#Rappaccini’s Daughter

[now-that-i-saw-you]

the great thing about getting a degree in literature is that when I don't feel like studying but feel guilty for not studying, I can just read one of the books I'm required to read for the semester

[derangedrhythms]

They stood, as it were, in an utter solitude, which would be made none the less solitary by the densest throng of human life.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse; from 'Rappaccini's Daughter'

[nemaliwrites]

i finally got around to reading "Rappaccini's Daughter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne and now i have Dahlia Thoughts™

Rappaccini's Daughter, according to the Ace Attorney wiki, is where the inspiration for Dahlia's last name comes from. I read it with my Fandom Goggles on, and not to get too english class here, but....we're about to get pretty english class

For those of you who haven't read it, it's a gothic short story abt a medical researcher whose experiments with poisonous plants result in his own daughter, Beatrice, becoming poisonous. The man who falls in love with her slowly learns the truth about her nature and struggles to cope with it.

"Am I awake? Have I my senses?" said he to himself. "What is this being? Beautiful shall I call her, or inexpressibly terrible?"

A large portion of our MC's internal narration heavily revolves around the idea of one's appearance vs their nature. He refers to the garden as "an Eden of poisonous flowers". When he shuns Beatrice for what she is, she tells him that even though her exterior is poisonous, her soul is pure.

This is a direct contrast to Dahlia, who Phoenix refers to multiple times as an "angel". And, needless to say, her soul is quite the opposite.

But the one thing the story makes clear about Beatrice is that she is, at the end of the day, a victim of her circumstances - in the same way that Dahlia arguably is as well. The MC's realization of the truth comes like this: he realizes that because Beatrice has been raised in the presence of poison, she has become poisonous herself -> i feel like I don't even need to relate this back to Dahlia at this point, it kind of slaps you in the face.

Beatrice confronts her father, too, and asks why he inflicted this miserable curse on her; but he is adamant that he hasn't done anything wrong.

"Wouldst thou, then, have preferred the condition of a weak woman, exposed to all evil and capable of none?"

He claims it's anything but misery to be as terrible as you are beautiful, to have the power and strength against which no enemy can prevail -> does that not give you big Morgan vibes

At the end, she takes an antidote given to her, believing that it will cure her of her poison - but because she's been so inextricably tied w the poison, there's no curing her anymore.

To Beatrice,--so radically had her earthly part been wrought upon by Rappaccini's skill,--as poison had been life, so the powerful antidote was death

The comparisons to Dahlia are interesting, I think, in that the 'poison' can be used as a metaphor for literally anything else. If we stick with the whole 'you can't escape from your nature and whatever you are raised in the presence of is something you can't separate from yourself anymore', then in a way Dahlia is the exact opposite of Beatrice. One actively fights against and rejects her nature, isolating herself from the entire world, while the other accepts it wholeheartedly. It also can be used to draw further comparisons between Beatrice's father and Morgan: one purposefully molded his daughter to fit his desired image, while the other actively was not involved, but still led to the same end result.

Beatrice's tragedy is that she's aware of her poisonous nature and hates it. She tells Giovanni, her love interest, "I am poisonous! I am deadly! I am like the fatal basilisk that slays with a glance!" She's a prisoner of her father's making, a living weapon who longs for normalcy. Dahlia, on the other hand, embraces her poisonous nature. She uses her charm like a weapon, manipulating everyone around her. There's no longing for normalcy with her; she revels in the chaos she creates.

"Thou hast filled my veins with poison! Thou hast made me as hateful, as ugly, as loathsome and deadly a creature as thyself--a world's wonder of hideous monstrosity!"

And, unwillingly, Beatrice ends up passing on her poisonous nature to Giovanni - and now he's forced to live with this curse. What, then, does that say about Phoenix...?

