Science as Servant of Man and Environmental
Constraints in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter
American
Studies, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Gadjah Mada University
Abstract
This
paper examines the concern of man to improve his life condition through
scientific experiment in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (1844).
Through an investigation of the impact of Doctor Rappaccini’s experiments on
the fauna and flora, it further explores the environmental constraints upon
scientific endeavour. Against the backdrop of the poststructuralist literary
approach and ecocriticism, the paper anchors on the assumption that the nature
places tight constraints on the anthropological strife to better life on the
basis of science. The research data source consists of primary and secondary
data sources. Data were collected by means of library documentation method. Firstly,
primary data were obtained from the short story “Rappaccini’s Daughter” in Nina
Baym (Editor)The Norton Anthology of American
Literature, Volume 1, 3rd
Edition (1989). In addition, for secondary periodicals data, textbooks, and
internet were used. Based upon the aforementioned literary research theories
and in accordance with the aims and hypothesis, the research was based upon the
qualitative descriptive method. Concerning the data collection and analytical procedure,
data were obtained following the interactive model, consecutively through data
collection, data reduction, data analysis, data discussion, and conclusion
drawing. The research findings indicated that man is deeply concerned with
transforming the world through his knowledge. Moreover, it was found out that
the need of appropriate research area, valid subjects, and invaluable and
reliable research instruments is a real ecological challenge, for it creates
conflicts between the researcher and the ecosystem. This conflict is in part
due to the natural order and the greed and mentalities of people in the place
where the researcher intends to carry out his experiment.
Keywords:
Science, Environment, Poststructuralism, Ecocriticism,
and “Rappaccini’s Daughter”
Introduction
Criticism
has mostly stressed the issue of duality of good and evil in “Rappaccini’s
Daughter”, ignoring other meanings generated by ambiguities in the short story.
Through a deconstructive analysis, this paper investigates the authorial
concern with the relationship between science as a cultural act and the
physical environment. Against the
backdrop of ecocriticism of this short story, I argue that there is a silence
in the story to point out that man’s scientific activity must aim at improving
his life condition and his surrounding physical environment.
Background and Theoretical Foundation
According
to Stephen Wilson, science is an attempt to understand how and why natural phenomenon
occur with focus on the natural world. He advances that like science like science
should be “viewed as a cultural creativity and commentary” and should be “appreciated
for its imaginative reach as well as its disciplinary or utilitarian purposes”
(3). This is because in the modern society, science is the centre of the
cultural and economic life. Thus science is therefore one engine of culture
because it is source of creativity and inspiration and a marker of identity (5).
Science in “Rappaccini’s Daughter”, is used to capture the creativity of Doctor
Giacomo Rappaccini, a medical researcher in medieval Padua. It is a laboratory
of a botanic garden with a pool wherein he cultivates poisonous plants in vases
and urns decorated with the highest ingeniosity of sculpture and architecture,
“fruitful of better pot-herbs than any that grow” in the city of Padua (1143).
This
experimentation endangers the surrounding environment. According to Larsson
(2011), in its broadest sense, environment is defined as the physical nature including
water, air, soil, flora and fauna. It covers “all those elements which in their
complex inter-relationships form the framework, setting and living conditions
for mankind, by their very existence or by virtue of their impact” (Larson
2009:169). This definition implies that environment encompasses aspects of the atmosphere,
hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere. Focussing on the short story
“Rappaccini’s Daughter”, environment is considered from the perspective of
ecosystem to delineate, in the sense of Neema Bagula Jimmy (2015), the
relationship between human characters and their practices and the fauna, flora,
the soil, air and water in the setting, that is Padua where all the story
events occur. However, the story develops around two kinds of environment or
physical nature: the natural and the artificial. The artificial environment is a
toxic garden made by Rappaccini and endangers the species of the surrounding
natural environment.
