Rappaccini’s Daughter Study Guide

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born to Nathaniel Hathorne and Elizabeth Clarke Manning on Independence Day in 1804. He was also a descendant of John Hathorne, the only judge in the Salem witch trials who never apologized for his participation. In his early twenties, Hawthorne legally changed his last name slightly, adding the “w” so he would not be associated with his great-great-grandfather. He attended Bowdoin College, Class of 1825, but reported that he preferred getting into scrapes over paying attention to his studies. In 1842, Hawthorne joined a transcendentalist utopian community at Brook Farm—not because he agreed with the movement but in order to save up for marriage. Hawthorne wed Sophia Peabody in 1842. By all accounts, they enjoyed a happy union. Together they had three children named Una, Julian, and Rosa. He published his first work in 1828 and his most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter, in 1850. Hawthorne was part of the Romantic literary movement, which emphasized the importance of the individual and the subjective experience. He was the contemporary of many American literary giants, including Herman Melville, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe. In addition to writing, Hawthorne held a number of political positions, such as U.S. consul in Liverpool, England while his former classmate, Franklin Pierce, was president of the United States. After experiencing chronic stomach pains, Hawthorne died in his sleep on May 19, 1864 during a vacation in Plymouth, New Hampshire.

After the rise and fall of the Greco-Roman Empire, Italy fell into the Middle Ages (500-1300 A.D.), where long-cultivated skills were lost and access to new information was increasingly limited. Italians turned to the Catholic faith as a respite when the Black Plague and other mysterious diseases regularly killed city dwellers overnight. It was during this period that Dante Alighieri wrote the Divine Comedy, which explores realms of the afterlife according to Christianity. During the Italian Renaissance (1400-1600s), artists and prominent thinkers began to revisit the ideas of the Greco-Roman Empire. Modern science was born during the Enlightenment (1600-1800s), when prominent thinkers began to prize reason, skepticism, and a scientific approach to gaining knowledge. Hawthorne’s short story explores the clash between Enlightenment-era reason and the Middle Ages faith mindset.

Rappaccini’s Daughter relies on the popular Indian trope of Visha Kanya, young women assassins whose bodily fluids are poisonous. References to Visha Kanya date as far back as the 4th century B.C. during the reign of Maurya Emperor Chandragupta. The name Beatrice comes from Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s famous epic, Divine Comedy, written in the 14th century A.D. The poem’s exploration of hell, purgatory, and heaven mirrors the discussion of purity and corruption that Hawthorne explores in this short story. Due to the Italian setting and tragic ending, Rappaccini’s Daughter reminds readers of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as well as Othello. Romeo and Juliet features death by poison as well as misinformation. Othello includes a protagonist who doubts the good intentions of his lover. Authors after Hawthorne continued to use Northern Italy as the setting for works that address moral decline, including Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice.