TRANSCENDENTALISM AND ECOCRITICAL ANALYSIS OF “RAPPACCINI’S DAUGHTER”
Simon Ntamwana
American Studies Program, Department of Cultural Sciences, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Gadjah Mada University, 16/405648/PSA/ 8125
Abstract
This
paper examines the concern of man to improve his life condition through a 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 ecocriticism,
the paper anchors on the assumption that nature
places tight constraints on the anthropological strife
to a 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’s
(Editor) The Norton Anthology of American
Literature, Volume 1, 3rd
Edition (1989) and Alfred Kazin’s Selected
Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1966). In addition, periodicals,
textbooks, and the internet were used as
secondary data. 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 are
a real ecological challenge, for it creates conflicts between the researcher
and the overall ecology. 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, Ecocriticism, and “Rappaccini’s Daughter”
Introduction
Criticism on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
“Rappaccini’s Daughter” (Abramson, 2011) has mostly stressed the issue of the duality of good and evil, ignoring other
meanings generated by ambiguities in that short story. Through an ecocritical analysis,
this paper investigates the authorial concern with the relationship between
science as a cultural act and the nature.
Through an ecocritical interpretation of this short story, I argue that
man’s scientific activity to improve the life condition of humanity is challenged
by his surrounding nature. In what follows I approach this argument by first
defining science, environment, poststructuralism, ecocriticism, and
“Rappaccini’s Daughter”. In addition, a brief background to the short story is
stated in order to trace the author’s connection to the 1840s American society,
the transcendentalist movement and its view of nature covers up the authorial
inspiration about nature and science in his writings. Before the discussion and
findings section, the research questions are stated to clear up the substance
of the hypothesis and argument.
Concept Contextualization and Theoretical Foundation
1. Definition of Keywords
According to Stephen Wilson (2002),
science is an attempt to understand how and why the natural phenomenon occurs
with a focus on the natural world. He
advances that science like art 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 a 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 (Baym,
1989:1143).
This experimentation endangers the
surrounding environment. Larsson (2011) defines environment in its broadest
sense as the the physical nature including water, air, soil, flora and fauna. In
the strict meaning, environment or nature 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 is
extended by Madhu Sharma to support that nature in its holistic sense includes
the physical, biological, and cultural environment. Sharma maintains that the
physical environment refers to geology, topography, water, and air. Under the
umbrella of biological environment, he classifies the fauna and the flora. As
for the cultural environment, Sharma mentions elements, such as society,
economy, and politics (1993:235). Focussing on the short story “Rappaccini’s
Daughter”, environment is considered from the perspective of deep ecology to delineate,
in the sense of Neema Bagula Jimmy (2015), the relationship between human
characters and their practices and the natural setting. Like “Dr Heidegger’s Experiment” (1860) and “The
Birthmark” (1843), the short story “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (1844) encloses the
complex operations of scientific ideologies and their impact on nature (Resetarits,
2012).