The story encloses the complex operations of ideologies, a deconstructive analysis
or poststructuralist criticism is first used to disclose the author’s silent
voice of science and nature. According to Peter Barry (2002), poststructuralism
is a theory that emerged in France in the 1960s propounded by Roland Barthes
and Jacques Derrida. Poststructuralism turns from structuralism, crucially with
Barthes’ publication of “The Death of the Author” (1968). In this essay,
Barthes sustains that a literary work is not determined by intention or context
of the author, it is rather a free text that the reader can play on to generate
meanings. While structuralism originates from linguistics, especially with the
binary theory of sign propounded by Ferdinand de Saussure (Bouquet 2002) and binary
opposites analysis advanced by Claude Levi (1972). Jacques Derida’s
contribution to the development of the deconstructive method is associated with
his 1966 lecture captioned “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the
Human Sciences”. In this paper, the author pinpoints the emergence of a new
trend in thought which draws from the relativist philosophies of Nietzsche,
Heidegger, and Sigmund Freud. These new trends in philosophy break from the god-based
platonic view of world and man-centred renaissance view of the universe to hold
that there are no absolutes or fixed point in the universe and that the world
is decentred and inherently relativistic. Therefore, there are no granted facts
or truth, all are just interpretations. Apart from the above mentioned article,
Derida’s influence to poststructuralism is also captured in his works L'Ecriture et la difference (Writing and
Difference), La Voix et le phénomène (Speech
and Phenomena), and De la
grammatologie (Of Grammatology). In these writings, he confirms that a text
can be read saying something different from what it appears to be saying. Hence
the necessity of the deconstructive method aims to reveal contradictions and
inconsistencies in order to disclose the disunity conveyed throughout its
apparent unity.
With
regard to applying the deconstructive method in literary criticism, Peter Barry
develops a threefold analysis including the verbal stage, textual stage, and
linguistic stage. The verbal phase looks at contradictions or paradoxes in the
story creating oddity between what is felt and what is expressed in the text.
For the second stage, the deconstructionist deals with the discontinuity of the
text. In other words, attention is paid to the lack of unity in tone or point
of view. As far as the third phase or linguistic stage is concerned,
deconstruction dismantles the ambiguity and reveals the silences of the author
and identifies marginalized ideas in order to build knowledge. These three
stages can be summarized into two phases, namely the reversal phase which is
concerned with the extinction of the power struggle of the binaries and the
neutralization phase which looks at uprooting the silent terms from the binary
complexity.
In
this paper, building knowledge is based upon the ecocriticism. According to
Laurence Buell (1), ecocriticism is “the study of the relationship between
literature and the physical environment”. It is an earth centred approach that
emerges in the United States of America in the late 1980s and in the Great
Britain early in the 1990s. While in the USA, ecocriticism or green studies
emerged as critics started studying the celebration of nature, the life force,
and the wilderness as depicted in the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret
Fuller, and David Henry Thoreau; it starts in the United Kingdom with the
working on the Romantic poetry of the 1790s. Gerrard distinguishes three tropes
or approaches sub through in green studies, namely pastoral approach,
wilderness approach, and ecofeminist approach. The pastoral approach focuses on
the dichotomy between urban and rural area. From this perspective the rural is
idealized while the urban is demonized. With regards to the wilderness trop, focus
is put on the dark character of the physical nature. The wilderness here is
linked with the idea of evil. Finally, ecofeminism looks at the relationship
between the oppression of the woman and the destruction of the environment
orchestrated by man. It is a kind of parallelism between the exploitation of
the nature by people and the domination of the woman by man. Later this
approach evolved to include other dominated groups based on race or class, thus
making this trop diverse and complex.
Ecocritics
view the physical environment as reality capable of affecting human existence.
It is a cultural practice which like a god when mistreated impacts fatally on
the human life. In view to analysing the relationship between culture and
nature in Rappaccini’s Daughter, emphasis is put on the representation of
environment in the short story, the crisis of the environment, the difference
of attitudes to physical nature by male characters and female characters, and
the parallel between oppression of human characters and ecosystem.
According
to the Norton Anthology of the
American Literature (1989:1083), "Rappaccini's Daughter" is a
short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne that appeared for the first time in the
December 1844 issue of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review. Nathaniel Hawthorne was later published in the collection Mosses from an Old Manse
in 1846. The story is about a medical researcher, Giacomo Rappaccini, who endeavouring
to improve the immunity system of humans, grows a garden of poisonous plants in
Padua, a northern Italian city. He used for experiment specimen his daughter,
Beatrice who tending the plants becomes resistant to the poisons, but in the
process she herself becomes poisonous to other people, to plants, and animals. Criticism
on the short story confirms Hawthorne to have been inspired by an Indian
traditional story of a poisonous maiden. In similar vein, Robert Daly (1973:25)
argues that in “Rappaccini’s Daughter” alludes to Gesta Romanorum, Shelly’s Conception of Beatrice Cinci, Milton’ s “Paradise Lost”,
Bacon’s Essays, Keat’s Lamia, Dante’s Inferno, Genesis story of Adam and Eve, Spenser’ Faerie Queene, Ovidia’s Pomona’s
Gardens and her Love therein for Vertumnus. In these
allusions Hawthorne draws the topic of the interference of men on the ground of
science to victimize nature and the woman.
