Rappaccini’s Daughter is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It tells the story of Rappaccini, a scientist who creates a poisonous garden, and his daughter, who is immune to the poison. Rappaccini’s daughter is very beautiful, but she is also very lonely.
She meets a young man named Giovanni, who falls in love with her. But Rappaccini does not want Giovanni to be close to his daughter, so he tries to keep them apart. Ultimately, Rappaccini’s plan fails and Giovanni and Rappaccini’s daughter are able to be together. However, Rappaccini’s daughter is still poisoned and she dies in Giovanni’s arms.
The clever start in Rappaccini’s Daughter where I placed myself somewhere between transcendentalists and “pen-and-ink men who address the intellect and sympathies of the people,” was crucial to my grasp of Hawthorne’s perspective on Science and Nature.
He appears to toy with the benefits and drawbacks of each worldview – science and nature, for example. It’s not about balance or a comparison of arguments. His strategy in this instance is to appeal to the tensions inherent in these apparent oppositions.
Rappaccini’s daughter, Rappaccini himself, and even Beatrice’s suitor, Giovanni Guasconti, are introduced as caricatures of one or the other. Rappaccini is “a man of science” who has “sacrificed human feeling” to his studies, and who sees his daughter as “the fairest flower of his garden”, which is both literal and figurative.
Rappaccini’s daughter is a victim of her father’s experimentations, and is poisoned by the very flowers she tends. And Giovanni is a young man who falls in love with Rappaccini’s daughter, but whose own health is threatened by her poisonous presence. In each case, the character represents an extreme position with respect to the nature/science dichotomy.
While Rappaccini and his daughter are presented as dangerous fanatics, Hawthorne also allows that they are victims of circumstance. Rappaccini was apparently once a kind and gentle man, but he has been driven to distraction by the loss of his wife. And Rappaccini’s daughter is not really responsible for her own condition; she is the product of her father’s experiments, and is as much a victim as anyone else.
In this respect, Hawthorne seems to be saying that science and nature are both good and bad, depending on how they are used. They can be harnessed for good or for ill, depending on the motives of those who wield them.
Ultimately, Rappaccini’s daughter is destroyed by her own father’s experiments, and Giovanni is saved by the intervention of Rappaccini’s rival, Baglioni. This seems to be Hawthorne’s way of saying that science and nature are not necessarily compatible with each other. They can be used for good or for evil, depending on the intent of those who use them. In Rappaccini’s case, his intentions were apparently good, but his methods were ultimately destructive. In Baglioni’s case, his intentions were also good, but he used more traditional methods to achieve his ends.
So what is Hawthorne’s message here? It seems to be that science and nature are both necessary and dangerous things. They can be harnessed for good or for evil, depending on the motives of those who use them. And ultimately, it is up to each individual to decide how to use them.
Science and nature are not necessarily compatible with each other, and their dangers must be weighed against their potential benefits. Rappaccini’s Daughter is a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked science, but it is also a story about the power of love to overcome even the most dangerous obstacles.
“Rappaccini’s Daughter” was first seen to be a cautionary tale, a warning against the perils of over-science, overwrought manipulation of nature – resulting in “thwarted nature,” which is “the fatality that accompanies all such perverted knowledge.” Rappaccini is characterized as a “disgusting empirical” who isn’t restricted by natural love for his daughter. His daughter Beatrice describes herself as just an earthly child while the plants are his intellect’s “offspring.”
Her voice is “harsh as Rappaccini’s own” and when she enters the garden, Rappaccini watches her with a “look of pride.” The story can be read on several levels – as a simple cautionary tale, as an allegory about man’s relationship to nature, or as a psychological study of Nathaniel Hawthorne himself. There are many possible interpretations of the story, but one thing is certain – Rappaccini’s Daughter is a complex and fascinating short story that has captivated readers for generations.
Beatrice is characterized by her physical appearance and poisonous physical disposition. She is also characterized by “the pure light of her character.” Giovanni, the would-be lover, swings between Beatrice’s attractiveness and repulsion. Her goodness is what attracts him;
The abhorrence is of her Rappaccini-ness, which might be translated as “witchcraft.” Rappaccini’s Daughter is the story of a young man who falls in love with a beautiful woman who is apparently poisonous. Giovanni Guasconti, a young student, meets Beatrice Rappaccini, the daughter of Rappaccini, a scientist who has created a garden of poisonous plants.
Giovanni begins to fall in love with Beatrice, even though he knows she is poisonous. He also knows that Rappaccini is using his daughter in his experiments. Giovanni’s friend, Baglioni, warns him that Rappaccini is using Beatrice to poison people.
Giovanni does not believe this at first, but he eventually realizes that Rappaccini is using Beatrice to poison people. Giovanni tries to warn Beatrice, but she does not believe him. Rappaccini then poisons Giovanni with a plant from his garden. Giovanni dies, and Beatrice realizes that her father has been using her to poison people. Rappaccini’s Daughter is a story about the dangers of obsession and the dangers of trusting people who are not what they seem.
The revulsion is directed toward her physical being. When Giovanni urges Beatrice to take the deadly antidote to her poison, his character fails him. When Beatrice prevented Giovanni from putting his “sister” plant in touch with her, she saved his life by keeping him away from fatal bodily contact. At the end of the story, she ensured that he would survive by taking her own life.
Rappaccini’s daughter is not Rappaccini. Rappaccini experimented on her without her permission, and she never asked to be poisonous. Beatrice is Rappaccini’s victim. Giovanni is Rappaccini’s willing participant.
Rappacinni’s Daughter is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the story, Rappacinni’s daughter is a young woman who has been poisoned by her father’s experiments. The poison has made her very beautiful, but it also means that she can never touch anyone without killing them. Giovanni, a young man who falls in love with her, tries to find a way to save her. In the end, he fails and she dies.
The story is a tragedy, but it is also a cautionary tale about the dangers of science and progress. Rappacinni’s daughter is a victim of her father’s experiments, but she is also a victim of the times in which she lives. The world is changing rapidly, and new knowledge can be both dangerous and deadly.
Giovanni is initially taken “along numerous obscure pathways,” before he must “force himself through the entanglement of a shrub that wreathed its tendrils around the concealed entrance.” There are several remarks about this poem that take it as a whole. Such provocative pictures have a meaning, especially when a work may be interpreted on so many levels. On one level, suggestive images may be used to keep the reader engaged.
On another level, Rappaccini’s Daughter is about the dangers of being too trusting, and the ways in which we can be easily led astray. The garden, with its hidden entrance and its overgrown shrubbery, is a perfect metaphor for this. We must be careful not to trust too easily, or we may find ourselves in a place we never intended to go. Rappaccini’s Daughter is a cautionary tale, and its suggestive images only serve to underscore this point.