2. Transcendentalism and Nathaniel Hawthorne
According to
Philip F. Gura (Gura, Philip. American
Transcendentalism, a History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), American
Transcendentalism is a movement that appeared in the New England in 1830s. The
movement was a sprang from occasional meetings of a changing body of liberal
thinkers grouped in what was referred to as transcendental Club or club of the
like-minded in Concord in Boston. The transcendental club was interested in
German philosophy and were associated with unitarianism. Thus they were
considered liberal christians who rejected the harsh tenets of calvinism. Then
this group of thinkers and activists broke from the British empirism to
embracethe German philosophical idealism. In other words, in accord with the
German revolutionary ideas of Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the
American transcendentalists champion the inherent powers of the human mind and
reject the empirical philosophy propounded by John Locke. Transcendentalists
were in majority unitarian ministers such as Cyrus Bartol, Charles Timothy
Brooks, Orestes Brownson, William Henry Channing, James Freeman Clarke,
Christopher Cranch, John Sullivan Dwight, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Convers Francis,
William Henry Furness, William B. Greene, Frederick Henry Hedge, Sylvester
Judd, Samuel Osgood, Theodore Parker, George Ripley, Samuel Robins, Caleb
Stetson, and Thomas T. Stone. Some of these thinkers reformed their Unitarian
churches while others left the churh altogether. Some women found the path to
transcendentalism among others Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Margaret Fuller,
Caroline Healey, Ellen Sturgis, and Anna Ward. Later the group expounded with
young aspiring writers such as Henry David Thoureau, Jones Very, Charles
Stearn, and William Channing. The
transcendentalist Ideas were later propounded by the second generation of
transcendentalists including Samuel johnson, Samuel Longfellow, Henry
Wordsworth Longfellow, and Moncure Conway. Before the 1830s, the American
transcendentalism focused on the primacy of self-consciousness. From the
1830s, there was intersections among
these the movement adherents and supporters, especially with the advent of
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. The reputation of transcendental
philosophy became glaring in 1842 with the publications of The
Dial a quaterly periodical about intellectual and social reformation ideas
that was edited by Margaret Fuller.
As so far
mentioned transcendentalism intends to change the world with two orientations,
that is unitarian religion based upon orientalism and German idealist
philosophy. Speaking of unitarian principles of transcendentalism, Ellis holds
that transcendentalism looks at the reality of the spiritual or religious
element in man, his inborn capacity to perceive the truth and right so that
moral and religious truth can be proved to him with the same degree of
certainity that attends all material demonstrations. Therefore,
Transcendentaists reject the notion of the Holy Trinity, and the divine
humanity of the saviour. This novelty in Transcendental religion was inspired
by the Asian religions. In fact, the transcendentalist interest in Orient
religions was due to the fact that the othodox calivinism was considering the
Socinian, Arian, Pelagian, and Arminian religious philosophies as heresies. The
Calvinist rejection derives substantially from the fact that these religions
hold that Christ was not divine. Transcendentalism therefore embraced this idea
to emphasize that Christ was not neceaasary to salvation and other religions
like hinduism, budhism and others were divine revelations. In addition these
Asian religions deny predestination and advance that people could improve
themselves and work towards salvation. Therefore transcendentalism was
interested in hinduism, buddhism and other religions that that we must work out
our salvation for ourselves (Versluis, 1993:5).
Murdock agrees with Ellis’s ideas that transcendentalism is a belief in
the living God in the Soul, faith in immediate inspiration, and in boundless
possibility.
As for the
idealism, Emerson argues in that while materialists argue from the data of the
senses and insist on facts, history, forces of circumstances, and the human
drives, the idealists insist that senses are not final and focus on the power
of thought and will, on inspiration, miracle, and ndividual culture. This
individualism favours social transformation. In fact they sustain that American
political freedom did not necessarily bring about the liberation of the mind
and religious freedom. In the furtherance of this idea Margaret Fuller holds
that transcendentalism would help men and women find meaning in their lives. Emerson and other transcendentalists believe
in universal divine inspiration and religious pluralism. The practical social
implication of Transcendentalism in America was the spiritual equivalent of the
democratic ideal that all men are created equal. This was a magnetizer in a
country where women were still considered as inferior and labour to men and
were Indians and Blacks were still marginalized. It was then an engine for
cultural liberation.
Accounting
for the relation of Nathaniel Hawthorne to transcendentalism, Alfred Rosa
(1980:151) sustains that Hawthorne’s relations to the transcendental ist
movement were various and intimate. Hwathorne was more attached to David Henry
Thoreau, Jones Very, and Bronson Alcott than to Ralph Waldo Emerson. According
to him the influence of Thoreau on
Hawthorne’s writing is very remarkable. Hawthorne inherited the artistic
concern from the transcendentalist aesthetics. This is justified by the special
choice of setting in his writing especially when dealing such issues as human
heart, psychology, ethics, morality, reality, dreams, imagination, etc.
