Rappaccini's Daughter

Gardens and enclosed spaces are highly significant for Western culture, beginning with the Garden of Eden. Hawthorne directly references the biblical garden, alluding simultaneously to the story of Adam and Eve. According to the most widely accepted version, Eve is tempted by Satan to eat an apple, acquiring as a result the knowledge of good and evil. She, in turn, convinces Adam to also try the fruit. As a result, the two are banished from Eden into the mortal realm of suffering.

Symbolically, gardens can be interpreted as human domination over nature. In the Enlightenment period, nature was perceived as fundamentally good, albeit irrational. Elaborate garden designs were a symbolic act, forcing primeval forces into a rational and scientific pattern for the benefit of human life.

As suggested by Hawthorne’s preface, the author did not support the Enlightenment and Transcendentalist views of nature as innately good. Rappaccini’s garden is presented, at first, as a mirror or a parallel to Eden. The doctor desires to play God. Unlike the biblical garden, however, it is described as an unnatural one in the sense that the plants are cross-pollinated by humans rather than produced by nature (Paragraph 63). In this sense, Rappaccini’s creation can be seen as a perversion of Eden, offering poison rather than sustenance. The doctor’s attempts to play God result in tragic failure. Like the plants, Beatrice is the unwitting and innocent victim of her father’s experiments. While he is unable to corrupt her morally, his tinkering with nature results in her isolation and inability to live life fully.

On such a biblical reading, Giovanni, despite seemingly fitting Adam’s role as Beatrice’s lover, turns out to be Satan. On his urging, the young woman drinks the “antidote,” which leads to her death.