Parallel Lives: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Rappaccinis Daughter - Essay Example

Parallel Lives: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Rappaccini’s Daughter Nathaniel Hawthorne was an early nineteenth century writer born in Salem to an ancestral family of John Hathorne who was a judge during the Salem Witch Trial. It is narrated that Nathaniel added a “w” in his surname after learning about this. Much of his work revolved around New England and he personally showed indifference to the Puritans and Transcendentalists ever since moving there. Reclusive in nature, Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody, a great source of admiration to his later works, in 1842. He moved to the Old Manse in Concord where he wrote many tales that are collected under Mosses from an Old Manse. Rappaccini’s Daughter is a tale from this selection which was later collected under Selected Tales and Sketches, written in medieval Padua, Italy, in 1894. It is one of his best tales about which he himself claims that he always wanted to “achieve a novel” that “should evolve some deep lesson and should possess physical substance enough to stand alone” (Turner 1980). One tends to see similarities in his short story and his own life, which reflect his desire to break away from the norms. Rappaccini’s Daughter is about a scientist who goes against the societal current and experiments with his plants, his daughter Rappaccini who helps her father to tend the flowers, as well as her lover Giovanni. The story centers on themes of romance, tragedy and danger. The flower plays a very significant role as it seems to be the personified third party between the two lovers. Beatrice Rappaccini is an irresistibly beautiful and obedient daughter of a notorious scientist Signor Giacomo. Segregated from the rest of the world for selfish purpose of research and internal understanding of botanical poisons, she is innocent about the culture and developments that are happening in those times. A young science student, Giovanni Guasconti, who rents above their garden, falls deeply in love with Rappaccini about whom he knows that her touch can kill both lizards and insects. Love is, after all, unavoidable and they both deeply get involved despite the warning: “By all appreciable signs, they loved; they had looked love with eyes that conveyed the holy secret from the depths of one soul into the depths of the other, as if it were too sacred to be whispered by the way; they had even spoken love in those gushes of passion when their spirits darted forth in articulated breath like tongues of long-hidden flame; and yet there had been no seal of lips, no clasp of hands, nor any slightest caress such as love claims and hallows.” (Hawthorne 2007) The theme of sacred love and passion emerge in the forefront, and the reader eventually learns that this relationship would not last any longer because the infatuation cannot be controlled and Giovanni will soon be poisoned by her touch. Hawthorne has kept the story a fantasy, unlike any other. His other female protagonists are a victim of their own believes, like Hester in Scarlet Letter. This one is too innocent to have a thought run through her mind because she is a “passive victim of her father”. Hawthorne made her both “beautiful and terrible” (Turner 1980). One can see a parallel in these themes and Hawthorne’s personal life that was “negative, elusive character”, according to Henry James (Allen 2003). Through his colleagues’ remarks about him, one learns that he had a mysteriously secretive imagination into which he rarely allowed anyone to enter. He was shy in nature and refused to be around the overenthusiastic people of his time, including “Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller and Bronson Alcott” (Allen 2003). Although his life did not collide with his work, the incidents that occurred in it allow the reader to find some similarities if not a whole bunch of references to the short story under discussion. His marriage to Sophia may be considered a connection to the story whereby Giovanni is afflicted by Rappiccini’s love and seems to be strangled in the beauty of the garden which might stand parallel to the Old Manson where Hawthorne resides. The details which add danger to the story, such as the invisible poison in Rappiccini’s touch, may be just a figment of his imagination but the disease, presumably cancer, that killed Hawthorne may be referred to in this form because Hawthorne was not familiar with the cause of pain that he suffered in his stomach, until later in his life (Turner 1980). Hawthorne was unhappy with practically anything in his life. Herman Melville speaks of him: “There is a grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes”. One can find Giovanni’s stubbornness in the writer who is adamant to get hold on the object that is not right for him and has been warned several times to stay away from it. But his curiosity is unstoppable. He persists on meeting Rappaccini and dooms his own fate which was in his hand until then. Hawthorne and Sophia were a very happy couple till the end of their lives. Biographers, however, point to the narcissistic nature of Sophia which was very disturbing to the people around her but she recovered from it after her marriage (Allen 2003). Hawthorne’s life was very unsatisfactory, and he withdrew from his family and friends. The tragic consequences that one follows in the Rappaccini’s Daughter are, probably, Hawthorne’s sealed thoughts which biographers have been so desperately looking for. His had created a wall around himself out of which he did not want to escape. Malcom Cowley points out that some of his projects were near perfection “at a time when circumstances were hostile to Hawthornes type of richly meditated fiction. His talent had to be robust in order to survive and had to be exceptionally fertile in order to produce, against obstacles, the few books he succeeded in writing.” (Allen 2003). The scientist in the story, Signor Giacomo, seems to have stolen this trail from Hawthorne. But there is a limit to self-degradation which Hawthorne refused to recognize. He always underestimated his work and never compromised on it. Works Cited Allen, Brooke. The Surveyor of Customs. Book Review “Hawthorne: A Life by Brenda Wineapple”. The New York Times, 2003. Web. 15 Feb 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/05/books/the-surveyor-of-customs.html Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Selected Tales and Sketches: (the Best Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne). Stilwell, KS: Digireads.com Pub, 2007. Print. Turner, Arlin. Nathaniel Hawthorne, a Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Print. Read More