Rappaccini's Daughter

“The young stranger, who was not unstudied in the great poem of his country, recollected that one of the ancestors of this family, and perhaps an occupant of this very mansion, had been pictured by Dante as a partaker of the immortal agonies of his Inferno.”

This is the story’s opening paragraph. The mention of Dante grounds the text in a specific geographical location and alludes to one of the best-known works of Western literature. It also suggests parallels between Giovanni’s fate and that of the previous occupant—the young man is replacing, in a way, the family’s ancestor, who is now in Hell. This allusion foreshadows the story’s tragic end.

“It was strangely frightful to the young man’s imagination, to see this air of insecurity in a person cultivating a garden, that most simple and innocent of human toils, and which had been alike the joy and labor of the unfallen parents of the race. Was this garden, then, the Eden of the present world?—and this man, with such a perception of harm in what his own hands caused to grow, was he the Adam?”

This paragraph uses irony to set the stage for the plot’s development. The narrator uses the phrase “most simple and innocent” to refer to gardening through Giovanni’s eyes, knowing that Rappaccini’s garden is anything but simple and innocent. Here the author alludes to Adam and Eve, drawing a parallel between Rappaccini and Adam. By this logic, then, Beatrice is Eve. Such a reading is strengthened by the fact that Beatrice is created from Rappaccini, the way Eve was—from Adam’s rib. Such parallels to the biblical story would also suggest a potential incestuous relationship between the doctor and his daughter. Additionally, in this scenario, Giovanni plays the part of the serpent, feeding Beatrice a terrible substance.