Actually in tackling these issues, Hawthorne set his stories in any age or
place. The story “Rappaccini’s daughter”, for example, takes place in the
Medieval Italy though it deals with American realities of the nineteenth
century. There is therefore a spiritual kinship between transcendentalism and
Hawthorne’s writings. Furthermore, for three years, Hawthorne stayed at Brook
Farm in Concord, the very centre of New England transcendentalism. Moreover the
influence of his wife Elizabeth Peabody, a transcendentalist contributed to the
transcendental tone in his writings. But Hawthorne does not relate to the
millennialist philosophy and social reform of transcendentalism. This is what
dictates the elements of antitranscendentalism and antiromanticism in his writings.
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 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” Hawthorne
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, and 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.
3. Literary Theory and Criticism
According to Laurence Buell
(1996:1), the ecocritical literary interpretation 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 (2012)
distinguishes three tropes or sub approaches 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 trope, the 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 nature
by people and the domination of the woman by a man.
Later this approach evolved to include other dominated groups based on race or
class, thus making this trope diverse and complex. Ecocritics view the physical
environment as reality capable of affecting human existence (Gerrard, 2012:1).
It is a cultural practice which likes a
god when mistreated impacts fatally on the human life.
The waves of ecocriticism have been
a bone of contention among scholars. While some argue for two distinct phases
in the evolution of the ecocritical theory, other go further to defend the
third, even the fourth phase or wave of ecocriticism. In New International Voices of Ecocriticism (2015), Scot Slovic argues
for the existence of four waves in the ecocritical theory. According to him,
the first wave of ecocriticism focuses on the wilderness, Anglo-American
non-fiction, and discursive ecofeminism. The second wave of ecocriticism is
more internationally inclusive and is characterised by its turn towards urban
experience and acknowledgement of environmental justice and postcolonial
concerns across a wide swath of literary genres. The third wave of the
ecocritical theory emphasises comparative and self-critical tendencies. This
wave admits ethnic and national particularities. But it transcends these
boundaries in order to explore all facets of human experience from an
environmental perspective. Finally, the fourth wave of ecocriticism is a
vigorous application of a new materialist vocabulary and thinking to
environmental aesthetics. In addition, this phase of ecocritical theory is a dedication to making the environmental
humanities significant to the new challenges of environment sustainability in
the contemporary world perplexed by the issue of global warming (2015: xiii).
Concerning the analysis methodology
in ecocriticism, Peter Barry in Beginning
Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory (2009) considers
five points, namely identification of the representation of the natural world
in the literary work, application of ecocentric concepts, such as growth and
energy, energy balance or imbalance, natural symbiosis, natural mutuality,
sustainable use of resources; emphasis on natural theories such as American
transcendentalism, British romanticism, etc.; they apply ecocritical theory
hand-in-hand with environmental notions; and they focus on the ecocentric
values of meticulous observation, ethical responsibility, and the claims of the
world beyond human usual existence. In view
to analysing the relationship between culture and nature in “Rappaccini’s
Daughter”, the emphasis is put on the
representation of the environment in the
short story, the crisis of the environment, and the parallel between the oppression of children characters, female characters,
and nature.
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 the internet.
Concerning data collection and analytical procedure, the short story was read
repeatedly. The author’s 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.
Hypothesis and Research Questions
This paper is based on the
hypothetical contention that in Rappaccini’s Daughter” the human greed for
power through science brings about nature degradation including deterioration
of cultural environment, infection of the
atmosphere, and pollution of the biological environment. Based on this
assumption, the paper anchors on the following research questions:
-How
does scientific research impact on children and women?
-How
does the scientific research degrade the fauna and flora?
Analysis
1. Science and Degradation of Cultural Environment
“Rappaccini’s Daughter” emphasises
the anthropological concern to improve nature through scientific
experimentation. In fact, human nature has been fragile and vulnerable to
diseases, maladies, and sicknesses. Rappaccini, a medical doctor at the
University of Padua in the faculty of medicine opens a botanic laboratory in a
bid to improving this human condition. Doctor Baglioni reveals Rappaccini’s
hypothesis,
It is his theory that all medical virtues
are comprised within those substances which we term vegetable poisons (118).
