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Book beginning: page 7

The Garden

• The garden was quite like a battlefield of death: Rappaccini was said to wear “armor” when handling the plants (p10); the insects that came perished; and it is even where Beatrice died. It was very well defended, anyone that came too near never left the same, if they left at all.

Beauty

• You would think that to be as beautiful as Beatrice would be a blessing, but Giovanni found out the hard way that it was a curse (p38).
• Beauty attracts humans so instantly and powerfully, that not only can it indirectly lead to danger by diversion, but it can as in this case, be the direct weapon itself, by both touch and breath.

The science

• Was there progress in Rappaccini’s madness for mankind, could he have helped evolve the race?
• In the story, nature was being modified for evil but to strengthen the weak. Excluding the evil reasons, this reminisces Darwin’s “power of selection”, whereby humans collect and mix breeds according to their needs.

The Rappaccini family dynamic

• Did Rappaccini love his daughter more as she was a successful scientific experiment, is that why she was his pride (p40)?

Rappaccini and Baglioni

• Both Rappaccini and Baglioni presented questionable ideals about the value of life, and affected other people’s lives without much regard for their suffering. Rappaccini did so by making his daughter poisonous, causing her to live a life of seclusion, and then inflicted the same circumstance on Giovanni; and Baglioni did so by not only making Giovanni take a human life, but the life of the woman he supposedly loved.

Love story

• Although Giovanni waited with anticipation for the appointed hour to see Beatrice each day, she literally had to wait for him to come to her; he was always the one in control. However, further down the page we see how every day he is heroically going into danger just to be with her, “down he hastened into that Eden of poisonous flowers” (p29).

The aftermath: Part 1: Giovanni’s poisonous change

• When Giovanni confronts Beatrice about poisoning him intentionally, he calls her “the pure daughter of Rappaccini” (p38) instead of using her name as he usually does. She suddenly became the daughter of a scientist in place of Beatrice, the woman he loved.
• Once wrong is done, it cannot be undone, it is always there, as seen in the lines “there could be no such hope. [Beatrice] must pass heavily, with that broken heart, across the borders of Time – she must bathe her hurts in some fount of paradise, and forget her grief in the light of immortality” (p39). Also  pointing out that only death could set her free.
• Beatrice always shrank away from Giovanni’s approach in order to protect him, however, near the end “she shrank away […] but now with a different impulse” (p39). This is the result of anger in life, where by the time Giovanni had calmed down, all was already lost.

The aftermath: Part 2: Beatrice’s death

• Rappaccini’s intent was to protect his daughter from those stronger than her, however, from Baglioni’s triumphant cry “and is THIS the upshot of your experiment!” (p41), the conclusion can be drawn that no matter how extreme the measures taken, no plan can be all-encompassing against faults. In the end, the deadly poison reached Beatrice through means of love although it originated in an almost certain case of jealousy (p14).

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Rappaccini’s Daughter. Great Britain: Createspace Independent Pub, 2012.