“Rappaccini’s Daughter” 533once inside, he meets Beatrice and talks with her. It
is in the conversations between the two youngsters
inside the garden that Giovanni, and the reader,
realize the extent and pain of Beatrice’s isolation in
a life severed from any contact with other human
beings. Her questions to Giovanni about the world
outside the garden wall reveal her lifelong seclusion
with the plants and herbs her father has grown.
Actually, Giovanni is right in his appreciation
that Beatrice cannot be approached without danger
since there is a secret behind Beatrice and Rappac-
cini. As Giovanni learns, the old scientist has fed
his daughter on poison since the day she was born
as part of an experiment to make her invulner-
able to any danger. Later, Beatrice further explains
to Giovanni that the very same day of her birth,
Rappaccini also created a poisonous plant to grow
up alongside Beatrice as a sister. The result is that
everything that Beatrice touches inevitably dies, and
therefore she has not been able to lead a life among
human beings.
Her peculiar poisonous nature discloses Beatrice
as the most dramatic case of isolation in the story,
which is the direct result of her father’s scientific
experiments. Rappaccini’s desire to outwit nature led
him to experiment with his own daughter regardless
of the possible effects on Beatrice’s life. Like other
characters such as Aylmer in “The Birth-mark,”
Rappaccini’s obsessive pursuit of scientific achieve-
ments inevitably leads him and those around him
to live a life apart from the social world and human
warmth. Thus, Beatrice is the dramatic outcome of
the father’s pursuits, and after a life of seclusion in
the garden she confesses her unhappiness and mis-
ery to Giovanni.
The story ends with still another turn of the
screw on the theme of isolation when Giovanni
realizes that he has also been turned into a poison-
ous creature. Initially blaming Beatrice, the last
paragraphs reveal that it has been Rappaccini who,
once more, has defied nature to create another being
equal to his lonely daughter, and thus they both
stand apart from common men and women. The
scientist deems his deed a great victory over nature,
while Beatrice and Giovanni realize the doomed
future awaiting them. Eventually, Beatrice’s death
ends dramatically her lifelong isolation.
The story thus portrays isolation from the social
world and human warmth in negative terms by
clearly showing the effects it has on the characters
and by arguing that isolation is the price to be paid
for any obsession.
Teresa Requenapride in “Rappaccini’s Daughter”
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s texts the examination of
pride figures as a prominent theme. Stories such as
“Young Goodman Brown” or “The Minister’s Black
Veil” explore the consequences of male characters’
religious pride when these characters assume that
their actions will have no effects on their religious
principles. In “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” Hawthorne
investigates intellectual pride in relation to scientific
advancements.
The text focuses on Rappaccini and Giovanni’s
friend, the professor of medicine Pietro Baglioni.
In the case of Rappaccini, his scientific pride leads
him to the firm belief that he can outwit nature
with his scientific discoveries. In the same way,
Professor Baglioni represents another angle of
scientific pride in his desire to prove Rappaccini’s
experiments wrong. For instance, upon Giovanni’s
first meeting with the professor, the sense of old
rivalry between Rappaccini and Baglioni is made
evident when Giovanni takes the opportunity
to mention the scientist’s name. It is then that
Baglioni changes his attitude and does not “respond
with so much cordiality as he had anticipated.”
The reasons for Baglioni’s reluctance seem to be
grounded on moral qualms, since he recognizes
Rappaccini’s contribution to scientific progress
but disapproves of his unethical scientific goals. In
this line, Baglioni assures young Giovanni that the
main objection to Rappaccini’s practices is that “he
cares infinitely more for science than for mankind.”
As the conversation progresses, the rivalry between
the two scientists surfaces again when Baglioni
speculates that Beatrice, with all the instruction
she has received from her father, may strip him
of his professor’s chair at the university. Baglioni’s
thoughts also betray his own scientific pride and
ambition when at the end of his conversation with
Giovanni he affirms that “it is too insufferable an
impertinence in Rappaccini, thus to snatch the lad