The Language of Flowers: James, Hawthorne, Allegory

This paper gives a close reading of Hawthorne's story “Rappaccini's Daughter” and James's novella The Aspern Papers to discuss three things: allegory as a European art form now seen in an American context; ambiguity in literature, which contests realism and is investigated through the writings of Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida; and questionings of gender that are central to both Hawthorne and James. Allegory seems the mode in which such questionings can take place, and this adds to its radical nature, even if it is a form which was publicly derided. This paper examines some modern readings of allegory in order to show how it not only fragments the sense of whole meanings, but introduces a transgressive and destabilizing element into the text as well, making it a crucial way of contesting publicly stateable meanings.