BSc BA ADP English Notes Short Stories Rappaccini’s Daughter (Nathaniel Hawthorne) Summary and Question Answers

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Question Answers

Q1. What is a fantasy? Discuss the story as a fantasy?

Ans. A fantasy is a story based on imagination… in which the writer presents an unreal event in an imaginary setting with fantastic characters. The writer has some hidden purpose in using such a technique. Generally it is used for the purpose of satire or criticizing something in a veiled manner.

“Rappaccini’s daughter” is a fantasy that presents a lot of unreal elements. A scientist has been presented in the story who is crazy about scientific research to the extent of disbelief. His indifference towards the value of his own daughter’s life is unusual and one doubts such a thing. The upbringing of a child with a plant and entering of the characteristics of the plant into the child’s body also are not credible. Then the poison of the girl transfers to the boy that too seems a far-fetched idea. The whole atmosphere of the story is filled with a mysterious feeling full of distrust and insecurity. The most naïve looking girl turns out to be poisonous at the end. The love destroys the life of the hero and anti poison kills the poisonous maiden. All these things embody a deep irony… in the story everything looks opposite to what it really is. The element of fantasy are dominant but are well placed thus making the story a legendry tale of inordinate human ambitions. The story deems a bit like “Dr Faustus” by Christopher Marlowe, in which the main character aspires for all the knowledge of the world but finally ends up with necromancy and sells his soul to Devil. Satan of “Paradise Lost” too went to the extreme of his ambition for supremacy and achieved the eternal damnation. Dr Rappaccini too laid the foundation of his ruin by going much farther in his ambition to become as powerful as to hold somebody’s life in his own hands. Though the story is unreal in treatment but the theme and moral lesson are real and true.

Q2. Who was Giovanni?

Ans. Giovanni Guasconti was a young student who had come from Naples to study at the University of Padua. He was a handsome lad in his early youth. He had a little money for accommodation and other expenses that’s why he had to take lodging at an old dark and ill furnished building that must have been a palace centuries ago. On the first day when he saw that building he was utterly disappointed though the housekeeper Lady Lisabetta tried desperately to give a better look to the room but she couldn’t do much in this regard. This made Giovanni sigh heavily but Lisabetta asked him to put his head out of the window and see a very pleasant sunshine. The window opened into a garden peopled with strange looking plants. This was the window of Giovanni’s destruction that opened at the very first day when he reached there.

He saw a sickly looking man aided by a young girl working in the garden. He fell in love at first sight with the most beautiful girl of Italy who later tragically turned out to be poisonous. The story didn’t end here but it went on as the poison present in Beatrice’s body made inroads into Giovanni’s system too, making him poisonous as well. A friend of Giovanni’s father lived in the same city and taught in the university. His name was Pietro Baglioni. He tried his best to save him from the fearful influence of Dr Rappaccini but the power of love had blinded Giovanni who went headlong into the swamp of a fearful life and a pitiable death.

Q3. Professor Baglioni said to Giovanni that he had fallen into fearful hands. What did it mean?

Ans. Being a friend of Giovanni’s father, Baglioni was very concerned about him. He was an old resident of this city and knew Dr Rappaccini perfectly. Dr Rappaccini was a strange man who had dedicated all his life for the sake of scientific knowledge. He was famed for having so much craze for science that he could lay even his own life for the sake of scientific research. He had gone to the length of making his own daughter poisonous.

When Giovanni came to live in his neighbourhood he chose him as the subject of one of his experiments. He planned the circumstances in an intriguing way and made the young man fall in love with his daughter and tried to take Providence in his own hands by planning to create a poisonous partner for his daughter. Giovanni was purposefully let in the garden to meet Beatrice. Both the garden and the poisonous charmer introduced a fine poison of love into Giovanni’s veins and he slowly became as poisonous as Beatrice was.

This event makes the reader shudder with disbelief and horror; how can a man be so mad to ruin his own daughter… and how recklessly he spoils a young man’s life for his own purpose. These grounds made Baglioni say that Giovanni had fallen into fearful hands that wouldn’t spare him unless the “mission” was achieved and thus it happened resulting in the sad demise of the innocent Beatrice.

Q4. What was their “chief treasure”?

