"Rappaccini's Daughter"
In "Rappaccini's Daughter", by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a professor obsessed with "a
spiritual love of science" pursues his experiments with his daughter, until he destroys her. In
other words he practices unfettered science. Now substitute the word technology or capitalism
or globalization or progress or sports or entertainment or law for the world of science. Pursuits
not contained by ethics will be destructive.
Giovanni Gusconti, was a handsome student at the University of Padua, he becomes the
student of on of Dr. Rappaccini's experiments when he falls in love with Rappaccini's daughter,
Beatrice, whom he sights in an alluring garden filled with poisonous plants. After a secret visit,
he is aware of an ominous mixture of beauty and poisons so much that "hope and dread kept a
continual warfare in his beast" Hawthorne comments "Blessed are all simple emotions, be they
dark or bright! It is the lurid intermixture of the two that produces the illuminating blaze of the
infernal regions." Giovanni is literally burned when Beatrice touches his arm, leaving "a burning
and tingling agony in his hand and a purple print line that of four small fingers" , but he soon
forgets the pain in a reverie of Beatrice.
Beatrice, Rappiccini's daughter, is the alluring beauty filled with life, health and energy.
Her father looks at her as if she were another flower in the garden, the "human sister of those
vegetable ones still to be touched with a glove" however; Beatrice can touch and smell the plants
Rappaccini avoids. She is a knowledgeable as her father to be a professor herself. Beatrice is
the attractive product, instant first love, innocent of the poison which lies under her beauty. She
never intended to hurt Giovanni. At the same time she is a
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