Rappaccini's Daughter Analysis

The premise of traditional parenting is one of the key ideologies behind Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Rappaccini 's daughter; the passage of multiple generations however, has rendered this notion impractical and irrational due to societal shifts that have changed the mentality of parents throughout history. In effect, I will apply psychological criticism to investigate the effects of the declining traditional parenting.

Protection is the fundamental part of parenting, and as such parents may take extreme precautions to protect their child. Such overprotective parenting emanates from Hawthorne’s story Rappaccini’s daughter, where in Beatrice Rappaccini, the daughter of Dr. Giancomo Rappaccini was meticulously transformed into a lethal poison, which

Rappaccini. The first few words of the question “wouldst thou, then have preferred,” implies a parent’s superiority in mentality. It explains that in a traditional household the parent is far superior to any of the children in the household–likely because of their first-rate experience of the world. The next words “the condition of a weak woman, exposed to all evil” implies that her daughter might have become a frail woman in the society. Here, Hawthorne illustrates a sense of sexism as he blatantly defined women as weak individuals capable only of becoming a victim to the immoral world. In addition, Hawthorne also demonstrates the unfaltering grip of traditional parenting trend of protection from a cruel world. Parents protect their child with foreknowledge that the world is not a child-friendly environment and in doing so they teach them to become self-dependent, so they can defend themselves or elude mischief. This overprotection, although extremely manipulative, displays compassion from a parent to a child and emphasizes the extent that a parent will go through for the sake of their child’s protection. Lastly, as Dr. Rappaccini ends his question as he states, “…exposed to all evil, but capable of none,” indicating that the poison was meant to be her defense if any creature dare to harm her.

Also, since they cannot inflict pain to their kids, often times it results to neglecting the improper actions of children, which compounds the effect of this parental dilemma. It is this predicament that has lead to an exponential growth of undisciplined kids, and to make things even worse, economical changes occurred at the time when the entire ruckus was happening. The weakening of United States economy provided a time span to increase the number of parents neglecting their kids because to sustain a family parents must work harder and longer. This results in further deterioration of many households leading to increased stress levels in many households and thereby causing more havoc that results to broken families. In essence, it is no surprise as to why kids in the present are very unruly because the environment around them are chaotic with an aside of self-discovery of right and wrong because of the absence of