Department of English Language
and Literature, Hazara University,
Mansehra.
Objectification refers to
the act of despising another person's dignity. It comes from the word object
which is seen as a tool. The objectification of women, therefore, implies
showing them as objects lacking dignity and honour. This study assesses how
women were targeted in Nathaniel's Rappaccini's Daughter. Nathaniel's Daughter
of Rappaccini portrayed women as the centre of the execution of unworthy acts.
However, the objectification of women in this novel has contributed to the
development of the plot of the story as well as building on the traits of some
characters.
Beatrice is the
representation of women in Rappaccini’s Daughter. She is misused by her father
who is a professor and does experiments with poisons. Rappaccini, the father of
Beatrice, uses her as a tool to carry out the experiment. Most of Beatrice’s
time is spent in the garden where there are plenty of flowers which she has
eventually developed love towards. The flowers are poisonous. Beatrice despite
her beauty becomes like one of those flowers in the garden, and her father is
less concerned about her life. Rappaccini tortured Beatrice by forging the
means to place her in the garden because she is a woman. This is a
representation of how the female gender is despised. They are only observed as the
tools for experiment thus depriving them the human dignity. Although Rappaccini
is observed as a learned professor who does not respect human rights like science, he is being biased on gender. He intends to use women as the centre of
the experiment which is poisonous. He lacks the shreds of tenderness to the
female gender since he observes them as not being different from the objects of
his experiment. Although this Hawthorne’s story is a moral fable, he uses a
woman to represent the tool of a poisonous experiment. Rappaccini regards
Beatrice as one of the poisonous plants in the garden. This is a depiction of
how males are underrating females in the novel.
Rappaccini uses Beatrice to reach out to other men. He realizes that his
daughter is beautiful and therefore, she can be used to carryout out his
poisonous experiment extensively by engaging other people. In this case, she
uses her daughter as a tool to attract men to the field so that they can also
inhale the poison. Rappaccini’s daughter is able to capture the attention of
Giovanni who is very new in that society. Giovanni is a guy who had just
arrived in Padua, and after observing through the window of the house, he was
able to spot a beautiful land that was full of flowers. He later recognizes the
presence of a beautiful woman in the garden. After discovering the path that
will lead him to this lady, Giovanni does not hesitate but follows the way to
meet the girl who eventually infects him with a dangerous poison that has been
set up by professor Rappaccini. Beatrice in this novel is depicted as a
dangerous object that easily kills. Her beauty is central in attracting men who
are lured into the death trap as in the case of Giovanni. It is her father who
had designed this poison, and he recognized Beatrice as a strategic “tool” to
carry out the mission of poisoning. Her appearance is elegant, and that is why
Giovanni is easily infatuated with her. It can thus be argued that Beatrice
is being used as a tool of poison which is instituted by a man to attract other
people, and this consequently helps Rappaccini to fulfil the mission of his
experiment.
In Rappaccini's Daughter,
Rappacccini is the beneficiary of the objectification of Beatrice. He ensures
that her daughter is placed in the garden to act as the centre of drawing the attention of men and
other interested parties who may be captivated by her looks. She attracts
Giovanni, and consequently, he poisons him with the Rappaccini’s poison that she
possesses. This is an illustration of how men despise women, and they are ready
to sacrifice them as core to achieving their desired needs.
Rappaccini's Daughter
shows women as a simple tool that is easily manipulated for personal gain. The
objectification of women is a representation of the lack of honour in their
lives.
“Thou, -- dost thou pray?” cried Giovanni, still with the same fiendish
scorn. “Thy very prayers, as they come from thy lips, taint the atmosphere with
death. Yes, yes; let us pray! Let us to church and dip our fingers in the holy
water at the portal! They that come after us will perish as by a pestilence!
Let us sign crosses in the air! It will be scattering curses abroad in the
likeness of holy symbols!”
― Rappaccini's Daughter
"'And must I believe all that I have seen with my own
eyes?' asked Giovanni pointedly, while the recollection of former scenes made
him shrink."
"Miserable! ... What mean you, foolish girl? Dost thou deem
it misery to be endowed with marvellous gifts, against which no power nor
strength could avail an enemy? Misery, to be able to quell the mightiest with a
breath? Misery, to be as terrible as thou art beautiful? Woudst thou, then,
have preferred the condition of a weak woman, exposed to all evil and capable
of none?"
"To Beatrice-so radically had her earthly part been wrought
upon by Rappaccini's skill-as poison had been life, so the powerful antidote
was death. And thus the poor victim of man's ingenuity and of thwarted nature,
and of the fatality that attends all such efforts of perverted wisdom, perished
there, at the feet of her father and Giovanni."
It was strangely frightful to the young man’s imagination to see this
air of insecurity in a person cultivating a garden, that most simple and
innocent of human toils, and which had been alike the joy and labour of the
unfallen parents of the race. Was this garden, then, the Eden of the present
world? And this man, with such a perception of harm in what his own hands
caused to grow,—was he the Adam?
All the male characters
in the story objectify Beatrice, transforming her into a support for their own
lives. Rappaccini, for example, sees his daughter as a scientific experiment.
Although she is his only daughter and his professional assistant who shares his
passion for gardening, Rappaccini does not treat Beatrice as a human being with
desires and interests that are independent of his own plans for her. Without
her consent, he infuses her body with poisonous plants of his experiment, which
means that she can take care of the most harmful plants without getting sick. However,
it also means that she cannot be around other people, because her body poisons
them. While Beatrice loathes her condition (she would rather have been “loved,
not feared”), Giovanni treats her as an object that he can manipulate, rather
than a person whose wishes he must respect.
Baglioni, likewise,
thinks of Beatrice only as an accessory of Rappaccini. Although Baglioni admits
that he never met Beatrice, he relies on rumours to characterize her for
Giovanni, saying that she is beautiful and that she learned enough of
Rappaccini's sinister science and might occupy one of the professor's chair at the
university. This may seem like a complementary description of Beatrice's beauty
and accomplishments, but Baglioni means that the description is ominous - after
all, women have not become professors, so Baglioni is implying that something
is wrong with her, just as something is wrong with her, father. Furthermore,
as Beatrice is the subject of one of her father's experiments, Baglioni
realizes that by manipulating Beatrice's body (to try to rid her of the
poison), he can defend his own interests: he wants to ruin his professional
rival Rappaccini. Therefore, Baglioni presents an antidote to Beatrice, which
he instructs Giovanni to give to her without worrying whether it could be
dangerous. This doctor's disrespect for Beatrice's health leads to her death,
which is a success for Baglioni in terms of ruining Rappaccini's experience.
Here, too, Beatrice's life is just a prop.
Giovanni's treatment of
Beatrice is more complicated, as he is genuinely interested in who she is as a
person, but nevertheless never comes to understand her, although she is direct
about her nature. Sometimes Giovanni seems to see that Beatrice is a wonderful
person who is too innocent and naive to deceive someone, but for most of the
story, Giovanni struggles with doubt, wondering if she is secretly bad. These
doubts are stimulated by Baglioni's sexist description of Beatrice as a fatal
femme, a weapon that Rappaccini built to ruin Giovanni's life. Ultimately,
Giovanni disregards his personal experience with Beatrice and gives in to her
suspicions, cruelly accusing her of evil and breaking his heart.
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