Rappaccini's Daughter story
"Rappaccini's Daughter" is the 14th installment of The American Short Story television anthology series produced by Learning in Focus and Sea Cliff Productions for the Public Broadcasting Service. This installment is based on the 1844 Nathaniel Hawthorne Gothic short story of the same name. Synopsis: Giacomo Rappaccini, a medical researcher in Padua grows a garden of poisonous plants. He brings up his daughter to tend the plants, and she becomes resistant to the poisons, but in the process she herself becomes poisonous to others.
18 total · 15 major · 3 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| coping with someone controlling your life | major | Beatrice was under the dominion of her father, Rappaccini. |
| deadly touch ability | major | A lifetime of tending poisonous plants left Beatrice poisonous to most living things she touched. In one scene, a butterfly that landed on Beatrice's hand instantly died. It later became apparent that Giovanni acquired the same poison touch when a bouquet of flowers he was given wilted in his hands. |
| disapproving parent | major | Rappacini did not approve of his daughter having suitors whatsoever. One must think he relished the thought of them dying if they tried to kiss her. |
| father and daughter | major | Rappaccini was very protective of Beatrice to the point of confining her to his private garden and controlling her interactions with people from the outside world. For instance, noticing Giovanni was gazing at Beatrice, Rappaccini quickly escorted her inside. |
| female independence | major | In the end, Beatrice lamented that both her father and Giovanni seemed bent on denying her autonomy. |
| human life choice | major | In the end, Beatrice chose to take her own life over living indefinitely as a prisoner in her father's garden with a man who blamed her for his own troubles. |
| infatuation | major | Giovanni found himself under the spell of Beatrice or a spell her father cast or a spell Giovanni put himself under. |
| loneliness | major | Due to her being rendered deadly by her father's scientific experiments, Beatrice was condemned to lead a lonely existence on her father's estate. Giovanni wrote in a letter that he was heartsick, that he was in a new place but that his heart remained in Naples. |
| obsession | major | Rappacini's preoccupation with his botanical research blinded him to the fact that he'd ruined his daughter's life in the process. To wit Baglioni said that Rappacini "cares more for science than for mankind". |
| playing God with nature | major | In one interpretation of the story, Rappacini made a poison maiden out of his daughter Beatrice with a view toward making her a new Eve. Rumors of unspecified "unnatural experiments" surrounded Rappacini, according to his former colleague Baglioni. |