Rappaccini's Daughter

Professor Baglioni comes to visit Giovanni at the young man’s apartment, and he gives Giovanni a “small, exquisitely wrought silver phial” containing a supposed “antidote” to Beatrice’s poisonous...

When Giovanni first sees Beatrice, he has the impression that she is "another flower, the human sister of the vegetable ones," because she is as beautiful as they are but seems likewise dangerous....

Beatrice does not want Giovanni to touch the plant because she knows that it would cause Giovanni harm. That is the simple answer, but exploring why she doesn't want Giovanni to come to harm or die...

As the other response has noted, "Rappaccini's Daughter" is full of allusions to Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden. Most notably, perhaps, is the fact that the story largely unfolds in a beautiful...

Beatrice's "sister" is a particularly poisonous plant that her father believes is too potent for him to care for any longer. He tells her that he thinks his "life may pay the penalty" of coming in...

Beatrice is happy to die at the end of "Rappaccini's Daughter" because she feels the pain of having been born poisonous. She has long endured the solitude that her father, a scientist, created for...

In "Rappaccini's Daughter," the two primary characters are Beatrice and Giovanni. They end up in the same place, but they're certainly more different than alike. Beatrice is the daughter of a...

As Professor Baglioni tells Giovanni, Rappaccini cares infinitely more for science than for mankind. Baglioni goes on to say that Rappaccini would sacrifice anyone, even himself or someone he...

Beatrice can be seen as a pawn of the men because she makes relatively few decisions for herself in the story; most of the story's action takes place as a result of her father's and Giovanni's...

"Rappaccini's Daughter" is definitely a love story of sorts, so I believe that a strong case can be made that Giovanni is in love with Beatrice. It is not hard to imagine why he would fall for such...

Baglioni gives Giovanni an "antidote" that will supposedly cure Beatrice. The narrator tells the reader that a "professional warfare of long continuance" exists between Baglioni and Rappaccini and...

The garden may be Rappaccini's world in the sense that it's the thing that matters the most to him but it's also Rappaccini's world in that he controls what happens in it. Rappaccini loves his...

Beatrice is the character in the story who shows unselfish love. Her father's love for her is tainted with selfishness because he uses her for his scientific experiments. Giovanni's love for her is...

In Rappaccini's Daughter, Nathaniel Hawthorne has created very complex characters in what is a study in motive along with a study in good and evil, as well as in science and nature. Giovanni is the...

Rappacini's name is connotative of the adjective rapacious which means excessively grasping or greedy. Using his daughter, who looks "redundant with life, health, and energy" Rappacini, a ruthless...

The beautiful Giovanni becomes fascinated with the beautiful Beatrice as he watches her from above tend her flowers in the garden next door, alternatively attracted to and repulsed by her. Although...

When Giovanni examines the plants in the garden, he recognizes them as unnatural. He thinks that they're fierce as well. These aren't qualities that a person normally attributes to plants. It...

The narrator of "Rappaccini's Daughter" is of the third person limited omniscient variety. This means that the narrator is not a participant in the events that take place in the text and does not...

"Rappaccini's Daughter" is a 1844 short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, written at a period in which Romantic or Gothic story writing was flourishing. It has several Gothic elements, described...

It is unclear whether or not Baglioni knows that his antidote would kill Beatrice. On the one hand, when he sees her die after drinking it, he calls out "with horror," asking Dr. Rappaccini if his...

In "Rappaccini's Daughter," a sense of foreboding and evil that are from the beginning attached to Rappaccini and his garden foreshadow Beatrice's sad end. The ending of this story is tragic....

When Giovanni first speaks with his father's old friend, Professor Baglioni, the professor tells him that Dr. Rappaccini cares a great deal more about science than he does about people and that he...

Baglioni first suspects that Giovanni's interest in Dr. Rappaccini proceeds from an interest in his daughter, Beatrice. She is famously rumored to be quite beautiful and knowledgeable, and her...

In order to figure out who or what is the antagonist, we must first decide who the protagonist is and the nature of that character's main conflict. I would argue that Giovanni Guasconti is the...

Doctor Rappaccini is said by Professor Guasconti to have a great devotion to science, a greater devotion to science than to people, and he is willing to sacrifice people, including himself, for...

Giovanni Guasconti is obviously very much struck by the beauty and grace of Beatrice Rappaccini when he sees her in her father's garden. He finds her to be enchanting in her loveliness, her voice...

Rappaccini comes across as a cold, insensitive man. When Giovanni first sees him tending to his flowers, he observes that the doctor “avoids the actual touch of the flowers, or the direct inhaling...

In "Rappaccini's Daughter," protagonist Giovanni Guasconti moves into an old building before beginning his studies at the University of Padua. He glances outside of his room's window and sees a...

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Rappaccini's Daughter," Dr. Giacomo Rappaccini is a brilliant scientist who cultivates poisonous plants which he uses to create medicines. Rappaccini is a...

Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter" is one of those classic stories which is worth discussing. This is a good question with a simple answer--Giovanni had become accustomed to the poison in small...

As an allegory, the story is open to many interpretations, so there is no single "message" or moral to the story. A few themes do stand out, however, including the following. Science is...

When Giovanni starts watching Beatrice in the garden below his window, he is at first enticed by her beauty and virtue. Of her face, we learn he is struck by its expression of simplicity and...

In "Rappaccini's Daughter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dr. Giacomo Rappaccini is a classical evil scientist figure, whose towering intellect and intellectual curiosity have led him to delve into the...

Excellent question. "Rappaccini's Daughter" is actually a commentary both on the nature of man and the nature of science. The science, here, comes in the form of manipulating humans and nature...

Giovanni is filled with rage at Beatrice and vents his anger to her for being poisonous. After he insults her, he still dreams that there is a way to change her nature and for her to be united with...

In some ways, this question is asking for a subjective response, and it is a fun question to ask students after reading this story. It is a fun question to ask, because about half the students feel...

Dr. Rappaccini is an esteemed and skilled physician, but "he cares infinitely more for science than for mankind." He treats his patients as interesting medical experiments rather than human beings,...

In his story, "Rappaccini's Daughter," Hawthorne raises a question proposed by others such as Victor Hugo with his character Claude Frollo and Mary Shelley with Victor Frankenstein: What are the...

Rappaccini’s daughter, Beatrice, first appears as a devoted and dutiful daughter who seems to have accepted her fate as “sister” of a toxic flowering plant. (Note, for example, how she sighs and...

Doctor Pietro Baglioni is one of the few characters in "Rappaccini's Daughter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Baglioni is a well respected professor of medicine at the University of Padua and is known as...

Professor Pietro Baglioni does not like Doctor Rappaccini. When Giovanni first brings up Rappaccini's name, Baglioni's demeanor changes immediately, and he doesn't respond with the same cordiality...

In "Rappaccini's Daughter," Giovanni Guasconti witnesses the death of a small lizard after a drop of moisture falls from a gorgeous flower picked by Beatrice Rappaccini falls on it. He sees that...

Professor Baglioni, when he sees Giovanni looking so different from the first time they met, grows convinced that Doctor Rappaccini has been making a study of the young man. Baglioni claims to know...

Allegories are stories with a hidden meaning, very often a moral message, and they are often characterized by a one-to-one correspondence between their characters and the particular trait they...

In addition to the elements you have identified, in "Rappaccini's Daughter," by Nathaniel Hawthorne, I notice not only that the house Giovanni lives in seems too solemn and crumbling, but the stone...

Transcendentalists believed in the divinity of nature. Many, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, thought that when we are in nature, something very special happens to us. We return to a childlike state of...