Then on
the basis of this assumption, Rappaccini creates a botanic laboratory to test
these scientific variables of medicine and poisonous plants. His research
subjects are children and some species of plants that embody toxins. Rappaccini’s
aware of the toxins but he instead commits the care of the garden to her
daughter Beatrice Rappaccini’s. While,
Rappacci enters the garden with masks and gloves, he does not hesitate to
assign the laboratory care to her daughter.
“Here Beatrice […], see how many needful
offices require to be done to our chief treasure. Yet, 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”(116).
Later
another human subject will be introduced to the laboratory to totalize two
research human subjects in the fatal botanical experimentation. Giovanni a new
student from Naples, southern Italy who is admitted in the faculty of medicine
will be enticed by the beauty of Beatrice and the garden. Therefore, under the
help of his lodging attendant, Dame Lisabetta, Giovanni finally enters the
botanic garden. Doctor Rappaccini delights too much in the introduction of
Giovanni into his research area. From now on his hypothesis will be proved on
two subjects.
Giovanni stepped forth, and, forcing
himself through the entanglement of a shrub that wreathed its tendrils over the
hidden entrance, stood beneath his own window in the open area of Dr. Rappaccini’s garden (125).
In this
familiar contact with toxic plants, the children’s respiratory system becomes
polluted by the noxious fragrance of the botanic vegetation. In using children
in this fatal area for scientific purpose, Rappaccini demonstrates the
anthropocentric egotism to victimise others for personal interests. As a result
of the experimentation, the children become contaminated by the poison of the
plants. The toxic fragrance of the garden has worked on their immunoglobulin
system. Doctor Baglioni finds it a marginalisation of humanity. He expresses
his dissention,
“But as for Rappaccini, it is said of
him‒and I, who know the man well, can answer for its truth‒that he cares
infinitely more for science than for mankind. His patients are interesting to
him only as subjects for some new experiments. 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 a grain of mustard seed to the great heap of accumulated
knowledge” (118)
Though
Baglioni’s judgement is tainted with jealousy and scientific rivalry, there is
enough to refute on the scientific ground. In fact, later, relying on the
medical tradition, he administers and prescribes an antidote to Giovanni in
order to cure the infection. But the antidote he gives is an old discovery of Benvenuto
Cellini (1500-1571) which implies the medicine may not be efficacious to the
case at hand (133). In Rappicini’s medical experimentation, As Uroff (1972)
contends, there is violation of scientific research principles, especially in the
choice of research subjects, area and procedures. Actually, like Josef Mengele
and other Nazi doctors who did unethical research, Rappaccini’s botanic
laboratory experimentation is noxious, subjective, with the lack of control of experiment area,
instruments, and subjects (Dyal, 2001). 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.
From an ecofeminist perspective, Brenzo
(1976) links these dramatic forfeits with the victimization of the woman by men
for the greed of science and love. In
“Rappaccini’s Daughter”, the woman and nature
are destroyed by man’s desires. 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 decaying
building, ‘desolate’ and ‘ill-furnished’, gloomy ‘old mansion’, without
‘habitable air’ (113), Beatrice suffers further in the toxic garden. This point
is captured by the author through his equation of flowers and woman. He admits
that there is ‘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 (Rice, 1879). The
author’s point, here, is that scientific knowledge should not be a dark
manipulation of the environment, it has rather
be a good management of the ecosystem to better human conditions through
objectivity, ethical experiments, with a good control of research factors and
material.
2. Botanic Experimentation and Nature Destruction
Hawthorne attacks scientific
attempts that cause nature degradation. He disapproves the garden of
Rappaccini, an adulteration of the natural flora. He ridicules the botanic
garden whose marble and soil garniture fountain, plants, shrub, herbs, in
vases, urns, garden-pots all planted in the pool are pollutants (114). The
botanic experimentation with high garden sculpture and architecture used,
though attractive with its greenery pasture and watery verdure is polluted. Giovanni
contemplates,
All about the pool into which the water
subsided grew various plants, that seemed to require a plentiful supply of
moisture for the nourishment of gigantic leaves, and in some instances, flowers
gorgeously magnificent. There was one shrub in particular, set in a marble vase
in the midst of the pool […] (114).
