For those of you out there in cyber world wondering if I fell off the earth or fled to Mt. Athos, well I;m still here, but am about to become a newly married woman very shortly and hence my time has been consumed preparing for this new wondeful change of vocations. I ask you all to please keep me and my beloved in your prayers. Hence, until my life settles down a bit, I thought to post an essay I wrote on the position of Nathaniel Hawthorne towards feminism and the scientific age as seen in his short story "Rappaccini's Daughter"( a veritable masterpiece). Although the topic discussed is not of particular interest to me, I thought I did a descent job presenting my arguement. I leave it now for you to decide....Ciao.
When reading a story, the personal opinions or biases of an author can often be assumed through the ways in which a text is written. By looking at a story’s characters, conflicts, climax and conclusion, the reader can usually distill basic ideas regarding the attitudes of the writer and their positions on topics surrounding the text. However, while this notion is true in some instances, it is not true in all. There are those occasions when a text can mislead a reader by giving them a false impression about the author, thus encouraging them to presume things that are not true. Such is the case with Nathaniel Hawthorne and his famous 19th century short story, “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” In this narrative, it can be argued that Nathaniel Hawthorne is both feminist and anti-scientific, due to the way he constructs his characters and the conflicts that arise between them. The way Hawthorne represents science, men and the victimized woman in this tale, one cannot help but believe that he held such positions. However, when looking at the personal life and letters of Hawthorne, these impressions must be disregarded; for indeed, Hawthorne does not possess the attitudes towards women and science which might be supposed. After researching this subject, it can be concluded that although there is objective justification to support the idea that Hawthorne was feminist and anti-science, such was not the case. Hawthorne did not in fact support the idea of any kind of feminism nor did he oppose the workings of science and the advancement of technology, demonstrating that his text’s meaning will never be fully known.
The first action to take in trying analyzing this topic is to understand the plot surrounding “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” The story opens introducing Giovanni, a young handsome medical student who comes to Padua, Italy to study. Residing in an apartment beside the garden of the “tall, emaciated, sallow, and sickly-looking man,” Signor Giacomo Rappaccini, Giovanni often looks out into the garden to view the beautiful flowers which he discovers are created by the hands of this “famous doctor” (Hawthorne). Upon seeing the beautiful Beatrice, Rappaccini’s daughter, he falls immediately in love and wants to get to know her. However, because Beatrice is unable to survive outside the garden, being that her father has poisoned her by means of corrupt scientific experimentation, she tries to keep a physical distance from Giovanni while developing a Platonic relationship with him from afar, though within the garden walls. With little hints as to the reality of her poisonous nature, such as when the healthy bouquet of flowers dies by her touch, Giovanni wonders about the nature of this delicate living beauty. A friend of Giovanni’s father, Pietro Baglioni, a “professor of medicine,” knows of Rappaccini and warns Giovanni of his affiliation with his daughter, stating she is instructed “deeply in [Rappaccini’s] science”(Hawthorne). He explains that Rappaccini is a corrupt scientist who uses his daughter in scientific experiments, and that Giovanni himself is the new subject of one of his malicious investigations. Giovanni, however, being enticed by Beatrice’s innocence, beauty and mystery, refuses his counsel and becomes intimately involved with her, visiting the garden regularly, slowly becoming immune to the poison which surrounds him. After some time, Giovanni realizes he himself is poisonous and has been bated by Rappaccini through his daughter. Wanting to kill Beatrice and blaming her for his vile state, he yells:
"Yes, poisonous thing!..Thou hast done it! Thou hast blasted me! Thou hast filled my veins with poison! Thou hast made me as hateful, as ugly, as loathsome and deadly a creature as thyself--a world's wonder of hideous monstrosity!"(Hawthorne)
Yet, Beatrice sincerely loving him, tries to explain the situation and tells him she wanted no harm to come to him:
I dreamed only to love thee and be with thee a little time, and so to let thee pass away, leaving but thine image in mine heart; for, Giovanni, believe it, though my body be nourished with poison, my spirit is God's creature, and craves love as its daily food (Hawthorne).
Ultimately, Giovanni tries to help her but ends in only making her worse. For not only does Beatrice become a victim of her father’s science, so too does she becomes a victim of Giovanni and Baglioni who together, give her an elixir which Giovanni thinks will heal her, yet which Baglioni (though not overtly stated) knows might kill her. Moments after she drinks the fluid, she ends her life, while saying with her last breath “Oh, was there not, from the first, more poison in thy [Giovanni’s] nature than in mine?" (Hawthorne).
