before the creation of Eve:

To banish his loneliness, Lilith was first given to Adam as wife. Like him she was created out of the dust of the ground. But she remained with him only a short time, because she insisted upon enjoying full equality with her husband. She derived her rights from their identical origin. With the help of the Ineffable Name, which she pronounced, Lilith flew away from Adam, and vanished in the air.[19]

Jewish lore continues that "the woman destined to become the true companion of man was taken from Adam's body, for 'only when like is joined unto like the union is indissoluble.' " [20]

The relation of this to "Rappaccini's Daughter" is striking because it provides a locus for the allegorically ambiguous Eve, and is so deeply related to the story's fundamental thematic concern with hybridization, but also because Lilith is a demon frequently associated with witchcraft. Interestingly, water is the abode of such demons (cf. the fountain in Rappaccini's garden), and in German popular belief Liliths "assemble under certain trees." [21]

Within this context the resolution of "Rappaccini's Daughter" does take on some strange coherence. If Rappaccini's garden is, as the story itself suggests, the Garden of Eden, Giovanni the second Adam, and Rappaccini a type of God, Beatrice may at least in part be viewed as God's first, and unsuccessful, experiment. This is why the temptation, alluded to both in the vegetative imagery and through a kind of sexual seduction, is suggested but never completed. Beatrice may, from this point of view, represent in God's world the last chance for a physical and spiritual consummation that was not in some way incestuous and therefore no longer robust and vital. The attraction holds, for Hawthorne, for that which is different; but in the true temptation, that of the second Eve, man was committed to his own kind forever. The story, then, becomes an etiological narrative explaining the author's attraction to the dark and mysterious, an allegory that is in this sense, as Erlich said, "anything but Christian." It explains too why that attraction is doomed from the start. Such a view in no way detracts from the more conventional Christian allegory usually seen in the story, but only serves to enhance its relation to the narrative in which it is found.

In the preceding pages I have not attempted a fully articulated interpretation of "Rappaccini's Daughter," but rather have tried to show the relevance of materials related to the ballad of "The Jew's Daughter" to such an interpretation and to suggest in small ways the direction that such an approach might take. There are, however, other points of connection between the ballad and Hawthorne's tale. We know, for instance, of the author's interest in witchcraft, and for this interest, too, beyond Lilith, there are powerful connections with "The Jew's Daughter." For example, "the motive most commonly alleged" for the crime committed in the ballad, Child notes, "in addition to the expression of contempt for Christianity, has been the obtaining of blood for use in the Paschal rites. . . ." [22] And in reference to what he called "the practice of the dark and hideous traditions of Hebrew magic," Montague Summers reiterates in his History of Witchcraft and Demonology the prejudiced belief that "In many cases the evidence is quite conclusive that the body and especially the blood of the victim, was used for magical purposes.'" [23] So Mathew Paris believed in his chronicles. Further, Robert Graves, in his English and Scottish Ballads points out many and striking connections between the ballad and the Old Religion (witchcraft). [24]

Critics like Frederick Crews, looking to the psychological subtleties of the story, have also emphasized the "strong sexual connotations" of the garden and of Beatrice. "If Beatrice's 'poisonousness' accounts for his characteristically ambivalent reaction," Crews writes "then that poisonousness may stand for her sexuality. . . ." [25] The ballad provides a rich background for these connotations. In his careful comparative study of the ballad James Woodall notes that many elements in the story (such as the ball game) are of little importance to the situation. "The lost ball is simply a focal point, a reason for the female's attention being directed to the particular boy." He concludes that "those basic elements of situation that persist are not the religious, but the mysterious and the sexual."' [26] And to this we might add that the gifts which accompany the apple in some variations (the cherry as red as blood and the gay gold ring) have folkloric associations with virginity, sexuality and fertility.

To be sure, one might object to use of the ballad on more general grounds. Despite all its similarities to "Rappaccini's Daughter," the ballad of "The Jew's Daughter" is very much an English ballad and bears in locale little or no resemblance to Hawthorne's Italian tale. But here we need only point out that the figure of the Jew, before and after Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, has always been considered exotic and Mediterranean. At any rate, in Percy's Reliques, which Hawthorne seems to have used often, Percy (and he is unique in this claim) states in his brief introduction to "The Jew's Daughter" that "the following ballad is probably built upon some Italian legend. . . ."[27]

There are valid objections to an uncritical use of folklore sources and analogues in literary criticism. But where a disciplined methodology is coupled with supporting historical and perhaps even biographical information, there is considerable room for insight and amplification. In this case, the striking similarity of the narratives and their shared range of suggestiveness argue very strongly for the possibility of some kind of broad structural and typological comparison. Considering Hawthorne's ongoing interest in the persecution of minorities in Massachusetts, perhaps even his sense of family culpability in the matter of the witchcraft trials, we may conjecture how highly charged a cultural and racial stereotype like that portrayed in "The Jew's Daughter" might have been to him. And we infer from this how the conflicting demands of a desire to atone, or at the very least to understand, collide so violently with his own sense of personal and racial identity.

The folklorist will already know how difficult it is to explain why an item of foklore persists and how it may speak to the autonomous individual. But even where clear uses and intentions may be difficult to understand, the knowledge that folklore motifs are repeated and elaborated in itself greatly enhances the scholar's ability to locate his text in a living, multi-levelled cultural context. Rather than limit the allegorical or psychoanalytic potential of "Rappaccini's Daughter," the ballad of "Sir Hugh" moves it, literary and artistic autonomy intact, into the broader and richer world of traditional thought and shared social value.

Oregon State University
Corvallis, Oregon