This
description of the garden shows that the plants under medical experimentation
grow in a pool. Though the narrator does not mention it, this ensures that the aquatic
organisms are contaminated since the garden is a nursery of noxious flora. In other
words, it suggests that the toxic herbage produces pollutants which are
destructive to algae, hydrilla, and other aquatic vegetation. Moreover, the
laboratory is dangerous to aquatic fauna that grows in the pool. More
concretely, as portrayed by the narrator, the scientific hybridation operated
in the botanic laboratory of Rappaccini is immoral and therefore pollutes the
surrounding environment. In addition to fatal impact of the garden to human
subjects, that is Beatrice and Giovanni, as discussed in the first part of this
essay, the adulterated nature of Rappaccini makes them fatal to surrounding
biological environment once they exhale. Cases of insects, reptiles, and flowers, are
numbered in the story to have succumbed the consequence of this scientifism.
The narrator observes,
It appeared to him, however, that a drop
or two of moisture from the broken stem of the flower descended upon the
lizard’s head. For an instant the reptile contorted itself violently, and then
lay motionless in the sunshine (120).
The
death of this lizard is an indication that the poisonous plant species have
contaminated the surrounding environment. This is very dangerous since the
garden is an urban open space. Though human beings resist to the plant
pollutants, they encage their fatal effect in their lungs. Rappaccini knows it
in advance that the garden is deadly. But for the sake of science and medicine
he needs an experimental group to use as human specimen. Both his subjects,
that is Beatrice and Giovanni having been in contact with the plants after some
time become noxious to nature. Beatrice experiences that she is intoxicated
when she discovers that any organism under her gaze perishes. The narrator
captures it in the following lines:
While Beatrice was gazing at the insect
with childish delight, it grew faint and fell at her feet; its bright wings
shivered; it was dead ‒from no cause that he could discern, unless it were the
atmosphere of her breath (121).
Not
only Beatrice herself, even Giovanni discovers that she is infected by the
garden poison. Earlier in the story Giovanni buys a bouquet. When later he
offers the bunch of flowers to Beatrice, following his being enticed by the
gorgeous splendour of her beauty, he notices with surprise that the flowers
start withering once they come into contact with her breath. This shows to
which extent the subjects experience the doom of Rappaccini’s intellectual
projects. The author plays on the narrative techniques to represent the damage
on subjects by letting them experience the degradation of their physical nature
themselves while allowing onlookers to live the dreadful situation. Thus walking
homeward, Giovanni discovers that Beatrice is fatal to any herb placed at the
reach of her fragrance withers and meets its end. The narrator mentions,
She lifted the bouquet from the ground,
and then, as if inwardly ashamed at having stepped aside from her maidenly
reserve to respond to a stranger’s greeting, passed swiftly homeward through
the garden. But few as the moments were, it seemed to Giovanni, when she was on
the point of vanishing beneath the sculptured portal, that his beautiful
bouquet was already beginning to wither in her grasp (122).
The
same goes with Giovanni. Turning eyes to a bouquet that has been in his
chamber, a horrible scene appears in his eyes as he witnesses the flowers
drooping and dying away (134). This is an indication in the research area, both
the biological environment that is the fauna and flora and the physical
environment or atmosphere are endangered by the scientific practice of
Dr.Rappaccini. The accumulation of the deadly fragrance produced by the botanic
herbage in the atmosphere nearby the garden may generate infectious diseases to
the surrounding population. In fact, under the phenomenon of photosynthesis,
the contact of the toxic substance with ambient atmospheric organisms is
susceptible to engender harm to the town of Padua. Furthermore, trying to
consider the horror of his deteriorated nature, Giovanni he expires at a spider
weaving webs in his room. Despite the height separating him and the animal, the
contaminated breath resists the surrounding air chemical particles and causes
tragedy to the innocent natural creature. The spider collapses under his breath
and falls down dead (135). Later, towards the end of the story, Giovanni
exterminates a swarm of insects by just breathing at them. The narrator
delineates it through the following lines,
There was a swarm of summer insects
flitting through the air in search of the food promised by the flower odors of
the fatal garden. […] he sent forth a breath among them, and smiled bitterly at
Beatrice as at least a score of the insects fell dead upon the ground (137).
