Rappaccini's Daughter
"If eyes were made for seeing,/ Then Beauty is its own excuse for being" (Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Rhodora).The eyes are not to be trusted. Human beings perceive the world mainly by sight; it is our most trusted sense. In fact, if you try to convince someone (especially an older person) of something spectacular, you will often hear him say, "I'll believe it when I see it". Does sight deserve this kind of faith? Human beings can only see what we call "visible light" and yet, our eyes perceive less than one millionth of the electro-magnetic spectrum, and even then, our brain fills in parts we miss and interprets things that are fuzzy or hard to see.Few have had to learn this lesson in a manner that exceeds, in hardship, that of Giovanni Guasconti. His affair with Beatrice began, not with his eyes absorbing her beauty, but with his ears, listening to her "rich and yout
This fountain, a symbol of purity in this Garden of Eden, was spared visual description so as to set it apart from the rest of the images. But upon closer inspection, these plants seem too beautiful to be natural (pg 11). Beatrice, too, though poisoned in flesh, manages to be kind and nurturing to her father and his plants, and forms an innocent friendship with a young man her age, while staying separate from the malicious rivalry between the two scientists. No pivotal scene was set without, first, a visual description of the surroundings, with the exception of one central item, the fountain. The fountain marks the spot where Giovanni and Beatrice came to rest in that first fateful meeting. Rappaccini himself appears to be feeble old man, spending his final days tending to his garden, caring only for the happiness of his daughter. Perhaps Giovanni should have trusted his instincts when he laid eyes on Rappaccini as the scientist tended to his perverse garden. The biggest masquerade of all being Baglioni's, posing as a guide for Giovanni, who destroys two young people in his plot to get back at his archrival, Rappaccini. He too, though, is still a scientist caught up in a bitter rivalry. But, in the true form of a human in denial, and a young man in love, he dismissed these events that he witnessed with his own eyes. A great amount of this story was described with vivid imagery, not unlike many literary works of the seventeenth century. (pg 12) The fountain could even be an extension of Beatrice's character, being that it once was a beautiful, marble fountain with an artistic sculpture, but has since been destroyed, and yet, while nurturing the deadly plants around it, still manages to maintain a pure and innocent separation from the garden. The remaining images in the story have a complete resounding correspondence; all of the characters and images in "Rappaccini's Daughter" are not what they appear to be.
Common topics in this essay:
Giovanni Guasconti,
Rappaccini's Daughter,
Giovanni Beatrice,
Emerson Rhodora,
Garden Eden,
,
visual description,
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