Belladonna. Stephanie Sipp, illustrator
The Literary Gardener
By Carol Howard
Looking for a creepy botanical classic to read this Halloween? A good choice is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” First published in 1844, this story has the same elements of mystery and the supernatural that the author brings to The Scarlet Letter and to “Young Goodman Brown,” his tale of witches in Salem.
“Rappaccini’s Daughter” is set during the Renaissance in Padua, a city of northern Italy that is now home to the world’s oldest extant university botanical garden. Today, a botanical garden might draw casual visitors hoping to learn more about familiar and unfamiliar plants and habitats. In the early days, however, botanical gardens were outdoor laboratories for state-of-the-art medical research and symbols of political power.
The fictional Rappaccini is a famous physician and scientist of the city who has his own secret botanical garden of exquisite, yet poisonous, medicinal plants. Rappaccini’s garden is tended by his beautiful daughter, Beatrice. Having been raised in the garden, Beatrice has not only built up a resistance to the toxic plants, but she herself has become poisonous. Beautiful though she is, her touch is both toxic and intoxicating to a young man who discovers the garden and falls in love with her. The young man, in turn, becomes poisonous as well.
“Poison damsel” stories originated in India and were retold in Europe for centuries before Hawthorne came along. His version of the tale features one plant in particular that the mysterious Beatrice resembles and that she calls her “sister.” It is a shrub adorned with a “profusion of purple blossoms, each of which had the lustre and richness of a gem.” Botanical sleuths might suspect this plant to be an ornamental rhododendron, mountain laurel or hydrangea. All can be deadly when ingested, but have medicinal properties as well.
A garden of alluring but potentially dangerous medicinal plants might also include: the striking spires of the foxglove (Digitalis); the miniature white bells of lily of the valley; Aconitum or monkshood, also known as wolfsbane or devil’s helmet; and Datura, also known as devil’s trumpet. Hawthorne’s story calls to mind the muted purple blooms of Atropa belladonna, a highly toxic plant commonly called deadly nightshade. Belladonna is named in honor of the beautiful women of Renaissance Italy who sought to make themselves more seductive by dilating their pupils with eye drops derived from the plant.
No plants are mentioned by name in Hawthorne’s tale, as Rappaccini’s outdoor laboratory is dedicated entirely to artificial cultivars (plants produced through selective breeding) or hybrids of doubtful medical value. Like Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s earlier novel, Dr. Rappaccini has lost sight of what matters most, as he “cares more for science than for mankind.” He has created life that is “no longer of God’s making,” but is rather “the monstrous offspring of man’s depraved fancy.” In this dark revision of the story of Adam and Eve, Rappaccini is eager (unlike Shelley’s reluctant Frankenstein) to create a mate for the solitary monster who is his child. In the end, however, the mad botanical scientist will end up alone in what Hawthorne calls “that Eden of poisonous flowers.”
Carol Howard is Dean of the Faculty at Warren Wilson College. Full-text versions of “Rappaccini’s Daughter” are available online.