[eleancrvances]

screaming crying throwing up over beatrice rappaccini. like. she’s named after dante’s beatrice. it’s said she’s intelligent and educated enough to be a professor. she has never been outside and lives alone with her dad. her mother is never mentioned, it’s implied she sprouted out of nothing like the plant she calls her sister and loves with all her heart. her father thought the only way to protect her was to make her deadly, while she only wanted to be loved. she’s the only one of her kind and not even the man she loves is willing to join her but would rather twist her nature, make her “ordinary”. she begs to be judged by her actions and words, nobody listens. her kindness is viewed as manipulation, her uniqueness and deadliness as monstrosity. she’s as terrible as she is beautiful and makes men feel weak. she’s a monster. she’s the furthest thing from it. she’s a science experiment and the most human character in the story. if anyone deserves a better ending, it’s her. "oh, was there not, from the first, more poison in thy nature than in mine?"

[spookycathymorshaw]

Note :

You'll find a poll about earlier gothic works, another about 19th-ish century ones, one about 20th-ish century ones, one about Dickinson's poetry and one about Poe's works in my 'gothic lit' tag on this post. There's also a cat versus raven poll in my 'edgar allan poe' tag.

[virtuouslibertines69]

"Blessed are all simple emotions, be they dark or bright! It is the lurid intermixture of the two that produces the illuminating blaze of the infernal regions." - "Rappaccini's Daughter", Nathaniel Hawthorne

Art by Vladimir Volegov

[lottiesoka]

The Athena Club Moodboards: Mary Jekyll, Justine Frankenstein, Diana Hyde, Beatrice Rappacinni, and Catherine Moreau.

[midsummernightsmemes]

𝓐𝓱 ... 𝓣𝓱𝓮𝔂'𝓻𝓮 𝓵𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓵𝓵𝔂 𝓽𝓸𝔁𝓲𝓬.

[pisswizard420]

Nobody:

Me: anyways rappaccinis daughter can be read as a story about the importance of accessibility and how without it disability and the development of one can be isolating. Beatrice is disabled in terms of the narrative, and Giovanni, upon developing the same disability, chooses to lash out, after being manipulated in that very vulnerable emotional state by someone claiming the ability to cure that disability and thus remove the societal barriers. This response to isolation and grief, caused in part by internalized ableism, leads directly to the tragic ending where Beatrice is dead, and Giovanni is left alone and isolated.

[xelidonia]

When I was in high school I was fascinated by "Rappaccini's Daughter". There was something about Beatrice and her innocence and tragedy that I just couldn't articulate. Now I know why: Beatrice is a Rose Bride. She's a Rose Bride trapped in a story that doesn't believe the world can be changed-- that doesn't believe in escape-- that can't imagine a world where women are free. Her story is meant to teach that Beatrice's nature has become so irreversibly tainted that the only way out for her is death. Of course every adult knows that being the Rose Bride sucks! But the mechanism of the greenhouse prevents Beatrice from believing she can exist anywhere else, and stripping off her Rose Bride dress would leave only an empty hollow. She lives on in captivity, a pawn in her father's argument. That's why the story cuts off where it does-- because there's no plausible ending for Giovanni here, since the author can't imagine that a man would inherit the same eternal suffering that Beatrice endures. I need to write essays about this. I need to write fanfic.

[anotherscrappile]

“Poison” by Alice Cooper is a “Rappaccini’s Daughter”-core song

[lemonlinelights]

^Rappaccini's Daughter about 100 pages

^a very old man with enormous wings five pages

Rime of the ancient mariner ^ it's a very long poem BUT

Here's Gandalf reading it^

^Fucked up poem I like called "Out,out" it's less than a page long

^the yellow wallpaper ten pages

The lottery ^ seven pages

No Exit^ a play about people being each others hell

[derangedrhythms]

Thy very prayers, as they come from thy lips, taint the atmosphere with death.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse; from 'Rappaccini's Daughter'

[treeroutes]

what's up ! non-exhaustive list of stories featuring weird plants :

The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham

The Night of the Triffids, Simon Clark

In the Tall Grass, Stephen King and Joe Hill

The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig', William Hope Hodgson

