Mosses From an Old Manse and Other Stories- Nathaniel Hawthorne
Rappacini's Daughter starts of with a subtle joke when Hawthorne introduces the story as a translation from a story by a French Author, who he fails to mention is fictional. Hawthorne manages to anchor the readers mind to the idea that they are about to read something that not many have read, and hence gripping their interest deeply even before they start.
The morality of Giovanni, Rappaccini, Beatrice, Baglioni and even Lisabetta are dubious; they are all neither right nor wrong, not black nor white. Giovanni is the traveller, the student, posessing "...not a deep heart, but a quick fancy..." which is inadmirable but not unexpected. He denies his own senses and sensibilities when he takes Lisabetta's help to enter the garden. Rappaccini, the scientist whose love for his science renders him inhuman in the eyes of his peers, but in the end we see that it was his love for his daughter that caused him to make her the specimen of his experiment: to shield her from the cruel outside world. Beatrice, who aware of her poisonous nature still encourages this stranger to come down to her garden, knowing that being with her could be fatal to him. Baglioni, whose envy and hatred- in contrast to his colleague- makes him more human, but still in a way the most inhumane of all as he cries out at Rappaccini from Giovanni's window at the end.
The reference to the Garden of Eden makes me think of the dual consequences of being with Beatrice for Giovanni; ultimate happiness or absolute tragedy. Like Adam, his desire for Beatrice makes him make an irrational choice.
A theme recurring in many of Hawthorne's tales is the duality of morality. There is, in every epoch, an agreement on a set of morals, and a group of people who choose to defy them and hence restructure these prior agreements.
Rappacini's Daughter starts of with a subtle joke when Hawthorne introduces the story as a translation from a story by a French Author, who he fails to mention is fictional. Hawthorne manages to anchor the readers mind to the idea that they are about to read something that not many have read, and hence gripping their interest deeply even before they start.
The morality of Giovanni, Rappaccini, Beatrice, Baglioni and even Lisabetta are dubious; they are all neither right nor wrong, not black nor white. Giovanni is the traveller, the student, posessing "...not a deep heart, but a quick fancy..." which is inadmirable but not unexpected. He denies his own senses and sensibilities when he takes Lisabetta's help to enter the garden. Rappaccini, the scientist whose love for his science renders him inhuman in the eyes of his peers, but in the end we see that it was his love for his daughter that caused him to make her the specimen of his experiment: to shield her from the cruel outside world. Beatrice, who aware of her poisonous nature still encourages this stranger to come down to her garden, knowing that being with her could be fatal to him. Baglioni, whose envy and hatred- in contrast to his colleague- makes him more human, but still in a way the most inhumane of all as he cries out at Rappaccini from Giovanni's window at the end.
The reference to the Garden of Eden makes me think of the dual consequences of being with Beatrice for Giovanni; ultimate happiness or absolute tragedy. Like Adam, his desire for Beatrice makes him make an irrational choice.
A theme recurring in many of Hawthorne's tales is the duality of morality. There is, in every epoch, an agreement on a set of morals, and a group of people who choose to defy them and hence restructure these prior agreements.
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