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Rappaccini

 

            "Rappaccini's Daughter" is very much like the book of Genesis in the Bible. Rappaccini's garden is, of course, a representation of the Garden of Eden. There was a tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden that was not to be touched. Hawthorne writes, "There was one shrub in particular that bore a profusion of purple blossoms, each of which had the luster and richness of a gem seemed enough to illuminate the garden, even had there been no sunshine some crept serpent-like along the ground or climbed on high- Serpent-like in the description causes us to think about the serpent in the Garden of Eden. The lizard who is killed by Beatrice's flower also reminds us of the reptile appearance in Eden. Hawthorne himself compares this man-made paradise to Eden when he writes, "Was this garden, then the Eden of the present world?" .
             We have our Adam, Giovanni Guasconti, and our Eve, Beatrice Pappaccini. It is even possible to include Rappaccini himself in playing the part of creator. He has created this garden by his own hands, and has his child care for it. His child is lonely in her own little world, so he provides for Beatrice this young man, Giovanni. In Genesis, God provided Adam with Eve. Also, just as God gave Adam and Eve the gift of everlasting life, Rappaccini thought he had given his child and her partner a wonderful gift.
             In both "Rappaccini's Daughter" and the story of creation, there is a character who plays a part in discrediting the creator by saying the creators only do for their own good. In Hawthorne's short story, when talking to Giovanni about Rappaccini, Baglioni states, "'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.'" Similarly, in the Garden of Eve, the serpent lures Eve by trying to discredit God himself, saying of the fruit, "Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.


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