"Perverted wisdom": Hawthorne's use of "Rapunzel" as a source for "Rappaccini's Daughter"

In "Rappaccini's Daughter", Hawthorne updates the "Rapunzel" fairytale, giving the reader an inverted, modernised version of the story. The setting and trappings are different, but both stories convey the same message: attempts by elders to excessively control and curtail their children are tragic exercises doomed to failure. The name Hawthorne chooses – Rappaccini – is the key to this reference. Rappaccini is acoustically similar to Rapunzel, and both play on vegetable associations: rampion, rappi (another word for rapeseed).

The character of Rappaccini is analogous to the witch: he is first seen dressed in “scholar's black”, and black is also the colour most associated with witches. He is also a herbalist, as were many of the “wise women” executed as witches. This is not a fairytale, though, so Rappaccini has the modern weapon of science rather than ancient magic in his arsenal. There's also another version of the witch in the crone Lisabetta, who furthers Rappaccini's experiment by conducting Giovanni through the labyrinthine corridors to the garden. The corridors here function as an analog of the forest through which the prince must travel to find Rapunzel.

Giovanni plays a dual role in the narrative. At first he functions as Rapunzel's mother, peering into the witch's garden and desiring what he sees there. Here, Beatrice plays the role of the rampion, underlined by Hawthorne’s frequent allusions to flowers and shrubs. She is "arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of the flowers... with a bloom so deep and vivid". Hawthorne makes the identification explicit: Beatrice is "another flower, the human sister of those vegetable ones... Flower and maiden were different, and yet the same". Next, Giovanni becomes an inverted Prince in the tower, looking down on Rapunzel captive in the garden. To call him, Beatrice uses an incantation similar to "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair": "Giovanni! Giovanni! Come down!". The reference is emphasised by the repetition of the name and the use of "down".

Beatrice and her Prince soon fall in love, but unlike the fairytale, there can be no happy ending: Rappaccini's science - the enemy of Hawthorne's Romanticism - is a more powerful enemy than magic, and Beatrice's only escape is into the profundity of death. Hawthorne uses "Rapunzel", a story about a young woman whose life is controlled and usurped by a wise elder for their own purposes, to underscore his message about the dangers of obsession and control.


Works cited:
Crane, Lucy. "Rapunzel". Household Stories: From the collection of the Bros. Grimm. London: Macmillan, 1882. 72-5.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Rappaccini's Daughter". Mosses From An Old Manse. Project Gutenberg, 13 September 2008. Web. 27 August 2012.