Nathanial Hawthorne's Rappaccinis Daughter

Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the greatest American authors of the nineteenth century. He published his first novel Fanshawe, in 1828. However, he is widely known for his novels The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables. His novel, The Scarlet Letter, can be analyzed from historical, psychological and feminist critical perspectives by examining his life from the past, as well as his reflections while writing The Scarlet Letter. In order to understand the book properly, it’s necessary to use these three perspectives.

The narrator shares this story from his youth in the words of an educated man. His actions as a teen are in stark contrast to his phraseology as an adult. Early in the story, he viewed “nature” as sex, drugs and rock and roll (Boyle 112-113). However, as the story ends and the turmoil subsides, the narrator sees nature for the first time, through the eyes of a person matured by this traumatic experience. The “sun firing buds and opening blossoms” replaced the once revered beer and

Hawthorne is known for being a Romantic writer with a Romantic subject: a rebel who refuses to conform to society's code. Most

Hawthorne did not view women as unimportant or threatening to his works, but as men’s vital, emotional, intellectual, and sacred partners. As many famous biographers have established, women have often played crucial roles in Hawthorne’s novels and short stories. For example, female roles in his fiction were based on relationships who affected his professional life, including Elizabeth Peabody and Margaret Fuller. Throughout his short stories and romances, Hawthorne describes myriad characteristics of female roles. His impeccable design of having women depicted as principle roles instead of supporting or victim characters contributes to

Writing an excellent book, short story,or poem is an ability very few people posses : Nathaniel Hawthorne is someone who had this talent. Hawthorne's writing is mostly centered around romantic fiction, he has written a plethora of things but he is mostly remembered for his short stories and novels. Before divulging into his work, a reader should know where his writing comes from, his inspirations, originality and what some would call pure genius. The author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, is an individual whose work has been and should continue to be analyzed for years to come due to his unique twist on romantic fiction. Many of his works have casted a silhouette over America through his intricate stories and writing style that revealed the themes of psychology and human nature during the 19th century. Hawthorne’s ominous style makes his works into oddities compared to the other romantic fiction novels in his time. Many of his works, such as The Scarlet Letter, exemplifies the epitome of Hawthorne’s distinct outlook on the moralistic attitudes of

In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne often demonstrates the frailty of humans. Nature is often described as beautiful, while the Puritan society and human nature are viewed in a harsh light. Hawthorne illustrates that human nature is flawed and judgmental through use of figurative language, critical diction, and symbolism.

Some of Hawthorne’s works are parallel in many aspects as in “The Birthmark” and “Rappaccinis Daughter” with a common obsession of scientific beauty and manipulation, the death. Both men have the obsession of science where Aylmer wants to help mankind unlike Rappacini’s work to destroys mankind “Rappaccini “cares infinitely more for science than for mankind”” (Roy R. Male, 1954). Georgiana’s is manipulated with her self-esteem easily convince her of the birthmark’s discouragement to her beauty “Life is but a sad possession to those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advancement at which I stand. Were I weaker and blinder, it might be happiness” (Bunge, 1993 ) Rappacini merely manipulates Beatrice with lies. Georgiana is clear to see that for Aylmer to achieve perfection, it will cost her life “She attributes this self-destructive attitude to the inspiring influence of Aylmer’s high standards and urges him to continue his noble work, at any cost” (Bunge, 1993 ) Rappaccini’s payment was the loss of a child when Beatrice took her life; diminishing the

The speaker then introduces nature as a female entity, which coincides with the perception of “Mother Nature.” as a female entity. “And from the fields the flowers and plants allure, / Where nature was most plain and pure” (3-4). The words “plain and pure” imply that nature, in its original, untouched state, has a sort of purity associated with a virgin maiden. Before coming into contact with “man,” nature has a pristine and naïve characteristic. However, that will change as soon after “man” establishes a position of power over nature. Mankind traps nature within “the gardens square” (5), and he begins to change the plants, presumably by grafting them together or selectively breeding them to produce more desirable and colorful traits. This “Garden square,” with its “dead and standing pool of air” (6). could be interpreted as the cramped interior of the brothel where the women are forced to work, with four walls trapping them on every side. Later in the poem, too, the garden is referred to as a “green seraglio” (27). A seraglio is the women’s apartment area of an Ottoman palace. This was an

In his short stories, "Young Goodman Brown," "The Birthmark," and "Rappacciniâs Daughter," Nathaniel Hawthorne uses his female characters to illustrate the folly of demanding perfection in the flawed world of humanity. Although Hawthorneâs women appear to have dangerous aspects, they are true of heart, and thus, they cannot be fully possessed by the corrupt men who seek to control them.

Writing about the beauty of nature and the simple life was how romantic artists rebelled against the industrial

Women in today’s world use many scientific measures to look young, beautiful, and perfect. Some women even undergo surgeries to perfect their bodies. True natural beauty comes from within one’s self and not what is on the outside. While critics argue that Hawthorne’s “The Birth Mark,” “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” and “Rappaccinni’s Daughter” stand as an overt commentary on nature vs. science, Hawthorne actually uses these works to explore personal familial connections.

     In Hawthorne's revered novel The Scarlet Letter, the use of Romanticism plays an important role in the development of his characters. He effectively demonstrates individualism in Hester to further our understanding of the difficulties of living in the stern, joyless world of Puritan New England.  It is all gloom and doom.  If the sun ever shines, one could hardly notice.  The entire place seems to be shrouded in black.  The people of this society were stern, and repressed natural human impulses and emotions than any society before or since.  But for this reason specifically, emotions began bubbling and eventually boiled over, passions a novelist

Towards the end of the story Beatrice says ““It is my father's fatal science?”(Hawthorne 19)”. The name of this short story is called “Rappacinni's Daughter” By Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is Rappaccini's harsh experiments that made Beatrice the way she is. Even though Beatrice is Rappacinni's daughter, he treated her as a specimen for his experiments. But to both Beatrice, and Giovanni this was unfair treatment.

people through the relationships of the story's main characters. The lovely and yet poisonous Beatrice, the

Nathaniel Hawthorne, an American novelist, whose works show a deep consciousness of the ethical problems of sin and punishment. In “Rappaccini’s Daughter," Hawthorne uses science and symbols to narrate the story of a student called Giovanni Guasconti, who falls in love with Beatrice. Beatrice is a beautiful and mysterious young woman whose touch and breath becomes poisonous by the experiments of her father, the scientist Giacomo Rappaccini, and is unable to be a normal young woman. Through a series of experiments, Hawthorne uses science to drive the entire story and show the boundaries of ethics and morals in science by the use of literary devices of mood and symbolism to create an association with the tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of