Hello all! This is just an extra blog post that I promised Julie I'd write long ago, because I was (and still am) extremely embarrassed that I wasn't able to discuss Rappaccini's Daughter back in week 7 due to the fact that I hadn't read it. Well, now I have read it! After choosing another Hawthorne piece for essay 3 of the midterm, I have decided to compare the two texts in order to highlight key themes in Hawthorne's work. There are definite similarities found in Hawthorne's texts"The Birthmark" and "Rappaccini's Daughter," and both stories include strong arguments that man does not have the right or the power to mess with Nature.
In "Rappaccini's Daughter," There is an act of worship regarding Nature that cannot be overlooked. Within the opening of the story, the author establishes that Giovanni "found no better occupation than to look down into the garden beneath his window," and upon his gift of the plant to Beatrice, she promises "Yes, my sister, my splendor; it shall be Beatrice's task to nurse and serve thee; and thou shalt reward her with thy kisses and perfume breath, which to her is as the breath of life!" Sure, she is intimate with the plants because she has been severly effected by them physically, but both of these characters posses great respect for these plants, and it is shocking how this respect later evolves into a blatant abuse of the plants when this very science was meant only to develop medicines for the good of mankind, which should Nature in it's position of power. Later, readers discover that Beatrice has indeed fallen victim to her father's experiments, "the effect of my father's fatal love of science-- which estranged me from all society of my kind." She is poisonous, and Giovanni discovers that his exposure to the strange plants has made him poisonous as well. I think the death of Beatrice indeed teaches Rappaccini a lesson in leaving Nature alone.
A similar tale is told in Hawthorne's "The Birthmark," in which the main character Aylmer is a scientist who's sole desire has become the removal of his wife Georgianna's unsightly birthmark:
“What will be my triumph when I shall have corrected what Nature left imperfect in her fairest work!” Aylmer is extremely confident in his abilities to undue such a permanent blemish, and breaks down Georgianna's spirit to the point where she gives in to his wishes to remove it. It is as if she is teetering on the final thread of life when she exclaims, “Danger is nothing to me; for life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and disgust, -- life is a burden which I would fling down with joy. Either remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life!” He finally manipulated her to the point of no return- she doesn't care what the cost is, she just wants the dreadful mark gone. The whole point of the story, however, is how defiant acts against Nature never end well, and she of course dies on the operating table.
Hawthorne's theme of science's fatal quest to defy Nature is evident in both of these stories, each ending tragically. It seems that Hawthorne chooses the most innocent to die in order to teach lessons to those who abandoned the worship of Nature in the first place, which is an important element to note. So basically, think twice before the next time you litter.
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