Love in the Male Dominated Society of the 1800's in Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter
"Rappaccini's Daughter" is a strange tale, kind of an early pseudo-scientific short story, that focuses on the life of Beatrice and her bizarre nature. The result of a twisted experiment, she must find happiness within the walls of a garden her father has created for her. Although her life depends on a fatal poison, she defines her soul as "God's creation, and craves love as its daily food" (2131). This paradox creates a powerful story as the mortal Giovanni falls in love with the deadly Beatrice. Insane love and harsh words end the story with the climactic suicide of a heartbroken girl.
I saw this situation as being analogous to women's rights at the time. "Rappaccini's Daughter" was published in 1844, women couldn't vote in the USA until around 1920. This story was written in a time when women were generally victimized by the society they lived in. Rappaccini purposely introduces his only daughter to a poison filled, solitary life in the name of love. As he "spends his life in achieving a picture" (2131) Rappaccini forgets about the "miserable doom" (2132) he has inflicted upon his beloved daughter. This parallels the inflicted miseries women of the nineteenth century endured such as arranged marriages as well as many other paternalistic conditions placed in the name of love or safety.
"Rappaccini's Daughter" was written two years after Hawthorne's marriage and during the same year of his first daughter's birth. The strange idea's brought forth in "Rappaccini's Daughter" are more easily seen when his position is put into perspective. As a father he knew that his daughter would be subject to the very restrictions he so skillfully illustrates in "Rappaccini's" as well as in "The Scarlet Letter". Could these stories be the imaginative musings of a frustrated father? Perhaps they were due to his own feelings after becoming a new groom. In either case both stories have a dominating theme of the oppression of women's sexuality, Beatrice's poison being that of society. Harsh consequences befall Rappaccini when he tries to control things he truly cannot, such as love and life. Would the same happen to Hawthorne is sought to exert as much control?
The character of Rappaccini exemplifies perfectly the views held towards women in the
Nathaniel Hawthorne the author of The Scarlet Letter uses the literary device of chiaroscuro to effectively develop his characters. Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804 to a prominent family. His father passed away on a voyage when he was four years old. His relatives recognized his talent, and they helped pay his way to Bowdoin College. Hawthorne and his classmates became the most prominent people in America at that time. He had many strong ties with important people from attending Bowdoin, such as: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Franklin Pierce. In 1828, his first novel, Fanshawe was anonymously published at his own expense. In 1842, he befriended Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott, and married Sophia Peabody, an active member of the Transcendentalist movement. In 1846, he was appointed surveyor of the Port of Salem where he worked for the next three years, being unable to earn a living as a writer. He wrote The Scarlet Letter in 1850, showing the Puritans as hypocrites fixated on sin. This romance was an immediate success, even though it received many criticisms for its risqué topic. In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne effectively uses chiaroscuro to develop the personalities of Hester Prynne, Pearl, and Arthur Dimmesdale.
In the penultimate chapter of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, Coverdale offers a “moral” at the end of the narrative that specifically addresses Hollingsworth’s philanthropic and personal failures:
Humanity is defined as the quality of being humane. This is something that people struggle with on a day to day basis. Hawthorne shows these struggles through his characters. Giovanni, the main character in “Rappaccini's Daughter”, shows this through being shallow in his love for Beatrice. Throughout their relationship, Giovanni faces the reality that there is something wrong with Beatrice. He begins to have suspicions that she is poisonous like the flowers in the garden, and this begins to taint the love he has for her: “At such times, he was startled at the horrible suspicions that rose, monster-like, out of the caverns of his heart, and stared him in the face; his love grew thin and faint as the morning-mist; his doubts alone had substance” (1346). Ultimately, Giovanni is left to grieve the death of Beatrice because he did not trust Beatrice, and allows doubt to overcome him. Other literary critics have found this to be truth as well, such as the literary critique on “Rappaccini's Daughter”. Katherine Snipes, the author of Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition, writes, “Giovanni falls from grace not entirely through the machinations of a satanic scientist. ...He falls not because of Beatrice's evil nature, but because of his own shallow capac...
