Knowledge and Sin Theme Analysis

Hawthorne twice compares Rappaccini’s garden to Eden, calling to mind the Biblical story of man’s fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. In that story, Adam and Eve live in a utopian garden and God’s only rule for them is not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Unfortunately, they eat the fruit, and God makes them mortal and banishes them from Eden. Hawthorne’s story parallels this Bible story, as Beatrice and Rappaccini tend a vibrant and isolated garden, and it is Rappaccini’s thirst for knowledge that leads to his and Beatrice’s downfall. Like the Biblical story, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” warns readers of the dangers of ruthlessly pursuing knowledge, and it additionally warns about the foolishness of playing God by trying to interfere in the world’s natural order.

Hawthorne explicitly sets up the parallel between Rappaccini’s garden and the Garden of Eden from the very beginning of the story. As Giovanni sees Rappaccini tending his plants for the first time, he notices that Rappaccini moves among the plants with great caution, as though “walking among malignant influences, such as savage beasts, or deadly snakes, or evil spirits.” Rappaccini’s “air of insecurity” troubles Giovanni, because gardening is such an “innocent” pastime—especially since it was the occupation of the “unfallen parents of the race” (Adam and Eve). In this light, Giovanni asks himself with dread whether he is looking at the “Eden of the present world” and whether this sinister man Rappaccini, who seems to be growing poisonous plants, could possibly be Adam.

The obvious divergence between the Garden of Eden and Rappaccini’s garden is that Rappaccini’s garden is already corrupted—it is poisonous and sinister, whereas Eden was pure. However, despite that Rappaccini’s garden is already corrupted, further danger still lurks within it: like in the Garden of Eden, Hawthorne suggests that Rappaccini’s garden tempts people towards sinful pursuit of knowledge. With Eve, the serpent convinced her to pursue knowledge, but Rappaccini seems to have an inherent thirst to learn the secrets of nature: “He would sacrifice human life,” Baglioni says, “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 his accumulated knowledge.” This quote explicitly associates Rappaccini’s quest for knowledge with evil and inhumanity, insinuating that his garden—a creation of scientific knowledge—is evil and harmful to mankind.

Rappaccini’s quest for knowledge is inextricable from his desire to interfere in the natural order of the world. After all, his experiments involve creating hybrid plants not found in nature and testing their (sometimes helpful and sometimes toxic) effects on humans. Hawthorne explicitly condemns Rappaccini for the hubris of wanting to alter nature, and nowhere is this clearer than in his effect on Beatrice. As readers learn towards the end of the story, Rappaccini has interfered in Beatrice’s nature by infusing her with poisons from his garden, making her something of a hybrid, scientifically-produced creature just like the plants themselves. While Rappaccini claims that he altered her nature out of love (giving her defenses against those who might harm her), his motivation was likely selfish: due to her poison, she can safely tend the plants that Rappaccini himself cannot touch, making her an essential accessory to gaining further scientific knowledge. By interfering with Beatrice in pursuit of knowledge, however, Rappaccini causes her great harm. Beatrice’s poisonous nature isolates her from others, leaving her lonely and subject to the gossip and suspicions of others. Accusatorily, she tells her father she would rather be “loved, not feared.” Rappaccini’s condemnation of Beatrice indirectly leads to her death, which shows the tremendous cost of altering nature in pursuit of knowledge.

Overall, Hawthorne’s parallel between Rappaccini’s garden and the Garden of Eden is not simply suggesting that humans are sinful—that lesson is as old as time. What Hawthorne adds is that humans are still just as sinful as they ever were, and still making the same mistake of pursuing knowledge for its own sake and interfering with the world’s natural order. When Giovanni sees the coat of arms belonging to a family whose ancestor Dante depicted suffering the “immortal agonies of his Inferno,” it reminds readers that sin is ancient and its consequences are unimaginably severe. To avoid such punishment, Hawthorne suggests, one must be careful not to lose sight of humanity and morality when pursuing knowledge, and one must respect the natural order of the world, lest you bring harm to others by changing it.