Diane Fenster – Beatrice In Her Reverie

Description

Artist Statement

Rappaccini’s Daughter Transformed
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” Beatrice is raised in her father’s poison garden until she becomes venomous – strange, beautiful, and untouchable – then is destroyed by the antidote meant to save her. Three men decide her fate: the father who made her, the lover who feared her, the doctor who poisoned her with
a cure.
This series refuses that ending. Here Beatrice lives. She survives the antidote and the story itself, and grows old inside the garden walls. The prison becomes her dominion; the poisons that marked her as monstrous become her pharmacopoeia. She deepens into what the world calls a witch, keeper of plants that heal and plants that kill, knowing they are often the same plant.