Ans. The garden was full of many strange looking plants having magnificent flowers, rich artificial smells and frightening deadly qualities. The garden had hundreds of plants but there was one plant in particular that grew in a stone jar, placed in the middle of a broken stone fountain. The plant contained big leaves and it bore many purple flowers that hung like jewels. Dr Rappaccini was very careful while dealing with this plant and he used to wear gloves on his hands and cover his face on approaching it. Even then he wasn’t confident so he called his daughter Beatrice to look after it, as its poison was harmless to her. This was Dr Rappaccini’s chief treasure as this plant sprang out of the ground at the day of Beatrice’s birth. The plant was extremely poisonous and it wasn’t natural but was created by the dreadful intelligence of Rappaccini. He made an ominous plan and tried to endow the deadly qualities of the plant to his own child and fed her with its deadly breath from the first day thus making it a vegetable sister to his lovely but ill-fated daughter, Beatrice. So according to the plan Beatrice acquired the poisonous characteristics of that plant. Even her breath smelled exactly like the smell of that plant and it was as lethal as that plant was. When she touched Giovanni’s hand there appeared a purple mark on it showing how deep the effect of that plant was on this poor soul. So it was the treasure for Dr Rappaccini but was the killer of his naive daughter’s joy and love. It separated her from the normal human life and society thus making her a terrible alien whose touch and breath was deadly to everyone though her soul was the purest and the simplest thing on the earth.

Q5. Discuss the relationship of Beatrice and Giovanni?

Ans. The very first day when Giovanni reached Padua he saw the beautiful daughter of Rappaccini and instantly fell in love with her. The presence of that girl in his neighbourhood was enough for the boy to be moved. Furthermore he could look into the garden at any time to find her working there sometimes alone and sometime with her scientifically possessed father. Giovanni didn’t know but he was trapped in a snare with a proper planning, Beatrice too was not aware of any lethal arrangement of her father. When Giovanni saw her for the first time, he found himself dreaming and thinking in a romantic way about that unusually pretty young girl. They both liked each other on their first meeting when Giovanni threw some fresh flowers from his window down in the garden that Beatrice accepted with delight and promised to repay with that magnificent purple flower. Then Lisabetta introduced Giovanni to a private entrance into the garden that later he often availed. He entered the garden and was welcomed by Beatrice…. thus started the love story practically. He often went there and his meeting with Beatrice had become his whole life. They talked with each other; Beatrice questioned him about his home, city, his sisters and other matters of common interest. She had always lived enclosed in this garden so she didn’t know much about the world. She was innocent and child like and often Giovanni thought that he talked to her as if he was talking to his brother yet the charm of her beauty was enough to hold him a captive of her love. Their love was pure and intense but there was no press of lips or touch of hands as whenever Giovanni seemed to overstep the limit Beatrice grew so sad that he himself drew back. At such times often he felt his love weakening but again the cheerful simplicity of his dear girl made him happy and his faith in her simplicity and love lingered on. During all this period the poison of Beatrice’s breath had been slowly and unobtrusively entering into Giovanni’s body thus turning him to be as deadly as she herself was.

They had been meeting each other for a long time when one day Professor Baglioni came to Giovanni and made him realize the presence of that poisonous impact on his own body. After verifying this truth he was very furious at Beatrice because of whom he had been cut off from the society of common people. He went in the garden to see her. He told her that he too had become poisonous like her. He spoke to her in a very heart-rending tone hurting the poor girl bitterly. She was shocked at his attitude but was ashamed of her father’s heinous act. He told her that Professor Baglioni had given him an anti-poison liquid, which would cure them of these poisonous characteristics, but Beatrice said that she would drink the medicine first, to check the results. So she drank the liquid out of that silver bottle which killed her instantly because she was fed with poisons from her birth so it had become the element of her life and the anti-poison was anti-life for her. So she was crucified by the insane love of her father for the scientific knowledge.

She was poisonous no doubt but her soul was very pure and innocent. Her love was heavenly and divine though it had made her lover poisonous too. Their relation was deep and beautiful but its outcome was death and destruction.

Q6. What is the moral of the story?

Ans. This story is a deep criticism on the people who are mad for their purposes and neglect all the other values and can destroy any man’s life for the sake of achieving their aims. Today the world is full of such people who have created the destructive agents that have destroyed the peace of human life. The deadly weapons have changed the human life into a tragic tale of death and suffering. The harmful intoxicating drugs have snatched the future of nations away. The atom bombs and other such things have shown a glimpse of hell to the mankind. Thus the character of Rappaccini doesn’t seem unreal as we all witness such inordinate ambitions and their outcome with our own eyes. He didn’t care for the sanctity of human life and tried to destroy two lives. He cared for science even more than any other thing in world and he reaped the fruit in form of his dear daughter’s death. This practice is very common these days; one nation wants the things that the other has… so they attack on the civilian population killing millions of innocent people. The trade and the economic interests have led the super power to fleece the weak but rich nations. Oil and other mineral wealth have been valued more than the cheerful laughters of innocent kids or the dreaming eyes of the youth. So Nathaniel Hawthorne creates a fantastic situation to make the reader conscious about his own circumstance of life.