The Man Whom the Trees Loved, Algernon Blackwood

The Red Tree, Caitlín R. Kiernan

Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer

The Willows, Algernon Blackwood

The Nature of Balance, Tim Lebbon

'Bloom', John Langan

The Ruins, Scott Smith

The Wise Friend, Ramsey Campbell

'The Green Man of Freetown', The Envious Nothing : A Collection of Literary Ruins, Curtis M. Lawson

The Beauty, Aliya Whiteley

The Ash-Tree, M.R. James

Canavan's Backyard, J.P. Brennan

Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Jack Finney

The Hollow Places, T. Kingfisher

'Reaching for Ruins', Crow Shine, Alan Baxter

'Vortex of Horror', Gaylord Sabatini

Hothouse, Brian W. Aldiss

Vaster than Empires and More Slow, Ursula K. Le Guin

Odd Attachment, Ian M. Banks

Deathworld #1, Harry Harrison

The Bridge, John Skipp and Craig Spector

'The Garden of Paris', Eric Williams

Apartment Building E, Malachi King

The Seed from the Sepulchre, Clark Ashton Smith

Rappaccini's Daughter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Nursery, Lewis Mallory

The Other Side of the Mountain, Michel Bernanos

The Vegetarian, Han Kang

Sisyphean, Dempow Torishima

The Root Witch, Debra Castaneda

Semiosis, Sue Burke

The Wolf in Winter, Charlie Parker #12, John Connolly

Perennials, Bryce Gibson

Relic, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Gwen, in Green, Hugh Zachary

The Voice in the Night, William Hope Hodgson

Ordinary Horror, David Searcy

The Family Tree, Sheri S. Tepper

The Book of Koli, Rampart Trilogy #1, M.R. Carey

Seeders, A.J. Colucci

Concrete Jungle, Brett McBean

The Plant, Stephen King

Anthologies/collections :

The Roots of Evil: Weird Stories of Supernatural Plants, edited by Michel Parry

Chlorophobia: An Eco-Horror Anthology, edited by A.R. Ward

Roots of Evil: Beyond the Secret Life of Plants, edited by Carlos Cassaba

The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

Sylvan Dread: Tales of Pastoral Darkness, Richard Gavin

Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic, edited by Daisy Butcher

Weird Woods: Tales From the Haunted Forests of Britain, edited by John Miller

'But fungi aren't plants' :

The Fungus, Harry Adam Knight

Growing Things and Other Stories, Paul Tremblay

The Girl with All the Gifts, M.R. Carey

Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Fruiting Bodies, and Other Fungi, Brian Lumley

'The Black Mould', The Age of Decayed Futurity, Mark Samuels

What Moves the Dead, T. Kingfisher

The House Without a Summer, DeAnna Knippling

Mungwort, James Noll

Fungi, edited by Orrin Grey and Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Trouble with Lichen, John Wyndham

Notes :

all links lead to the goodreads page of the book, mostly because i like to look at book cover art ;

list features authors/books that i love (T. Kingfisher, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Ursula K. Le Guin, the collections from the British Library Tales of the Weird, etc.), but also a few that i don't like and some that i have not yet read ;

if upon seeing that list the first novel you check out is by Stephen King's you have not understood the assignment ;

not all of those are strictly horror stories, some are 100% science fiction (Brian W. Aldiss' Hothouse for instance).

[eleancrvances]

speaking of rappaccini’s daughter. in the end baglioni’s antidote is worthless, so... what the hell happens to giovanni after the ending? he’s already doomed, he’s just like beatrice. does he go live the rest of his days with rappaccini, in awkward furious silence? does baglioni keep him in his basement for the rest of his days? does he jump out the nearest window? who knows

[madseance]

“Who are you?”  “I'm you. But stronger.”

the thing about "Rappacini's Daughter" is that it's a fucking badass premise (girl is raised by her mad botanist father in a garden of poisonous plants and becomes immune to them but poisonous herself), but Nathaniel Hawthorne fell victim to one of literature's most alluring yet deadly traps: choosing to tell the story from the perspective of Some Boring Fucking Guy