Name
Professor Martin
1301 S13
4th May 2007 
Inexpressibly Beautiful
	Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Rappaccini’s Daughter” is the tale of Giovanni Guasconti, a young man, who falls in love with Beatrice, the beautiful daughter of a scientist renowned for turning poisons into medicine. A great deal of intrigue and drama surrounds this beautiful young woman. She is the result of her father’s experimentation, the object of Giovanni’s obsession, and the victim of the rivalries between her father and Pietro Baglioni, a “Professor of Medicine.” The series of revelations and subsequent tragedies, that make this tale so moving, take place in and around a garden. This garden is no simple thing; it appears to be naught but the most beautiful and pleasingly fragrant of flower gardens, but beneath the surface lies a darker nature. It is no flower garden; it is the medicinal garden of Doctor Rappaccini, and many if not all of the blossoms are poisonous. The most potent of the garden’s deadly gems inhabits a ruined fountain that, despite its disfigurement, flows freely with untainted water. A great deal of symbolism surrounds this fountain and its deadly flowers. Hawthorne continually draws connections between the fountain, the flowers, and Beatrice. While each can be seen to symbolize powerful ideas on its own, the connection between these elements is just as important to the symbology as it is to the story.
	The symbolism of the fountain, flower, and Beatrice, is likely the most significant element of the story. One of the many interpretations of their significance is explained in detail by Alfred Kloeckner. His interpretation of these symbols is straightforward, yet deeply meaningful. He finds parallels in Hawthorne’s work to Milton’s third book of Paradise Lost. These parallels lie in the nature of the flower and the fountain. Kloeckner reveals the parallel by first telling us how Hawthorne thematically associates purple and crimson flowers with true love in many of his stories, and second by showing that Hawthorne’s writing often describes water as having an immortal and pure nature. This knowledge then allows the parallel to be drawn between Hawthorne’s “flower of love growing in immortal water” in “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” to the, “Immortal Amarant… shading the Fount of Life,” in Milton’s text (Kloeckner).
	Kloeckner also explains that by associating the fountain and flower with these holy aspects, Beatrice is also associated with it through the obvious connections Hawthorne draws between Beatrice, the flower, and the fountain. He also brings attention to the fact that all three elements have a broken aspect to them. The fountain, while its water gushes and sparkles, is housed in a “woefully shattered” sculpture. The flower, a symbol of holy beauty and love, has been tainted into a deadly poison. Likewise Beatrice, having a pure and loving soul, is trapped within a deadly shell. And it is because of Giovanni’s inability to coherently see past Beatrice’s “broken,” and thus bad, aspect to the purity of heart beneath that causes a great deal of suffering before the story is over.
	While Kloeckner’s theory makes a great deal of sense, it exhibits a fairly standard avoidance of the physical aspects of the love he feels could have saved Beatrice’s story from ending so gruesomely. While he does mention the shallowness of Giovanni’s feelings, he does not fully examine the implications of that shallowness. And while I disagree with the overall tone of Frederick Crews take on “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” it addresses some insights that were criticized and downplayed in Kloeckner’s paper.
	Crews points out a fact that should be obvious. Giovanni is attracted to Beatrice, physically as well as psychologically. Thus the poisonous nature of Beatrice has much greater symbolic significance. While Crews does not outright say so, his paper opens the door to interpreting Beatrice’s poison as a symbolic manifestation of the stigma society places upon sexuality. However if that were so would not the worldly Giovanni be the poisonous one rather than the innocent and sheltered Beatrice? Sadly it’s not that simple, the story is being told from Giovanni’s point of view thus his apprehension of sexual feelings demonizes Beatrice as the instigator of those emotions, hence her body is poisonous to him. It seems shallow to unconsciously put the blame on another for your own transgressions, but as many will tell you Giovanni is far and away from being a deep individual.
	I find myself in agreement with much of what both Kloeckner and Crews find in the symbolism of this tale. However, there is another meaning to this story; it lies beneath the surface. A shadow story that is told only by Hawthorne’s word choice and the symbolism that seems to have been discussed to the point of exhaustion, a story that has been implied and alluded to, but never put into words. It is a story about the conflict of Christian and “pagan” thought, a story that calls into question the demonization of womankind.
	Both stories follow Giovanni through his revelations in the garden, and in both, his youth and impressionability are important factors. In this understory Giovanni is as much a symbol as he is a person. He is young, grown but not yet wise, intelligent though not yet learned. He represents an open mind, influence but not yet sealed into the ways of his society. The story begins when he is exposed to something strange and new, Beatrice and the garden. Their beauty fascinates him, and his curiosity leads him to watch and study them, to try to understand them. 
