Rising Action

In “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” the rising action begins when Professor Baglioni warns Giovanni of Rappaccini and ends when Giovanni and Beatrice are strolling through Rappaccini’s gardens, right before Giovanni explodes in anger at Beatrice. At the beginning, Giovanni is having dinner with Baglioni, a close friend of his father’s, and asks about Rappaccini out of curiosity. Baglioni, a scientific rival of Rappaccini’s, denounces the doctor as caring “infinitely more for the sciences than for mankind” (Hawthorne 3). Although the reader will have had a premonition of the darkness surrounding Rappaccini, his garden, and Beatrice based upon their initial physical characterizations in the exposition, it is here, with Baglioni’s warning, that this dark tale picks up with a certain degree of suspense having been instilled in the reader through his warning. It is also here that one of the central themes of the story is first addressed, which is the condemnation of the sciences and the rational, for Romanticism emphasizes emotions, spontaneity, and irrationality.

After the dinner, Giovanni returns to his place and looks over the garden wherein which he finds Beatrice pruning the purple bush, which is revealed to be fatally poisonous when a drop of its sap lands on a lizard’s head and subsequently kills it. Giovanni is further shocked when he notices the rose that he threw down for Beatrice instantaneously started to “wither in her grasp” (Hawthorne 5). Here we see in this description a touch of the horror and the supernatural, both characteristics of Gothicism and Romanticism, which are employed throughout the story.

One day Giovanni is greeted by Lisabetta, looking like “a grotesque carving of wood,” who leads him through a secret passage into Rappaccini’s garden where he examines the flowers and describes them as an “adultery of various vegetables…glowing with only an evil mockery of beauty” (Hawthorne 7+8). It is here where the Romanticist’s criticism of the sciences is made most clear. Scientists tamper with and manipulate nature in order to seek certain truths that should not be sought, similar to how God forbid Adam and Eve from picking form the Tree of Knowledge, a comparison that was already established in the exposition of the story. Rappaccini has manipulated Lisabetta like a whittler whittles his wood but note the use of the adjective “grotesque,” implying that his manipulation is ugly and sinful. Similarly, the hybrid plants of the garden are described as being the creation of “adultery,” a comparison that further describes the sinful nature of the sciences as seen through a Romantic spectrum. Later in the story, it is revealed that Rappaccini had offered “up his child…as the victim of his insane zeal for science,” transforming Beatrice into a physically poisonous being (Hawthorne 11). Science has warped Rappaccini’s ethical sense, for logic drains the emotions and makes us less human. It is here in the story that Giovanni becomes acquainted with Beatrice.

Throughout the rest of the rising action, Giovanni is conflicted. His logical side, propelled forth by Baglioni’s warning and his first hand experience of Beatrice’s poisonous touch, is fostering a sense of doubt towards Beatrice and the love the two share. However “these incidents…dissolving in the pure light of her character…were acknowledged as mistaken fantasies” (Hawthorne 12). Thus we see here another one of Romanticism’s main themes, the idea that the emotions, in this case love, surmount logic.

Unexpectedly, Baglioni one day comes to Giovanni’s room to warn him to stay away from Beatrice because he believes that the relationship between the two is another one of Rappaccini’s twisted experiments. For Giovanni, this “gave instantaneous distinction to a thousand dim suspicions, which now grinned at him like so many demons,” which then “he strove hard to quell them” (Hawthorne 11). Giovanni has always had suspicions and doubts concerning Beatrice but he has managed to subdue them in his infatuation. However they are steadily growing as the evidence piles up, foreshadowing an inevitable eruption. Here “suspicions” is compared to “demons,” indicating the sin of doubt, which undermines the faith needed for true love. This is in lines with Romantic thought, where the spontaneity and sincerity are valued.

When Giovanni figures out that he himself has turned poisonous of touch, just like Beatrice, he becomes filled with “wrath and despair,” yet when he gets together with Beatrice “his rage was quelled into an aspect of sullen insensibility” (Hawthorne 13). At this point, Giovanni has began to realize the truth but still remains blinded by love, as noted by his “insensibility.” However when they walk through the gardens, Beatrice finally reveals to Giovanni his worst horrors, the now indisputable truth that she is “sister” to the poisonous purple bush and Giovanni can no longer contain his inner rage. Throughout the rising action, Giovanni is in conflict with himself but it is at this point where his doubts are finally realized. His ensuing reaction will be the climax of the story, the cracking point that his internal conflict has been edging towards.