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How are Hawthorne's stories "Rappaccini's Daughter" and "The Birthmark" thematically similar?

One of the themes which connects "Rapaccini's Daughter" and "The Birthmark" is that of the intellectual pride of the scientist.


In Hawthorne's time, science was not what chemistry and physics are today; rather, it was closer to alchemy, which has spiritual ties. Scientists of this time sought to not only solve the mysteries of nature, but also to master and perfect them. Both Rapaccini and Alymer seek to master nature by perfecting their beloved women, and in so doing, they allow their pride to dominate them.


  • "Rapaccini's Daughter"

Dr. Rapaccini seeks to protect his daughter from the world by wrapping her in poison to which she develops an immunity because of her father's potions. However, in doing so, he has denied her any human companionship but his own, and, selfishly, he has loved science more than his own flesh and blood. Thus, her life becomes a counterfeit, leaving her bereft of the love that drives the world: the love between woman and man. Without this love, she develops a loving relationship between herself and the purple shrub which is so deadly to all others. 



Approaching the shrub, she threw open her arms, as with a passionate ardor, and drew its branches into an intimate embrace; so intimate that her features were hidden in its leafy bosom....



When a young man named Giovanni Guasconti watches her from his window, he falls in love with her, despite her later warnings to stay away. After he goes a few times to the garden and speaks to Beatrice, she explains to him,



"There was an awful doom...the effect of my father's fatal love of science--which estranged me from all society of my kind."



Perceiving that his daughter loves this young man, Dr. Rappacini works on Giovanni, his new experiment, so that he can become a mate for his daughter. However, suspicious of Rappacini's motives, his rival Dr. Baglioni has given Giovanni an antidote to the poison of Beatrice's sister plant so that Beatrice will not harm him. But, thinking if Beatrice drinks it, he can have a close relationship with her, the young man asks her to drink it. So, she does, but it kills her. 
Thus, in their intellectual pride, both Dr. Rappicini and Dr. Baglioni have interfered with nature and, in so doing, have destroyed human life.


  • "The Birthmark" 

Similarly, in this story the husband of a beautiful woman whose perfection is marred by a single birthmark wishes to dominate nature and correct its mistake.



Seeing her otherwise so perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with every moment of their married lives....



Alymer has a dream in which he attempts to remove the little red hand-shaped mark, but it recedes until it grasps his wife Georgiana's heart. Still, he pursues his experiment. In his vainglorious nature that seeks the possibilities of alchemy, he represses the memory of this dream and pursues his scientific experiment. After some time, because her husband becomes actually repulsed by her birthmark, Georgiana acquiesces to his wish to remove the small mark on her face.

As Georgiana awaits her husband, the chemical odors of Alymer's laboratory contrast with her aromatic boudoir. She then discovers her husband's folio, in which he has recorded his ambitions and labors:



He handled physical details as if there were nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them all, and redeemed himself from materialism by his strong and eager aspiration towards the infinite. 



As Georgiana examines Alymer's writings, she recognizes them as a revelation of the shortcomings of the human against the mysteries of nature. In his love for his wife and his intellectual pride, Alymer can accept nothing less than perfection, so he seeks to rectify the mistake that he believes nature has made. But, as he pours the elixir he has created upon the birthmark, the "fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of life"--her heart--and the birthmark reveals itself as the natural bond between Georgiana's spirit and body--something that in his pride Alymer has not recognized even when his premonition foretells it. Georgiana dies, a victim of Alymer's intellectual pride.

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