All
this harm on nature shows that Rappacini’s medical discovery rather than being a
betterment to the human species is merely a vain philosophy of the lesser evil.
Certainly, the experiment proves that the experimental group that is Beatrice
and Giovanni, is immune to disease while being disastrous to the surrounding
fauna and flora. This then may complicate answers to the experiment hypothesis,
for the comparison of the experimental group to the control group, that is the
people in Padua city, will reveal a paradoxical situation of Beatrice and
Giovanni who are immune and contagious to nature on the one hand. On the other
hand, the control group remains vulnerable to disease, yet it is not
contagious.
This research for a new project to
improve human health condition through botanical medicine is founded on Dr.
Giacomo Rappaccini’s belief in homeopathic approach about the nature of disease
and forms of cure (Uroff, 1972: 63). In other words, his medical theory is based
on the fact that minute amount of substances when taken internally or applied externally
stimulate reaction that mimic the disease state. These substances may be used
to cure the disease, that is, letting like treat like (Al-Achi, 2008: 8). On
the contrary, his opponents represented by Professor Pietro Baglioni support
the allopathic approach of medicine. Allopathic medicine or Western medicine
utilises drugs and chemicals to restore health whereas botanical medicine seeks
to restore health by using herbs and their constituents (Al-Achi, 2008: xi). Baglioni a supporter of allopathy, which is
in vogue in Massachusetts at the time Hawthorne writes this short story,
accuses him of lack of valid methodology and purporting to subvert the natural
ecosystem by the artificial physical
environment (Stripling, 2005). But the author approves the positive impact of
the experiment for the personal beauty and strength of Beatrice and the
greenery aspect of the city. Rappaccini persuades,
“Dost thou deem is misery to be endowed
with marvellous gifts against which no power nor strength could avail an
enemy‒misery, to be able to quell the mightiest with a breath‒misery, to be as
terrible as thou art beautiful? Wouldst thou, then, have preferred the
condition of a weak woman, exposed to all evil and capable of none” (139).
Above
all, Hawthorne celebrates the scientist’s eager interest in changing the world
for better. While he discredits using human research subject, subjective method
to elicit medical findings, and uncontrollable research instruments and area,
the garden, as Rosenberry argues “gives to Giovanni a picture of an exciting
laboratory of experimental science” while using Beatrice in the botanic
laboratory is simply professionalism to “pass the torch to the new generation”
(1960: 40). This is an indication that in the policy
of ecology care, as John Donne sustains, “no man is an island” (Meditation
XVII) all the scientific disciplines have to work hand in hand for a good and
durable sustainability of the environment. That is why the author satires the
Massachusetts society whose lack of virtues impacts on the ecosphere (Cuddy,
1987: 39). In his dramatic monologue, Baglioni is jealously determined to
‘thwart’ (Baym, 1989:1157) 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 the 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 favoured by other medical
professors. This difference in reaction ensures the science’s environmental
constraints. It 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 in the destruction of the
natural purity (1973).
Conclusion
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. This conflict
is in part due to the natural order and mentalities of people in the place where
the researcher intends to carry out his experiment. In addition, as result of
the ecocritical interpretation of the short story, special attention must be
paid to the overall function of the ecosystem, that is all humans, fauna, and
flora should be taken into account by the scientific research. Thus following
such environmental sustainability standards is what makes science servant of
man.
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