From this very basic overview, it is not illogical to perceive Hawthorne as a feminist and anti-science/anti-Industrialist activist. The very premise of the story supports this reasoning as it surrounds itself around a young, innocent girl who dies as a result of two sources: one, selfish men who seek to possess, control, or subvert her, and two, corrupt scientific experimentation. Clearly one would think Hawthorne would subscribe to these aforementioned positions. Yet, before making any judgments, one must first locate texts which treat the potential correlation between the author and these corresponding subjects, and then look at how Hawthorne himself reacted towards these issues within his personal life.
Concerning Hawthorne and feminism, there are many articles which discuss the relationship between him and his “feminist” texts. One work by Richard H. Millington focuses upon how Hawthorne addresses the male-female relationship in his works such as “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and “The Birth-Mark.” He states:
In these encounters, male characters--their underlying anxiousness and aggression disguised as ambition or obsession--refuse the invitation to full, complex, and humane life offered by their female counterparts. These acts of neurotic refusal punish--and even kill off--the women and yield to the male characters the utterly empty lives they seem all along to seek (Millington).
Certainly, looking at Beatrice this statement appears valid. The three men involved with her, whether directly or indirectly, punish her for the purpose of their own selfish ends, only to return to their lives of loneliness and dissatisfaction. Beatrice is the one thing in all three men’s lives that is pure and truly innocent, yet, they do not allow her to remain so. Thus, by wanting to possess or protect Beatrice’s beauty, virtue or knowledge, all three men ultimately destroy her. While Beatrice is truly not who Giovanni or Baglioni want to avenge, they nonetheless use her as the scapegoat for their wrath towards Rappaccini. In truth, Beatrice is the “Pascal flower” sacrificed for the sake of all three men’s pride.
Supporting this supposition is commentator Richard Brenzo, who comments in his article “Beatrice Rappaccini: A Victim of Male Love and Horror,” about the perverted relationships all three men have with Beatrice. The three-fold relationship Beatrice has with these men (her father, lover, and professional rival), shows the ways in which she “becomes a focus for these men’s fantasies, fears, and desires, and is credited with (or at least punished for) various evil intentions which in fact spring from within the minds of the three men” (Brenzo 153). Explaining how the men are the truly poisoned figures, he writes:
Each man represents a typical male role might find a woman threatening, and might therefore try to destroy her. Giovanni, her lover and almost-husband, desires her sexuality, yet fears its power to dominate and destroy him. Baglioni, her professional rival, feeling insecure about his university position, tries to neutralize her by diverting her energies to woman's proper sphere, marriage. Her father wants her beautiful enough to win a husband, dependent enough to remain in his home, obedient enough to do his bidding, and compliant enough to be molded to his standards. None of these men could have been portrayed as feeling these same fears, with the same intensity, about a man. Notice, for example, that Baglioni views his struggle with Rappacini almost as a game, with a rather gentlemanly tone. Only with Beatrice does he play for keeps (Brenzo 151).
Basically, these commentators make readers ask themselves, “Who has the more guilt: the poison or the poisoner?” While Beatrice is poisoned, it is not by her own doing, but by those around her. She is the victim of the poison, though not the poisoner. Additionally, the poison she claims is merely external, whereas the poison the men possessed, though not externally fatale, was nonetheless deadly. Ironically, although Beatrice could have been the perfect femme fatale figure, she respected the power of science and did not use it to kill. She chose rather to love and to seek love, and yet she could not find it except in death.
By reflecting over these interpretations of “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” one could easily perceive, and perhaps even support, the feminist argument that Beatrice is the paradigm of what innocent women suffer a the hands of dominating men, and thus contend that Hawthorne was undeniably an early feminist sympathizer. In the face of such opinions, however, one must ask themselves, “Am I getting the whole picture here? Is there more to this that is not being said? What does Hawthorne himself think and/or say about women outside of his fictional works?” Researching the life of Hawthorne regarding his opinion of women writer’s for example, he does not infer any evidence that he himself is a closet feminist, let alone a feminist activist.
While Hawthorne had a great love for women and respected them as any true gentleman would, he nonetheless proved himself to be a man deeply against having women write for the public, and deeply resented the fact they did at all. At a point in his life when he was struggling to get his writings in print, he wrote a letter addressed to his publisher, William D. Ticknor in 1855 stating:
America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash--and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumberable editions of The Lamplighter [by Maria Susanna Cummins], and other books neither better nor worse? Worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the hundred thousand (Baym).
Clearly there is no implication of feminism in these words. Hawthorne has no desire to provide women the same opportunities he enjoys. Verily, he wishes they did not written at all as they are competing, and succeeding, in gaining the publics attention. Moreover, when writing to his wife about his impressions regarding this escalation of female writers, he comments:
My dearest, I cannot enough thank God, that with a higher and deeper intellect than any other woman, thou hast never—forgive the bare idea!—never prostituted thyself to the public, as that woman [Grace Greenwood] has, and as a thousand others do. It does seem to me to deprive women of all delicacy; it has pretty much an effect on them as it would to walk abroad through the streets, physically stark naked. Women are too good for authorship, and that is the reason it spoils them so (Baym 24).
