Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter"

In the short story "Rappaccini's Daughter," Nathaniel Hawthorne explores different types of love and describes these types of love through the relationships among his characters. The love of a man for a woman seems to be the centerpiece of the story, but in truth it is the unhealthy love of a man for science that becomes the centerpiece, negating the love of a man for a woman as well as the love of a father for a daughter. The garden and garden imagery in the story recalls the story of the Garden of Eden and makes use of that story by inverting it so that the individual who most corresponds to God in the original also fulfills the role of the serpent.

The natural love of man and woman develops in a mysterious fashion in the course of the story. The way the story is structured, Hawthorne seems to be developing a variation on the more common story in which the love of a father for a daughter challenges the love of a young man for the daughter, with the father being jealous of the affections of his daughter and seeking to end the young man's attentions. It becomes apparent in the course of the story, however, that the truth is more complex and that there are other dynamics at work. For one thing, the father seems to be encouraging rather than discouraging the attentions of the young man, though in an unhealthy way. The garden becomes a metaphor for the situation, and the unhealthy nature of this garden mirrors the sickness at the heart of the obsessions of Rappaccini and

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s to be the normal love between a father and a daughter, but as we learn, that sort of love has been perverted by the scientific love of the father. He has changed his daughter to protect her, in his view, from the harms of this world. He sees women as weak and in need of special protection, and he has taken this terrible step to protect the young woman by giving her power that no other woman (or man, for that matter) possesses. Yet, while the father states that he has done this for the protection of his daughter, it seems more that he has used his daughter because of his love of science and experimentation. Professor Baglioni believes this--even when he did not know of this experiment, he made references to the unhealthy experiments of Rappaccini. He is not surprised by the horror that is revealed as Beatrice dies, and he cries out: "Rappaccini! Rappaccini! and is this the upshot of your experiment!" (Hawthorne 1248). Baglioni sees Rappaccini as a kind of scientist who loves knowledge more than humanity, and this is not the role that the scientist should play. It is also not the role that a father should play, and Rappaccini ha allowed his love of knowledge to warp his love for his daughter, as Baglioni correctly points o

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