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AMERICAN LITERARY CRITICISM, SIMON NTAMWANA

American Literary Criticism

'''Ecocritical Analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne's “Rappaccini’s Daughter” '''

'''Simon Ntamwana, American Studies Programme, Department of Intercultural Studies, Faculty of Cultural Sciences,Gadjah Mada University, '''

'''Ecocritical Analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne's “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 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, 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 cover 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.

'''A. 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 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 the environment in its broadest sense as 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”, the 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). Therefore, the ecocritical theory is pertinent to the analysis of the short story.

2. Transcendentalism and Nathaniel Hawthorne

According to Philip F. Gura (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 likeminded in Concord in Boston. The transcendental club was interested in German philosophy and was 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 empire to embrace the 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 church 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 Thoreau, 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 selfconsciousness. From the 1830s, there were 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 quarterly periodical about intellectual and social reformation ideas that were edited by Margaret Fuller. As so far mentioned, transcendentalism intended 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 certainty that attends all material demonstrations. Therefore, Transcendentalists 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 orthodox Calvinism 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 emphasise that Christ was not necessary to salvation and other religions like Hinduism, Buddhism 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 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 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 individual 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 marginalised. 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 transcendentalist movement were various and intimate. Hawthorne 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 the 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 anti-transcendentalism 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 victimise 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 idealised while the urban is demonised. 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, others 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 the 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.; the application of ecocritical theory hand-in-hand with environmental notions; and the 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.

'''B. 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 the cultural environment and the degradation 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?

C. 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 speciesof 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 Rappaccini 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 dissension,“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 Rappaccini’s medical experimentation, As Uroff (1972) contends, there is a 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 conservatism 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 Nuremberg Code. From an ecofeminist perspective, Brenzo (1976) links these dramatic forfeits with the victimisation 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 Elisabetta 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’ (114). The same issue of adulteration of nature and woman is also depicted by Hawthorne in “Heidegger’s experiment”, and the “Birthmark” where women are victimised 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 hybridization operated in the botanic laboratory of Rappaccini is immoral and therefore pollutes the surrounding environment. In addition to the fatal impact of the garden on 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 a 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 is 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 odours 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 Rappaccini’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 homoeopathic 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 a reaction that mimics the disease state. These substances may be used to cure the disease, that is, letting like a 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 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 paper examined the relationship between human acts and the nature in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter”. It further explores the impact of scientific experimentation of Dr Giacomo Rappaccini and the conservative medical professionalism of Professor Pietro Baglioni on the surrounding environment. In the light of ecocritical theory, it was found out that the use of children in the botanic experimentation for the care of noxious plants intoxicates them. In their turn, the children became fatal to the surrounding fauna and flora. In addition, in his attempt to redeem the children by giving an antidote to Giovanni, Baglioni caused the story tragic scene. After drinking the medicine Beatrice dies on the spot. Furthermore, it was found out that the children are exploited by these university professors. They use them for scientific experimentation in order to increase their own power and wealth. Moreover, it was found out that all female characters in the short story are marginalised by the society because they are associated with labour in polluted and dirty areas. Thus is recommended to readers to pay much attention to the overall function of the ecology, that is all humans, fauna, and flora, atmosphere, etc. because there are reciprocal relations among the elements of nature. In addition, researchers in science should take heed in the choice of the research area, subjects, instruments, and techniques and aim at the environmental sustainability by making science servant of man.

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