he poisoned beauty in Rappaccinis daughter
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The poisoned beauty in Rappaccini's daughter
Critics have been fascinated by Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter," a tale which has proved as elusive, ambiguous, symbolic, and intimidating as Beatrice Rappaccini is in the eyes of Giovanni Guasconti. Roy R. Male sees the story as an allegory, rich in ambiguity, about a conflict between "idealistic" faith "and materialistic skepticism," with Beatrice symbolizing the first, Baglioni the second, and Giovanni caught between the two. Frederick C. Crews emphasizes the psychosexual elements of the tale, characterizing Giovanni as "another Hawthorne protagonist who regresses to juvenile nausea over female sexuality." Other scholars view the tale as an allegory of corrupted and pure nature, or emphasize the attack on single-minded scientific inquiry, represented by Doctor Rappaccini. These interpretations have validity, especially Crew's stress on the sexual quality of Beatrice's allure. However, what I find striking is the story's concern with the relationship of three men to a woman, who, though she never deliberately harms any of them, and though the men profess to have her good in mind, is nevertheless destroyed by them.
The tale is a partial allegory; Beatrice's poisonous nature as well as the garden and its contents are to be understood symbolically, and the relationship of the woman with her lover, her father, and to a lesser extent her professional rival, Baglioni, are typical male-female pairings. Yet the characters must exhibit credible attitudes, motives, and responses if the story's ethical content is to have any validity...