In the night, after first encountering these curiosities, Giovanni has a dream of a beautiful flower and a girl. It is no pleasant dream, for he feels that there is something he is missing, some danger that, in his desire, he simply cannot understand. However, Just as his society conditioned him to, he disregards this feeling, this uncertainty, as an “error of fancy, or even of judgment, [that] we may have incurred during the sun’s decline, or among the shadows of the night, or in the less wholesome glow of moonshine,” to be dispelled by the light of dawn. Though in the original tale the reader goes on to find out that Giovanni’s first impression was no “error” (Hawthorne), the wording of this sentence is deeply important to the symbolism of the hidden story. All of the times described are considered sacred in a great many earth worshiping beliefs, some named, others not. The way Hawthorne describes nighttime and the moon as being shadowed and unwholesome, conveys the sense that the night is somehow sinister. In most earth and nature based beliefs the moon is seen as a feminine entity, while the sun is masculine. Thus by claiming that the night and the moon presiding over it are untrustworthy it is implied that the society in which Giovanni was raised has similar distrust for womankind.
This dispelling of Giovanni’s fear, the fear of the unknown and unfamiliar, is accomplished by the morning sun that glitters off the dew and not only reaffirms the garden’s beauty, but enhances it while at the same time bringing “everything within the limits of ordinary experience.” His realization and, at this point, acceptance of the inherent beauty of the garden’s flowers when solitary from all other influence, is an interesting symbolic event. While I am unlearned in regards to Freudian psychology, Crews mentions that in that school of thought flowers are indeed symbols of sexuality. Though I cannot speak for the credibility of Crews statement of “Freudian symbolism,” I can tell you that there are cultures where flowers are symbols of sexuality and creation. Thus Giovanni’s acceptance that there is a good aspect to the flowers is an acknowledgement that the idea of sexuality as sinful is perhaps unfounded. 
In Hinduism there is a sect which, like many “pagan” beliefs, holds women to be inherently connected to the divine due to the ability to give birth to new life. Yoni is a word with a great multitude of meanings, although as is typical a great many westerners have gravely misunderstood it. While westerners often regard it as just another word for female genitalia, its proper meaning is more thoughtful, and in fact holy. Yoni is their word for the great womb of the cosmos that gave birth to all things, the inherent holiness of this word transcends all it’s uses in varying intensities. There is no single word in the English language that gives a similar amount of respect to that which everyone alive owes their existence. Many different flowers are seen as symbols of the yoni (Bess), thus I believe that the numerous varieties of flowers present in the garden are symbolizing the sexual and divine nature of woman kind. 
Where then does the significance of the fountain come to bear? In countless earth based beliefs fountains carry a potent symbolism that undeniably links back to the feminine as a divine power. Many of these beliefs revere water as a sacred element, without which there would be no life on earth. Even Christianity recalls habits from ages gone past by enshrining the waters of creation in their heavenly “Fount of Life” (Kloeckner). Many see the ocean as having given birth to all life, and fountains, particularly circular ones, are often seen to be yonic and generally feminine symbols because of their womblike protection of the creative and divinely charged waters. 
Hawthorne then through subtle connection of these powerful feminine symbols is showing the reader and Giovanni, if only they would notice it, that women are holy and good creatures despite society’s suppression and demonization of their sexual and thus creative nature. No matter how dangerous those flowers can be, they are no less beautiful, and it is no less true that Rappaccini from that very poison creates amazing medicines that save life, not destroy it. Hawthorne has thus, intentionally or not, through poor confused Giovanni asked a question that demands an answer, “What is this being? –beautiful, shall I call her? –or inexpressibly terrible?”

Works Cited This student did not use three library sources, but the analysis of the story is still strong
Bess, Savitri L. “Hinduism and the Mother.” The Path of the Mother. 2000. Web. 9 May 2007. 
Crews, Frederick C. “Giovanni's Garden.” American Quarterly. 16.3 (Autumn, 1964): 402-418. JSTOR. Web. 5 May 2007.
Kloeckner Alfred J. “The Flower and the Fountain: Hawthorne's Chief Symbols in ‘Rappaccini's Daughter’.” American Literature. 38.3 (Nov. 1966): 323-336. JSTOR. Web. 5 May 2007.