532 Hawthorne, Nathaniel
bringers of death. Thus, Rappaccini is presented as
an egotistical character whose only design in life
is to advance in his knowledge of science by what
the scientific community considers to be unethical
means. It is such forbidden procedures that have
earned Rappaccini a bad reputation among the
scientific community. Hawthorne’s tale condemns
that attitude when he describes the scientist as being
willing to “sacrifice human life, his own among the
rest, or whatever else was dearest to him, for the sake
of adding so much as a grain of mustard seed to the
great heap of his accumulated knowledge.” That
Rappaccini’s efforts result in the addition of some-
thing as small as a grain of mustard clearly poses a
criticism of the man’s immoderate ambition, which
brings not only isolation but also death to what he
seems to love most, his daughter.
Although now aware that Beatrice’s touch or
breath is deadly to anything raised outside the
garden, Giovanni falls in love with Beatrice. Soon
he realizes that he, too, has become as poison-
ous as Beatrice. Like her, he can kill insects with
his breath. When he realizes what has happened,
Giovanni accuses Beatrice of infecting him despite
Beatrice’s claim that her father is the one to blame.
In an effort to save them both, Giovanni produces
an antidote that Professor Baglioni has given him
with the hope that their deathly nature can be puri-
fied. Beatrice takes the drink first so that Giovanni
can see the effects of the drink before he takes
it. The effect of the antidote is contrary to that
expected, and Beatrice dies. Thus, she becomes the
final victim of Rappaccini’s experiments and his
desire to alter the natural course of nature through
scientific means.
Beatrice’s death at the end of the tale coincides
with a tradition of female characters in Hawthorne’s
short fiction who suffer in their own flesh the
effects of the male’s obsessions and his actions taken
in order to achieve a desired aim. As the writer
explored in other tales such as “The Birth-mark,”
the death of the female character also symbolizes
the negative consequences of pursuing an egotistical
endeavor, in which the male character is unable to
realize that his experiments or desires are incompat-
ible with a social life.
Teresa Requena
iSolation in “Rappaccini’s Daughter”
Many of Hawthorne’s short stories are populated
by isolated characters that, for different reasons,
live their lives apart from the social world. “Rap-
paccini’s Daughter” provides a neat example of such
a theme in the characters of Rappaccini and, most
poignantly, Beatrice.
The story opens when Giovanni travels north
to study at the University of Padua. Once there,
he rents a small, gloomy, and dark room in an old
building. His initial sadness is somehow relieved
when he peers through the window and discovers a
beautiful and bountiful garden that holds a variety of
strange and mysterious plants and herbs that grow
all around. In the middle, there is a decayed fountain
that supplies water to an exceedingly beautiful and
fragrant flower.
As Giovanni continues to observe the garden,
the housekeeper explains that it belongs to Doctor
Giacomo Rappaccini, a reputed scientist in Italy
who grows these plants to make medicines. A few
minutes later, he spots Rappaccini walking around
the garden wearing thick gloves and a mask so that
he does not touch the poisonous plants and herbs
nor inhale the fragrance they shed. As the story
progresses we learn that Rappaccini has always been
guided by an irrational passion for experimenta-
tion beyond what is seen as reasonable. His scien-
tific ambition and experimentation with poisonous
plants has led to his isolation from the scientific
community, which questions his scientific methods
and goals.
Rappaccini’s loneliness in what seems to be his
outdoor laboratory is apparently eased by the pres-
ence of his daughter Beatrice, who is described as
a beautiful and lively girl. Mysteriously, she is the
only one who is able to touch and approach the
plants without any protective means. Upon seeing
her, however, Giovanni affirms that Beatrice seems
another of the plants that Rappaccini has in his
garden and, like them, she has to be touched with
gloves or approached with a mask.
Giovanni’s curiosity toward the garden and the
plants it nourishes soon leads to observation of the
beautiful Beatrice; little by little, he feels deeply
attracted toward her. His interest in the scientist’s
daughter impels him to trespass in the garden, and