Good, Evil, and Morality Theme Analysis

In “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” Hawthorne presents the full spectrum of human morality: Rappaccini seems pure evil, Beatrice seems pure good, and Giovanni and Baglioni have conflicted intentions. As Giovanni, Baglioni, and Rappaccini all try to manipulate Beatrice to serve their own ends, it becomes clear that Beatrice’s naïve goodness cannot prevail in a world whose morality is inferior to hers. She dies as a result of the other characters’ immorality, showing that morality as pure as Beatrice’s cannot exist in our corrupted world.

Hawthorne offers Beatrice as the story’s example of good morality, an embodiment of pure goodness. This is immediately clear in Beatrice’s name, which is an allusion to Dante’s Divine Comedy, in which a woman named Beatrice guides the main character through the various realms of Heaven. Beatrice’s good morals are further apparent in her appearance—in addition to being beautiful, she exudes “simplicity and sweetness” and “tenderness,” she is like “the light of truth itself,” and she is a “simple, natural, most affectionate and guileless creature.” Her behavior supports these characterizations, as she is kind and tender when caring for the plants, she crosses herself whenever an insect dies in her presence (showing her concern for others, even vermin), and—most important—she takes scrupulous care to protect Giovanni from her own poisons and that of the plants, meaning that she denies herself physical contact with the man she loves for his own benefit. Beatrice’s virtues are clearest in this selfless denial of what she most wants and her acceptance that one day she must allow Giovanni to move on from her.

By contrast, Beatrice’s father Rappaccini is the story’s embodiment of evil. From the first time he appears in the garden, the reader sees that something about him is not right—for one, he is “emaciated, sallow, and sickly-looking.” Furthermore, unlike Beatrice’s “expression of simplicity and sweetness,” Rappaccini’s face “could never, even in his more youthful days, have expressed much warmth of heart.” Rappaccini’s reputation aligns with his sinister physical presence. Baglioni paints him as a man who 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 his accumulated knowledge.” And, in fact, he does just that by sacrificing Beatrice’s happiness to make her into one of his experiments, leaving her lonely and feared because her body is poisonous to others. Rappaccini seems to have no redeeming qualities; he is selfish, manipulative, arrogant, and inhumane.

While Beatrice and Rappaccini represent extremes of human morality, Giovanni and Baglioni are regular people: their actions and intentions are sometimes good and sometimes bad, and are most often they are an inextricable blend of the two. Giovanni, for example, is a young medical student who seems at first to be motivated by his desire to heal others and by his love for Beatrice. However, his ill-founded doubts as to her goodness lead him to falsely suspect her of betraying him, which makes him ultimately betray her, breaking her heart and leading to her death. Sometimes, Giovanni’s actions reflect an earnest desire to trust Beatrice, such as when he begs Baglioni not to speak ill of Beatrice (saying that Baglioni cannot “estimate the wrong—the blasphemy, I may even say—that is offered to her character by a light or injurious word”). Despite this protectiveness, Giovanni succumbs to his own doubts and selfishness, accusing Beatrice to her face of being evil and “accursed,” since he believes that she has made him poisonous (“as hateful, as ugly, as loathsome and deadly a creature as thyself—a world's wonder of hideous monstrosity!”). His inability to trust in Beatrice’s goodness leads him to a depraved and misguided tantrum that irrevocably harms her. As Beatrice dies, she says, “Thy words of hatred are like lead within my heart—but they, too, will fall away as I ascend,” suggesting that Giovanni has harmed Beatrice so profoundly that her only escape is to die.

Likewise, Baglioni’s actions and motives are sometimes good and sometimes bad, but his net effect in the story is harmful. At first, he seems to be a kind older man. He is a friend of Giovanni’s father (whose character has therefore been vouched for), and he takes Giovanni under his wing in a new city, feeding him dinner and warning him against his new neighbor Rappaccini’s bad intentions and reputation. While Baglioni’s motives here seem at first to be wholly protective, the narrator mentions casually that Giovanni might have taken Baglioni’s warnings with “many grains of allowance” had he known that Baglioni and Rappacini were professional rivals. The troubling implication here is that Baglioni might be disparaging Rappaccini out of professional jealousy, not concern for Giovanni. As the story progresses, both of these motives seem simultaneously true: Baglioni has good intentions in his desire to protect Giovanni from Rappaccini (who proves a real threat, just as Baglioni warned), and he has bad intentions in that he wants to use Giovanni’s proximity to Rappaccini to foil Rappaccini’s scientific success. This is clearest in the antidote that Baglioni gives to Giovanni for Beatrice. Baglioni seems to simultaneously want to return Beatrice to her natural state (thereby benefitting both Beatrice and Giovanni) and to want to ruin Rapapccini’s experiment (as he says to himself after he gives Giovanni the potion). When Beatrice dies, Baglioni reacts with “triumph mixed with horror”—he has killed Beatrice but succeeded in ruining his rival’s experiment. His final taunt to Rappaccini about his failed experiment (and dead daughter) suggests that perhaps Baglioni’s bad nature has outweighed the good.

Throughout the story, all of the characters succumb to their bad intentions except for Beatrice, which results in her (as the story’s only good character) dying. This seems almost inevitable when considering that Beatrice was not a creature of the broader world; her existence has always been “confined within the limits of that garden,” and once she came into contact with the corruption of the broader world, that corruption killed her. Beatrice’s death, coupled with Baglioni and Giovanni’s succumbing to their worst natures, suggests that evil will prevail over good in this world.