Rappaccinis Daughter Essays - Rappaccinis Daughter,

Interestingly to me, Hawthorne attended college and when he graduated he moved back home with his mother (his father died when he was only four). He had started writing some in college and soon published his first work after graduation. He said this was a lonely and difficult time for him because he earned little money, but did learn a lot. The first thing he published was Fanshawe (1828). Soon after he did, he learned that publication of his work was a mistake and he wanted all copies destroyed. He disposed of all the ones that he could get his hands on and asked his family and friends to do the same. A fire at the local bookstore destroyed all of the rest of the unsold copies. This must have been a sad time for him. To be able to actually write something and publish it and then deliberately trash all of them. On the ninth day of July in 1842, Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody. He wanted to marry her long before this time, but was not making very much money and was afraid he would not be able to support. He did slow down writing for a while and worked at a farm to try to earn some money so he could have the money that he wanted. He learned fast that manual labor left little energy for anything else (DLB 153). Edgar Allan Poe described Hawthorne as a man of "truest genius". Others said he was a "truly American literary voice". Mosses from an Old Manse" was Hawthorne's last collection in writing short stories. He would still work on small works, but this would be his last big one. Many of Hawthorne's books are science fiction fantasies. The conflict in values between the conservative tradition in science that relied on authority is illustrated in "Rappaccini's Daughter" with the conflict between Professor Baglioni and Doctor Rappaccini. Baglioni defines Hawthorne's sense of the Faustian quest when he says of his rival, "he cares infinitely more for science than for mankind...He would sacrifice human life, his own among the rest, or whatever else was dearest to him, for the sake of adding so much as a grain of mustard seed to the great heap of his accumulated knowledge" (DLB 158). Rappaccini's laboratory is the garden and the plants seem to threaten him. When he has to touch a flower he calls for his daughter, Beatrice because she is "better with them". She herself is a poisonous "plant". Anything that she breathes on will die. This is scary that a father would treat his daughter the way he did. His patients were only good for one thing he thought - being a sub ject for an experiment. Some scholars say that "Rappaccini's Daughter" is probably the most complex of all of Hawthorne's short stories. Rappaccini is an evil man that is extremely smart, but he is also a loving and protective father. Beatrice is a person of purity and also a little evil too. Giovanni is a student at the University of Padua and his room overlooks the garden. When he sees Beatrice he immediately falls in love with her. He was so attracted to her that sometimes when he watched from the window he thought he could be dreaming. "He was struck by its expression of simplicity and sweetness; qualities that had not entered into his idea of her character, and which made him ask anew, what manner of mortal she might be" (Lauter 2242). Beatrice was so powerful that she could have anything in her reach to die in a second. For example, when she went to the flower and asked for "thy breath". The stem broke from the flower and a few drops of the moisture fell onto a lizard's head a nd killed him. " Beatrice observed this remarkable phenomenon, and crossed herself, sadly, but without surprise; nor did she therefore hesitate to arrange the fatal flower in her bosom" ( Lauter 2242). I do not think Beatrice enjoyed killing these innocent flowers and animals, but she had to for her father and for her to live. Giovanni witnessed this incident and he couldn't believe what he saw. he really thought