Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the short story Rappaccini's Daughter.
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote "Rappaccini's Daughter" in the December 1844 issue of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review in New York.A medical researcher in Padua named Giacomo Rappaccini grows a garden of poisonous plants.He brings up his daughter to tend the plants and she becomes resistant to the poisons, but in the process she herself becomes poisonous to others.Hawthorne's version of the traditional story of a poisonous maiden has been adopted in contemporary works.
The story is set in Padua, Italy.From his quarters, Giovanni Guasconti, a young student of letters at the University of Padua, sees the beautiful daughter of a scientist.The gardens are filled with poisonous plants that were grown by her father.Giovanni notices that the withering of fresh flowers and the death of an insect when exposed to her skin is strange.Professor Pietro Baglioni, Giovanni's mentor, warned him that Rappaccini was devious and that his work should be avoided.Beatrice was raised in the presence of poison, and Giovanni discovered that she was poisonous.To create great feelings of doubt in Giovanni, Beatrice urges him to look past her poisonous exterior and see her pure and innocent essence.The consequences of his encounters with the plants begin when he discovers that he himself has become poisonous; after another meeting with Baglioni, Giovanni brings a powerful antidote to Beatrice so that they can be together, but the antidote kills her rather than cure her.
The sources of Hawthorne's story are in India.One of the two political rivals uses the gift of a visha kanya, a beautiful girl who is fed on poison, in the play Mudrarakshasa.The theme of a woman transformed into a phial of venom is popular in Indian literature.The story was passed to the West from India.In the 17th century, Robert Burton picked up the tale in The Anatomy of Melancholy and gave it a historical character: the Indian king sent Alexander the Great a girl with poison.
Pietro Baglioni, the character in Hawthorne's story, draws a parallel between the fate of Beatrice and an old story of a poisonous Indian girl presented to Alexander.The University of Padua's botanical garden was founded in 1545.It is not known if the garden influenced Hawthorne in writing "Rappaccini's Daughter".
It is possible that Hawthorne was inspired by The Down-Easters by John Neal.The Yankee published the first substantial praise of Hawthorne's work in 1828.[3]
Hawthorne begins the story with a reference to the writings of a fictional writer named 'Monsieur Aubépine', who was named after the French name of the hawthorn plant.He praises and criticizes the author.The introduction aims to establish a tone of uncertainty and confusion, throwing off expectations and establishing the theme of the interrelationship of perception, reality and fantasy.Some of the texts by M. de l'Aubépine translate into Hawthorne's own works.
"Beatrice or the Beautiful Poisoner" was published in "La Revue Anti-Aristocratique", according to the narrator.