Hawthorne illustrates that he does not wish women to write since , as he says, they are too good for it. To be sure, this is not a man a feminist would dare tolerate. His way of crafting women as merely delicate creatures unfit for the honest exposure writing has upon their minds and hearts, would most likely not be well received by a feminist of any generation. Therefore, while “Rappaccini’s Daughter” alludes to Hawthorne’s projected state of mind, it must be remembered that such statements boldly refute such assumptions.
Similarly, with regard to the subject of science, the apparent impression that Hawthorne was adamantly distrusting of science and the booming age of Industrialism is not to be held. Not surprisingly, Hawthorne did not dislike science to the extent “Rappaccini’s Daughter” suggests. As Dave Berry retorts in his essay “Hawthorne and the Scientific Mind,” “Hawthorne didn't hate science. He recognized its great power, and the great benefits to be derived from a proper use of it. The problem stems from the fact that science is a human tool and therefore subject to human abuse.” So science, for Hawthorne, was a good which could be used for one’s own selfish desires and therefore needed to be respected with a certain fear. Elsewhere, as Henry G.Fairbanks acknowledges in his work “Hawthorne and the Age of the Machine”
Towards the machine as such, as toward the scientist in se, [Hawthorne] never displayed unenlightened hostility. It was only when the spirit of the savant, or the operation of the machine, effected an unnatural subversion of the human element that Hawthorne spoke with accents that might seem to identify him with the laudatory temporis acti. Hence, science could be used for the advancement of the good of others, so long as man did not use science as a a means to “arrogate to [one]self a totalitarian control of both man and the universe”(Fairbanks 163).
The possibility for corruption within science troubled him more than the mere presence of science in the modern world. Additionally, being a friend of the Transcendentalist movement, Hawthorne wished to evolve with the times and yet still retain the elements of the spiritual and the natural worlds which were elemental aspects of man’s existence. As Fairbanks well asserts:
His strong sense of integration compelled him to regard the whole experience of man steadfastly and to see it according to an ancient hierarchy which placed spiritual values uppermost. It was not, then, that he admired the scientist or his machine less, but that he loved man more.
Science was not to be despised or condemned, rather it needed to be utilized by people to increase the for the good and not towards evil which is what he might have implied in “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” It appears Hawthorne believed man was to be blamed for the corruption of science and not science for the corruption of man, since science was merely the tool of the wrongdoer and not the wrongdoer itself. This would be much like blaming the gun for a murder instead of the murderer himself. This distinction must be noted, for the alleged meaning within the text might lead one to believe Hawthorne completely disregarded the benefits to be found within modern science, which he surely did not do. Science had its place in the world which Hawthorne undoubtedly recognized, yet which he also acknowledged as a potential threat to humanity if put in the hands of crooked men.
Thus after reviewing the story’s plotline, considering its apparent meanings, and then comparing these meanings with essays discussing the actual opinions held by Hawthorne, one can distill how the work does not accurately reflect the mind of its author. This clear contradiction between the text’s seeming objective implications and its author’s personal position on the matters addressed, indicates that a work, though replete with possible personal perspectives of the author, can indeed be a false assumption. Thus, when reading works which appear to argue certain positions, be careful not to claim these ideas the author’s own, for such could very well be one’s false attempt to interpret a writer’s apparent meanings where indeed there is none.
Works Cited
Baym, Nina. “Again and Again, The Scribbling Women.” Hawthorne and Women. Ed. John Idol
Jr. and Melinda Ponder. Amherst: U of Massachusetts Press, 1999. 20-33.
Berry, Dave. “Hawthorne and the Scientific Mind.” Brave New World: The Portrayal of Science in the Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. 20 Oct. 2007. U of British Columbia. 7 Nov. 2007
Brenzo, Richard. "Beatrice Rappaccini: A victim of Male Love and Horror." Nathaniel
Hawthorne. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers. 1986. 151-153.
Fairbanks, Henry G. Hawthorne and the Machine Age. American Literature 28 (1956):155-163. JSTOR. U of Dayton, Roesch Lib. 31 Oct. 2007
< http://www.jstor.org>.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” Classic Reader. 2001. 9 Oct. 2007
< http://www.classicreader.com/read.php/bookid.260/sec.>
Millington, Richard H. “The Meaning of Hawthorne’s Women.” Hawthorne In Salem. North
Shore Community College. 8 Nov. 2007
