Allusion in Rappaccini's Daughter

The Borgias were a powerful family in Italy during the 1400 and 1500s. The family produced two popes and many other religious and political leaders. They were rumored to have been particularly nefarious, engaging in murder, incest, and witchcraft. Historically, it’s more likely that they were committing common transgressions of the day: bribery, nepotism, and breaking religious vows to have sexual relationships.

Alexander the Great was a Macedonian conqueror who lived from 356 to 323 BCE. The anecdote Baglioni describes was first recorded in a collection of messages, the Secretum Secretorum, Alexander sent back and forth with his mentor, Aristotle. In the story, an Indian queen sent Alexander a beautiful girl as a gift. The girl, who exercises “snake-like” charms over men, was to poison Alexander in order to free her people. Fortunately for Alexander, Aristotle intervenes and provides a leaf as an antidote. The anecdote functions to foreshadow, or warn, Giovanni about Beatrice’s poisonous nature. It also happens to place Baglioni in an analogous position to Aristotle. There is one key difference between the story and “Rappaccini’s Daughter”:While the girl in the myth of Alexander the Great is sacrificed for political purposes, Beatrice is the victim of scientific experimentation.

The narrator again makes reference to Eden, the biblical garden that serves as the utopian setting for Adam and Eve. However, the garden in “Rappaccini’s Daughter” serves as an ironic anti-Eden where the characters are surrounded by death instead of blooming life.

In another reference to Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Hawthorne names Rappacini’s daughter “Beatrice.” In “Paradiso,” the third part of The Divine Comedy, a woman named Beatrice guides the protagonist through paradise. While in the myth of Adam and Eve, the woman is responsible for man’s expulsion from paradise, Dante’s Beatrice is responsible for guiding a man to paradise. These contrasting references lend ambiguity and complexity to Beatrice’s character in “Rappaccini’s Daughter.”

In one of the more overt allegorical moments of the poem, the narrator compares the garden to Eden and Giovanni to Adam. In the Old Testament, the Garden of Eden is the paradise in which the first two humans, Adam and Eve, inhabit. In the story, a snake tempts Eve to eat an apple from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. Eve, in turn, shares the fruit with Adam. When God finds out, he expels Adam and Eve from the garden. This allegory introduces themes of good and evil in the story, and provides a lens through which to analyze the relationship between Giovanni and Beatrice. Additionally, it questions the role of Rappaccini himself. As the creator of the garden, he is in a god-like position.

In Roman mythology, Vertumnus is a god associated with changes in nature and in life. He most prominently stands for changing seasons, plant growth, and harvest. In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Vertumnus transforms from a farmer to an old woman to win the love of the goddess Pomona. Vertumnus’s presence might be considered commonplace in an Italian garden but also perhaps underscores the role of Lisabetta, the elderly housekeeper, in guiding Giovanni to Beatrice.

The narrator uses a simile to describe the other plants’ movement as “serpent-like.” The reference to snakes suggests that the plants in the garden are more powerful, or more dangerous, than just plants. It is also an example of religious imagery, drawing a parallel between this garden and the biblical Garden of Eden.

One source that “Rappaccini’s Daughter” alludes to is Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, written in 1472, the first part of which is called “Inferno.” One of the members of the family that owned the home Giovanni is staying in was a figure that the protagonist meets in Dante’s rendition of hell. As a result, the initial setting Giovanni inhabits, the old mansion in Padua, becomes associated with suffering and torment.