Research Methodology
The
study is qualitative in nature and the inductive method was used to carry out
it. Library documentation method was used to collect data. The primary data
were obtained from the short story “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (1846) written in The Norton
Anthology of American Literature, Volume 2, 3rd Ed. Secondary data
were collected from periodicals, textbooks, and
internet. Concerning data collection and analytical procedure, the short story
was read repeatedly, deconstructed thanks to the poststructuralist literary
criticism. The author’s hidden ideology to promote science for the service of
humanity was discussed based upon ecocriticism. Following the aims and
hypothesis, pertinent notes were taken from both the primary and secondary data
sources. They were then discussed in the light of the theoretical frameworks.
In addition, they were descriptively analysed and conclusions were drawn.
Discussion and Findings
This
section consists of two subsections, namely a deconstructive analysis of Rappaccini’s
Daughter to point to Hawthorne’s ambiguous idea of science and an ecocriticism
of the short story to discuss the author’s apprehension of genuine knowledge
and its import in environment.
1. Hawthorne’s Hidden Ideology of Science Promotion
Many
critics have underlined duality and ambiguity in Hawthorne’s short story
“Rappaccini’s Daughter”. According to Roy Male (1957:1) the main concern of the
short story is the dual nature of humanity, embodying good and evil. Martin
(2006) points to a dualism of good and evil. Lois A. Cuddy (1987) highlights
the duality of nature and society. Edward A. Abramson points out the
complexities of morality. Actually,
“Rappaccini’s Daughter” encloses many paradoxical phrases and opposition
instances which highlight the author’s undecidability on the issue of science.
This can be discerned through the application of Peter Barry’s three-stage
deconstructive method, that is verbal stage, textual stage, and linguistic
stage. In this paper, I argue that through these ambiguities, the story hides
its ideology of science promotion which I attempt to unmask in the following
deconstructive analysis. Firstly, in the verbal stage, the author uses oxymoron,
such as the title ‘La Belle Empoisonneuse’ (1143), Eden of the present world’
(1145), Eden of poisonous flowers (1155), and ‘shattered fountain’ to suggest a
kind of complexity in nature. The word ‘Eden’ is used metaphorically to suggest
degradation of nature by scientific research activities. He uses paradox or
self-contradictory statements, as such ‘to give the chamber habitable air’(1143),
it said he distils these plants into medicines that are as potent as charm (1143)
‘a face singularly marked with intellect and cultivation, but which could
never, even in his more youthful days, have expressed much warmth of heart’(1143),
‘in spite of his deep intelligence on his part, there was no approach to
intimacy between himself and these vegetables existences’ (1144), ‘my life
might pay the penalty of approaching it so closely as circumstances
demand,….this plant must be consigned to your sole charge’ (1145), ‘flower and
maiden were different and yet the same, and fraught with some strange peril in
either shape’ (1146), ‘he cares more infinitely for science than for mankind’, ‘he
would sacrifice human life, his own among the rest, or whatever else was
dearest to him, for the sake of adding so much as grain of mustard seed to the
great heap of his accumulated knowledge’, ‘but so pervaded with an expression
of piercing and active intellect, that an observer might easily have overlooked
the merely physical attributes’(1150), ‘poison was her element of life’ (1156),
‘pass on, then, through the world, most dear to one another, and dreadful to
all besides!’. These paradoxical instances are indication of slippage of the
language in the author’s tackling way of science and nature. There is too much
linguistic floating to shape the ambiguous tone that hides the authorial
ideology of promoting science capable of achieving environmental equilibrium
and sustainability.
