Science, Reason, and Humanity Theme Analysis

Set during the Age of Enlightenment—a movement that glorified science and reason—“Rappaccini’s Daughter” is the story of three scientists: the young medical student Giovanni, his family friend and fellow doctor Baglioni, and Baglioni’s arch-rival, the “famous doctor” Rappaccini. Given that all three characters are doctors, one might think that their life’s work would be to use scientific processes to heal others. However, as each of these men tries to impact and understand the world through science, each of them causes only destruction. Their collective failure to use reason to arrive at truth or virtue suggests the limitations of science as a way to understand the world and shows the terrible human cost of rationality.

Rappaccini is the story’s most obvious embodiment of the danger of science and rationality. Described as a “true man of science,” Rappaccini’s life’s work is to experiment on plants, which are said to produce “medicines that are as potent as a charm.” However, Rappaccini’s plant-based potions are also rumored to have sinister effects, and Rappaccini himself is said to have perverse motives. Baglioni tells Giovanni, for instance, that Rappaccini “cares infinitely more for science than for mankind” and that “He would sacrifice human life” to gain even the tiniest bit of scientific knowledge. Baglioni’s comment not only paints Rappaccini as sinister, but it also implies that science can be harmful if it is not tempered by morality and human empathy.

As it turns out, Rappaccini’s experiments do harm someone: his only daughter, the beautiful Beatrice who tends her father’s garden. As the story progresses, Giovanni discovers that the plants are poisonous to everyone except Beatrice, whose body—by Rappaccini’s design—contains the same poisons and is therefore immune. At the end of the story, Rappaccini reveals his belief that he has done a service to Beatrice by endowing her with “marvellous gifts,” such as her ability to kill people and creatures with her poisonous breath. But Beatrice herself feels that her father has irreparably and unjustifiably condemned her. She tells him she would rather be “loved” than “feared” and that her death will cleanse her of the “evil” he has imbued in her. In other words, Rappaccini’s own “patient” condemns his scientific experiments on her as being harmful and morally reprehensible.

Rappaccini’s use of science for sinister ends is bad enough, but Hawthorne also shows that scientific pursuits lead the story’s other two scientists—Baglioni and Giovanni—astray. Baglioni, for instance, treats science as a professional competition, rather than a way to serve others. While at first his desire to keep Giovanni away from Rappaccini seems fueled by his concern for the young man, Baglioni’s professional rivalry with Rappaccini is actually his motivating force. When he first finds out that Giovanni is familiar with Rappaccini, for instance, he vows to protect Giovanni from coming “to any harm.” However, he immediately adds that he’s frustrated by the “insufferable impertinence” of Rappaccini trying to steal Baglioni’s own protégé, Giovanni. Baglioni seems more upset by Rappaccini’s supposed infringement on his own sphere of influence than by the potential harm Giovanni might suffer. Hawthorne again shows Baglioni’s ulterior motives when he gives Giovanni an antidote that will allegedly cure Beatrice of her poisonous nature. Though this seems to be an attempt to help Beatrice and Giovanni, Baglioni later chuckles to himself that “We will thwart Rappaccini!” Baglioni’s focus, then, is on ruining Rappaccini’s experiment out of professional animus, not saving Beatrice. And, in fact, the antidote actually kills Beatrice instead of curing her. Whether or not this was Baglioni’s intention, he doesn’t seem to care that his “medicine” has killed a patient. Instead, after witnessing Beatrice’s death from a hiding place, he calls out to taunt Rappaccini. Baglioni’s behavior shows that science is not motivated wholly by reason—jealousy and revenge drive scientific pursuits as much as a quest for objective knowledge. Furthermore, this illustrates that science, when uncoupled from morality and compassion, can lead to harm.

While Giovanni is not as depraved as Rappaccini or Baglioni, science also leads him to immorality, as he uses reason to arrive at inaccurate and harmful conclusions about reality. For Giovanni, this revolves around his scrutiny of Beatrice. Despite his intuition that Beatrice is lovely and good, Giovanni has doubts about her nature after observing her deleterious effect on insects and flowers, and he worries that “those dreadful peculiarities in her physical nature” may correspond to a “monstrosity of soul.” Giovanni ultimately decides, based on a pattern of living things dying in her presence, that Beatrice is evil. However, while his observations are correct (she does have this effect) and his inference is rational, he is wrong. Beatrice is not evil; she is an innocent victim of her father’s experiment whose heart is pure. Science, then, has led Giovanni to the wrong conclusion, and this conclusion leads Giovanni to accuse Beatrice of being evil. This accusation wounds her deeply enough that she loses the will to live.

It’s Beatrice who emerges as the story’s most virtuous character, and it’s significant that Hawthorne depicts her in explicit opposition to science. When Giovanni says that he has heard she has deep scientific knowledge of medicinal plants, she scoffs, saying, “I know no more of them than their hues and perfume…Signor, do not believe these stories about my science.” Furthermore, she questions the notion that anyone could arrive at truth through rationally deducing it with scientific observation: “If true to the outward senses,” she says, “still it may be false in its essence”— in other words, she argues that scientific observations do not always reveal inner truth. Giovanni’s belief in science, though, ultimately leads him to conclude that she is in fact exactly what she appears to be. This conclusion leads to the innocent Beatrice’s death, which embodies the death of virtue and humanity in the face of pure reason.