The Art of Snake Handling: Lamia, Elsie Venner, and "Rappaccini's Daughter"

THE ART OF SNAKE HANDLING: LAMIA, ELSIE VENNER, AND "RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER" Kathleen Gallagher* Keats says in Lamia: Let the mad poets say whate'er they please Of the sweets of Faeries, Peris, Goddesses, There is not such a treat among them all, Haunters of cavern, lake, and waterfall, As a real woman ... (I, 328-32).l Lamia herself, Holmes' Elsie Venner, and Hawthorne's Beatrice Rappaccini would no doubt be the first to agree. Inhuman, preternatural , the three are all both more and less than women. Two serpentwomen and one with poison in her system, all three love mortal men and struggle to function as "real women" in a human world. Predictably, none of the three succeeds; each dies or is destroyed in the attempt. Of the three stories, only Elsie Vennercan be said to have a"happy ending," and what makes the difference is that those close to her, especially the man she loves, know what she is, pity her, and dealwith the reality of her existence, not the fantasy of what they would like her to be. Two studies have been done, by Julian Smith and Norman A. Anderson, suggesting Lamia as a source for "Rappaccini's Daughter."2 That Elsie Venner forms a triad with these two works has not been noted previously. Holmes' use of Lamia is relatively clear-cut, but several marked similarities between Elsie Venner and "Rappaccini's Daughter" suggest that Hawthorne as well as Keats may have influenced the novel. Each story involves a handsome young scholar who, while isolated from his family and friends, comes into contact with a woman of doublenature who falls in love with him. In each case the young man has reason to suspect that there is something odd about the woman and must eventually decide how he will respond to her. Each is advised by an older man (or men) of learning who functions as his teacher. Perhaps it is useful to summarize each story briefly: in exchange for "Kathleen Gallagher is a member of the Department of English of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 52Kathleen Gallagher the favors of a nymph who is under the serpent Lamia's protection, the god Hermes changes Lamia into her former "woman's shape" so that she can seduce Lycius, a Corinthian youth whom she loves. He has by chance strayed from his friends, and Lamia succeeds in entrancing him. After a brief but amorous seclusion with her, he is recalled by the sound of trumpets to the "real" world. Not satisfied with the mode of love Lamia has offered, and mortal that he is, he disregards her tears and entreaties and insists that they be fashionably married so that he can possess her, "entangle, trammel up and snare" her soul in his (II, 52-53), and show her off to Corinth. He ignores both his own doubts concerning her humanity and the tacit disapproval of his teacher Apollonius. When, at the wedding, Apollonius at last accuses Lamia of being a serpent, she vanishes, and Lycius falls dead. Giovanni Guasconti leaves home to study medicine at the University of Padua, where he boards in a house adjoining Dr. Rappaccini's exotic garden. He falls in love with, or is at least fascinated by, Rappaccini's beautiful daughter, Beatrice, and is driven to resolve the apparent conflict between Beatrice's beauty and goodness and the fatal influence she has on normal life forms as a result of having grown up among her father's poisonous plants. Pushed finally to test her, Giovanni discovers his system too has become deadly, and he scornfully rejects any notion that her soul and will might be untainted by the physical poison. He sees the destruction of the poison as the only hope, and offers her an antidote given him by her father's enemy, Dr. Baglioni. But to destroy the physical nature is to destroy the woman. The dying Beatrice, coming closer to pure spirit as she sheds her poisoned body, asks if, in fact, there has not been more poison all along in Giovanni's nature, which so quickly turned from love to hate. Bernard C. Langdon is also a...