Secondly
in the textual stage, the author uses contradictions in tone, narration, and
ideas. In this discontinuity, he combines statements and ideas which are
opposed to one another. This can be illustrated by the following instances; at
the beginning of the story, Lisabetta describes the garden of Rappaccini as
strange but later he leads Giovanni into the garden. Giovanni is in many
instances warned against Beatrice and her father, but does not give importance
to the warning. Beatrice is destined to the fatal garden and jovially delights
in the task, but at the end of the story, she expresses her regret of being
polluted by the toxins of the plants. In the early paragraphs of the story,
Baglioni confirms himself to act in accordance with professional medical rules,
but at the end of the story, she administers a heroic antidote to a patient. He
first asserts his concern to care more for humanity discrediting Rappaccini,
but at the end of the story, he jubilates at the death of Beatrice. Beatrice is
strong and beautiful with a poisonous nature, but the medicine prescribed by
Doctor Baglioni kills her at the end of the story. Rappaccini is silent at the
beginning, but at the end of the story, he rises to explain how his science has
worked through the life of his daughter. Baglioni gives an antidote to Giovanni
to cure him of poison, but the story ends in surprise with Giovanni poisonous
while Beatrice is dying at the spot. Focussing on the protagonist, Beatrice,
the story starts with scientific tone in the botanic laboratory, develops
through love tone, and ends with a spiritual tone. The narrator asserts that
Padua is a barren city let alone that garden of Rappaccini, but later
demonstrates that the garden is polluted. This disunity in the text indicates
the persistence of the idea of science promotion, though masked and silenced.
Finally,
for the linguistic phase of deconstruction, there are moments in the short
story where there are masks of language communication, that is, inability to
say something where everything is said, incapacity to do something where
everything is done. This achieved through analysis of in this neutralization
phase, the paper unmasks irresolvable internal contradiction or logical
disjunction in the short story. In fact, Hawthorne is masking the idea of
science promotion and natural constraints while emphasising it through the Baglioni’s
point that science must be servant of humanity. He insists in the following
instances; ‘He
cares infinitely more for science than humanity’ (1147), his exclusive zeal for
science (1147). Though this concern seems silent because ambiguous situations,
the author finally discloses it but giving victory in a way to Rappaccini while
mocking at Baglioni’s professional jealousy, ‘and is this the upshot of your
experiment?’ (1162) Rappaccini’s botanic laboratory though first satirised as
fatal and demonic is proved in the denouement to have strengthened Beatrice’s
immunity. But some improvement would have been done to inoculate the poisonous
character of experiment subjects. The author contends that the medical
discovery is still noxious to the ecosystem. Hence many scientific innovations
and renovation of botanic experimentation must be done in accord with
scientific ethics and rules taking into account the harmony and equilibrium in
nature.
2. Scientific Researcher as Servant of Humanity
Hawthorne’s
view for science in “Rappaccini’s Daughter” is that science be at the service
of man and his environment. Science must follow philosophy of art as championed
by Plato in The Republic. Scientific research, like other cultural art forms, must
aim at improving the ecosystem where humans lives with strong ties with the
fauna, flora, and inanimate organisms. On the one hand, science must advocate
nature purification. On the other hand, scientific research should make sure of
avoiding potential danger to the ecological system. Hawthorne
attacks scientific attempts that cause nature degradation. He disapproves the
garden of Rappaccini, an adulteration of the natural flora. He ridiculed the botanic
garden whose marble and soil garniture fountain, plants, shrub, herbs, in vases,
urns, garden-pots all planted in the pool. The botanic experimentation with
high garden sculpture, and architecture used, though greenery pasture and
watery verdure is polluted. This is due to the fact that, as Uroff contends, Rappaccini
violates scientific research principles in his choice of research subjects,
area and procedures. Like Josef Mengele and other Nazi doctors who did
unethical research, Rappaccini’ botanic laboratory experimentation is noxious,
subjective, with lack of control of experiment area, instruments, and subjects.
Likewise, Baglioni ‘s conservatist attitude and his jealous reactions in the
scientific field of medicine is against his career as academic and professional
medical doctor. All these vices are condemned by the Scientific Ethics Nuremburg Code. Brenzo links these dramatic forfeits with the victimization
of the woman by men for the greed of science and love. Thus the woman and the nature are destroyed
by man’s desires. In view of ecofeminist approach, there is a parallel
adulteration of the physical nature and the female character. In this story
while Lisabetta is a servant in charge of sanitation in a decay building,
Beatrice suffers further in the toxic garden. This point is captured by the
author through his equation of flowers and woman, he intimates as he admits
‘analogy between the beautiful girl and the gorgeous shrub’ (1148). The same
issue of adulteration of nature and woman is also depicted by Hawthorne in
“Heidegger’s experiment”, and the “Birthmark” Where women are victimized by men
twice by their greed for science and love. The
author’s point is that scientific knowledge should not be a dark manipulation
of the biotope and biocenosis; it has rather to be a good management of the
ecosystem to better human conditions trough objectivity, ethical experiments,
with a good control of research factors and material.
