“Rappaccini’s
Daughter”
by Nathaniel
Hawthorne
***
Once upon a time in Salem, Massachusetts, there lived a
young man named Nathaniel. His Puritan ancestors included a judge from the
town’s infamous witch trials, so it’s probably not surprising that when
Nathaniel grew up he wrote some famous stories about dangerous women, stories
such as today’s post about his 1844 story, “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” and
the terrible things another man did because of her.
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| Nathaniel Hawthorne |
The old Puritan judge was John Hathorne. In an attempt to
distance himself from this terrifying heritage, young Nathaniel added a “w” to
the family name, becoming Nathaniel Hawthorne. But his cultural heritage
wasn’t so easily overcome. Moral themes of sin, evil, deception and sexuality –
especially the sexuality of women – would haunt his works, including his most
famous, The Scarlet Letter.
But years before the Big Red Letter, Hawthorne had become
working through his worries in the story about a beautiful young woman in an
Italian city and the young man who loved her – or told himself he did. And the
destruction that followed that supposed love.
“A young man, named Giovanni Guasconti, came, very long ago,
from the more southern region of Italy. . . (and having) but a scanty supply of
gold ducats in his pocket, took lodgings in a high and gloomy chamber of an old
edifice. . . ”
Giovanni is already homesick, and nothing about his student
housing (except possibly its cheapness) appeals to him until he looks down from
the window onto a beautiful garden. His landlady informs him that the garden is
the property of a famous doctor Rappaccini and his only daughter, Beatrice. As
nosy as he is handsome, Giovanni spies shamelessly on the doctor, noticing that
he avoids the touch and even the scent of many of the most beautiful garden
flowers.
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| artist: Dante Rossetti |
But the interest Giovanni feels in the old man is nothing to
his interest in Rappaccini’s lovely daughter. And beautiful as she is, “more
beautiful than the richest of (the flowers)” he can’t help noticing that she
handles and inhales the fragrance of several of the plants her father most
carefully avoids.
Giovanni attempts to inquire discreetly about Beatrice from
one of his professors, only to be dismayed when the professor tells him
Rappaccini is more zealous for science than for humanity, and has become notorious
for dabbling in poisons, and that his daughter is his star pupil in the art of
poisoning. Horrified, Giovanni notices that when Beatrice is in the garden, any
bee or butterfly that alights on her or the flowers she gathers, is instantly
struck dead. In fact, Beatrice has been so saturated in poisons from her
childhood that she is now immune to their effects, but liable to innocently
infect others, even those she loves.
When the great Italian poet Dante first saw his Beatrice, the single glimpse was
enough to inspire him for life. Giovanni’s glimpses of his latter-day Beatrice
are less spiritual. He is soon infatuated with her. And when he visits her
through a secret entrance in the garden, she, isolated from society by her
father’s evil instructions, soon falls in love with Giovanni.
Still, no kiss or touch can pass between the lovers without
endangering Giovanni. Or so they think, until he realizes he has become so
imbued with her essence that he also is toxic to fellow mortals. Is there any
hope for them? Or will a supposed antidote against poison Giovanni secures
prove more deadly than a garden full of nightshade?
(Next Friday, Adventure classics continues an October of
Halloween horror with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter.”)
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