A connection can be drawn among the stories listed above regarding women who live as prisoners. Beatrice, of Rappaccini's Daughter, is confined to a garden because of her father's love of science, and she becomes the pawn to several men's egos. The woman of The Yellow Wallpaper is trapped by her own family's idea of how she should conduct herself, because her mood and habit of writing are not "normal" to them. Sethe, of Beloved, carries the burden of her past and also the past of all slaves. She is unwelcome in her community and a prisoner in her own home, where she is forced to confront these memories of slavery. All three of these women are viewed by society as crazy, evil, or both. The "prisons" in which these women live are constructed by their family, their history, or even themselves.
In four of Hawthorne's stories there is a struggle for power and control as a vehicle to obtain perfection or beauty. In "The Artist of the Beautiful", "Rappaccini's Daughter", "The Birthmark" and "The Prophetic Pictures" the characters are controlled by their desire for perfection in their creations, but they do not achieve their goals without sacrifice.
The three male characters of the story are all sinful and corrupt in some way. Giovanni likes to meddle with things and his curiosity leads him to be involved in things he shouldn’t be. Baglioni is very egocentric and critical as he belittles Rappaccini. Rappaccini is a detached and secretive man who is hungry for knowledge and obsessed with science. These qualities contrast to the female character, Beatrice, who is just a result of her father’s overpowering fixation of science.The men are also all sinful for being selfish. This male flaw reflects onto Beatrice and it ultimately causes her death. Beatrice is considered evil in nature, but she is not actually evil herself. She was created to be evil, but is really an innocent, delicate, and naive girl. None of her evilness is her fault but is directly the fault of the male characters. She is only guilty of the sins that the men gave her. This reveals how it is easy for innocence to be taken over and turned corrupt, especially by a man. Hawthorne does this to characterize the female and male roles of the time.
Rappaccini's Daughter was first published in December 1844 in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review under Hawthorne's own name. Before the story was even published Julian Hawthorne read the unfinished manuscript to his wife and she asked how it was going to end. Hawthorne was not quite sure how he was going to let the story end. It has been said that Beatrice's dilemma may have been a reflection of Sophia's (Hawthorne's wife) sheltered years when she was younger at home with her mother. While Giovanni's failure to save Beatrice or himself is a tragic reversal of Nathaniel's and Sophia's happiness together (Newman 258).
III. Comparable aspects of Hawthorne's characterization in The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables
...atrice is passion. In brief, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” includes a minimal amount of Gothic traits, but it is actually Romantic.
Various studies evaluate, for both managerial and educational motives, the effectiveness of nudity advertising in attracting audience’s attention. Particularly because lots of advertisers resort to this medium in order to overcome the tough competition and pierce the buyer’s perception. The advertisers’ practices have evolved in all the fields and the exposure to ads comprising sexual appeals increased due to the amplified number of adverts bombarding the audience every day. At first, an attractive woman was associated with a product targeting men only to attract their attention. The impact of these ads on attention getting and brand awareness was measured through male resp...
attempting to make Giovanni immune to the poison of the plant, so they could be
In the Nathaniel Hawthorne tale, “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” we see and feel the solitude/isolation of the scientific-minded surgeon, Dr. Rappaccini, likewise that of his daughter, Beatrice, and finally that of the main character, Giovanni. Is this solitude not a reflection of the very life of the author?
Dr. Rappaccini is obsessed with science and what the manipulation of nature can do for people. He is overprotective of Beatrice and thinks that he can provide the solution to all of her problems. Knowing the evils of the world as a young man, Rappaccini decides to take control over Beatrice's life and make sure no one can ever hurt his beloved daughter. By filling Beatrice up with poison, Rappaccini succeeds in keeping Beatrice from any evil; but at what price? Beatrice is free from any evil touching her, but she is also isolated from any good that may come to her.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia, n.d. Web. 8 Nov. 2011.
The Scarlet Letter is a fictional novel that begins with an introductory passage titled ‘The Custom-House’. This passage gives a historical background of the novel and conveys the narrator’s purpose for writing about the legend of Hester Prynne even though the narrator envisions his ancestors criticizing him and calling him a “degenerate” because his career was not “glorifying God”, which is very typical of the strict, moralistic Puritans. Also, although Hawthorne is a Romantic writer, he incorporates properties of Realism into his novel by not idealizing the characters and by representing them in a more authentic manner. He does this by using very formal dialogue common to the harsh Puritan society of the seventeenth century and reflecting their ideals through this dialogue. The Puritans held somewhat similar views as the Transcendentalists in that they believed in the unity of God and the world and saw signs and symbols in human events, such as when the citizens related the meteo...