Scientific Ecosystem Restoration and Ecologic System
Demands
The
scientific hybridation operated in the botanic laboratory of Rappaccini is
immoral and therefore pollutes all intruders with poison. The story portrays
the human mind trying to perfect nature. His theory is that “all medicinal
virtues are comprised with those substances which we term vegetable poisons” (1147).
With this hypothetical contention, Rappaccini cultivates poisonous plants and
produces new varieties of poisons. This idea to restore human nature is
disapproved by another doctor in the department of medicine at the university
of Padua. This research for a new management of ecosystem is founded on his belief
in homeopathic approach about nature of disease and forms of cure (Uroff 63).
His opponents, especially those who support the allopathic approach of Medicine
which was in vogue at the time Hawthorne writes his story accuses him of lack
of valid methodology and purporting to subvert the natural ecosystem by
artificial physical environment. This is because his garden destroys the
biocenosis. Beatrice experimented in the laboratory is polluted and noxious to
insects, reptiles, flowers, and human beings. But the author approves the positive impact of
the experiment for personal beauty and strength of Beatrice and the greenery
aspect of the city. Of this Beatrice confirms;
“it is no marvel,
therefore, if the sight of my father’s rare collection has tempted you to take a
nearer view. If he were here, he could tell you many strange and interesting
facts as to the nature and habits of these shrubs, for he has spent a life-time
in such studies, and his garden is his world. (1153)
Above
all, he celebrates the scientist is eager interest in changing the world for
better. While the weakness is attributed to using human research subject,
subjective method to elicit medical findings, and uncontrollable research
instruments and area, the garden, as Rosenberry mentions “gives to Giovanni a
picture of an exciting laboratory of experimental science” while using Beatrice
is simply professionalism to “pass the torch to the new generation” (40). This
is an indication that in policy of ecosystem management, as John Donne sustains,
“no man is an island”, all the scientific disciplines have to work hand in hand
to restore to the environment with its natural beauty. That is why the author
satires the Massachusetts society whose lack of virtues impacts on the
ecosystem (Cuddy 39). In his dramatic monologue, Baglioni is jealously
determined to ‘thwart’ (1157) Rappaccini’s scientific efforts to privilege old
rules of the medical profession. This suggests the authorial view to change
mentality and favour innovation in this campaign of improving human condition
and his surrounding environment. At the end of the story, Beatrice regrets her
life wholly spent in exclusion from the society while her father exults of joy
to triumph over the status quo of his medical professors. This difference in
reaction ensures the science’s environmental constraints. This corroborates
with Daly’s assertion that Hawthorne draws from previous literature to argue
that man’s strife to perfect nature is barred by the interference of natural
phenomena and the diversity of human desires and thus results to the
destruction of the natural purity.
Conclusion
In
“Rappaccini’s Daughter”, Hawthorne’s silent view to advance science as engine
in transforming the world that haunts many of his writings, is depicted through
a complexity of ideologies. The story’s undecidability is sensed by critics who
depending on approaches and perspectives of their writings have variously
pointed to ambiguity and duality. This analysis has adopted Jacques Derrida’s
deconstructive strategies and Peter Barry’s deconstructive analysis steps and
thus has revealed through a reversal phase powerful struggle of binaries in “Rappaccini’s
Daughter”. This was achieved through the application of verbal and textual
analysis methods. Upon this binary logic, metaphors, paradox, oxymoron,
contradiction, and discontinuity through tone and style were examined to reveal
and extinguish the author’s undecidability about his silent view of science and
nature. Furthermore, through neutralization, analysis at the linguistic level
shows that the author’s use of irony demonstrates his point that any scientific
endeavour though aiming at bettering humanity and natural environment is
hampered by the greed of man. In addition, special attention must be paid to
the overall function of the ecosystem, all humans, fauna, and flora be taken
into account by the scientific research.
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