흔적 그리고 전통: “Rappaccini’s Daughter”와 Washington Square

Abstract

Literary Legacy and Tradition:“Rappaccini’s Daughter” and Washington SquareHahm, YeonjinThis study explores the nature of Hawthorne's impact upon Henry James’s works, focusing mainly on “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and Washington Square. In Washington Square James uses the method of the social “study” and the procedures of critical realism employed by Balzac.While James admires Balzac’s highly developed skills of representation, he finds American sources from Hawthorne, who “cares for moral questions” and is “haunted” by a moral idea. In “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and Washington Square, an innocent young girl is torn between her father and her would-be lover, who each fail her in her greatest need of them. Catherine Sloper does not duplicate Beatrice, who embodies spiritual truth in a fallen world; yet a correspondence of a certain kind exists. In a sense, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” provides a clue, indirectly, to Washington Square as a tale peculiarly American. At the same time, Washington Square suggests the ambivalence of the relationship between Hawthorne and James.However, even if James incorporates Hawthorne’s doctor-and-daughter archetype into Washington Square, he also transforms it into psychological realism. This altered form of traditionality is one of a whole set of related transformations that James’s practice performs on a nature of the 19th-century American novel.