Hawthorne Essay

Giovanni and Aylmer demonstrate manipulation of authority over women in order to pursue their unhealthy infatuation with scientific experimentation. The capability to exercise this desire while controlling another human’s life threatens the Romantic ideal of love for the natural world.

Both stories exemplify the thrill inherent to the ability of exerting dominance over a human being to alter them to a perfect, insuperable counterpart. Rappaccini, though possessing paternal sentiments for his daughter,

cares infinitely more for science than for mankind. His patients are interesting to him only as subjects for some new experiment. He would sacrifice human life…of adding so much as a grain of mustard-seed to the great heap of his accumulated knowledge. (“Rappaccini’s Daughter”)

Egotistic in nature, Rappaccini finds no harm in placing his desires before the welfare of others, as apparent through his captivity of Beatrice. Written in a time when patriarchal society was valued and allowed for control of women socially, economically, and psychologically, both stories reflect the gender relations between man and woman. To Rappaccini, an intellectual is automatically granted power, and he finds no better way to put his plans to gain power into action through his daughter whom he knows will be acquiescent. Beatrice replicates the submissive stereotype of females when her father remarks that, “shattered as I am, my life might pay the penalty of approaching it so closely as circumstances demand. Henceforth, I fear, this plant must be consigned to your sole charge” (“Rappaccini’s Daughter”). She readily agrees to perform this otherwise hazardous task her father orders her to do, since obeying him is so innate to her. Posse...

... middle of paper ...

...t it could only be by intertwining itself with his love of science, and uniting the strength of the latter to his own” (Hawthorne). In an attempt to justify his pleasure, Aylmer mingles adoration for Georgiana with his necessity for perfection. His failure is attributed to his oversight of nature’s goodness combined and the consequences of tampering with nature. There was much foreshadowing about Georgiana’s death, yet Aylmer overlooked all of it, because he was too overpowered by the pleasure that creation and manipulation gives him. Correspondingly, Rappaccini disregarded his intellectual gifts that he could have used beneficially for mankind; rather, he continued to do what gave him personal gratification. Both men had the craving for supremacy; the only way they knew to achieve that is through exploitation of nature, which they both found pleasantly appealing.