Giovanni, a shallow and vain young man, finds corruption where none exists in the beautiful but deadly Beatrice, but fails to see her true danger until it is too late. He does not let her fine and noble character convince him of her innate goodness and depth of soul. His shallowness reflects itself in his judgment of her character. She is a lonely woman grateful for the affection and attention received from Giovanni. When his attentions turn to pursuit, she is frightened because she knows that her touch would be death to him. She withholds returning his affections, but does not give explanations, which leaves him with only his imagination. By turns Giovanni’s perceptions tell him that Beatrice is evil and corrupt, then good and pure.
“”Beatrice came back to his passionate musings, invested with all the witchery that had been gathering around it ever since his first
glimpse of her, and now likewise imbued with a tender warmth of girlish womanhood. She was human; her nature was endowed with all gentle and feminine qualities ; she was worthiest to be worshipped; she was capable, surely, on her part, of the height and heroism of love. Those tokens which he had hitherto considered as proofs of a frightful peculiarity in her physical and moral system were now either forgotten, or, by the subtle sophistry of passion transmitted into a golden crown of enchantment, rendering Beatrice the more admirable by so much as she was the more unique. Whatever had looked ugly was now beautiful; or, if incapable of such a change, it stole away and hid itself among thos shapeless half ideas which throng the dim region...” (p. 1759)
Beatrice asks Giovanni to avoid all notions of her character which he has already formed, and only to believe the words that come from her mouth, straight from her heart, as the only truth to be believed. Giovanni says he will do as she asks, but his heart is fickle and shallow; he still reverts back, with the use of his imagination, to his ambiguity about Beatrice. He attributes Beatrice with the shallowness he has himself. Adding to his feelings of perception of some innate evil in Beatrice are Baglioni’s urgings and allusions. Baglioni refers to a story of a poisoned woman, sent to assassinate a king (1760). This inference of the nature of Beatrice further reinforces Giovanni’s confusion and his conflicting feelings of horror and fascination with her intensify. As Baglioni gives him the means, supposedly, to “normalize” Beatrice, Giovanni is intent on doing that and, at the same time, purging the same poisons from himself.
Giovanni offers the Baglioni’s “fruit” to Beatrice in the form of the elixir that will bring her death. In a weird twist on the Biblical garden of Eden, Giovanni is the unknowing Eve, offering Beatrice the elixir of life which, when as in the biblical account, as she partakes of it, “in that day” she will “surely die.” Knowing its effects, Beatrice drinks to save Giovanni.
Baglioni knows that Beatrice’s physical beauty as hiding a corruption imbued upon her by Rappaccini, his rival. He tells Giovanni the tale of the Indian prince and the poison woman. Although she is just physically poisonous, as an extension of her father as his rival, Beatrice is also credited with a poisonous character projected upon her by Baglioni’s jealous heart. He speculates that “Perchance her father destines her” for his professor’s chair. (p. 1752) ‘The youth may have taken ... Baglioni ... with many grains of allowance had he known that there was a professional warfare of long continuance between him and Dr. Rappaccini, in which the latter was generally thought to have gained the advantage.’ (p. 1754) In his jealousy of Rappaccini’s skill and reputation he berates Rappaccini, betraying his jealousy. Baglioni says that Rappaccini “has as much science as any member of the faculty” save one (Baglioni). “He has affected, or seemed to effect, a marvellous cure ... but ... he should receive little credit for these instances of success ... but ... his failures ... may justly be considered his own work.” “cares infinitely more for science than for mankind.” His envy convinces him that Beatrice is in fact as evil as he assumes Rappaccini to be, and a participant in her own corruption. He either does or does not know that the elixir he offers Giovanni is death to Beatrice, but neither does he care. As evil, Beatrice and Dr. Rappaccini are one and the same to him, and to destroy one is to thwart the other. “Perhaps, most learned Rappaccini, I may foil you where you little dream of it!” (p. 1755) The triumph in his mind over one evil proves to be the surrender to the evil in his character. So Baglioni fulfills the tale of the poison seductress, by sending his poison to his rival. Baglioni can be likened to the serpent in the garden, tempting the vulnerable and naive Giovanni with Giovanni’s own vanity to offer the “cure” for their troubles to Beatrice, just as Satan offered Eve the apple as a “cure” for her ignorance. Just as Adam, knowing the consequences, still ate the apple, Beatrice, knowing(or at least guessing), drank the potion and died to save Giovanni.
Dr. Giacomo Rappaccini is yet another man projecting his needs and wishes onto an unwilling Beatrice. When Beatrice asks her father why he visited this suffering upon her, he replies, “What mean you, foolish girl? Dost though deem it misery to be endowed with marvellous gifts...?” (1766). He sees her as merely an experiment. That she is his daughter serves his purpose of having complete control over her life. Like her sister, the purple bush, she can only be handled with the greatest of care and protection. I picture Rappaccini carrying his infant daughter across the room, wearing thick gloves, holding her out in front of him to avoid her breath, laying her down on a laboratory table to administer another dose of his poisonous “protection” to her as she cries for the affection she so desperately desires. As a little child, I picture her going to her father, arms outstretched, only to be turned aside by a gasp of fear and a look of horror at the prospect of her touch. When her father insists that his “marvellous gifts” should be appreciated, Beatrice sums up the real tragedy of her life: “I would fain have been loved, not feared.” (1766) A great deal of the inherent cruelty of the relationship of the father to the daughter is implied by her carefully cultivated poisonous nature. His imposition of this grim condition on Beatrice from her birth implies that she exists only to be studied and experimented upon. And Giovanni is yet another experiment to a man who sees human biology only as something to be acted upon, tested and twisted. His experiment then proceeds subsequently continues through the interaction of Giovanni and Beatrice, and he observes it at every turn with keen interest and satisfaction, playing God to his two creations in the Garden of Eden of this time.
Giovanni, Rappaccini and Baglioni never realize that the flaws they see in Beatrice are their own. Each absolves himself by destroying that person onto which they have projected their own corruption. Baglioni justifies himself by imagining that he is giving Rappaccini his just reward, the “upshot” of his experiment, death to Beatrice. Giovanni excuses his behavior by blaming Beatrice for her deceptions: “Dost thou pretend ignorance?” (1764) Rappaccini’s alibi is his professed love and protection evidenced by the poisoning of his daughter “Wouldst thou, then, have preferred the condition of a weak woman, exposed to all evil and capable of none?” (1766) All the qualities of character credited to her by Giovanni and Baglioni are products of their imaginations, and not based on the facts of her personality and interactions with them. Baglioni imagines her to be a certain way without evidence for or against his opinion, while Giovanni, despite evidence to the contrary, believes her to be inherently evil simply because he assumes that it would not be possible for a truly pure and good person to evince such evidence of corruption.
Giovanni never does seem to realize that the physical corruption imbued upon Beatrice by her father hides the spiritual beauty which lies beneath. Similarly, Rappaccini himself does not realize the true worth of his daughter, valuing her only as an experiment. Baglioni values her least of all; as an instrument of retribution upon his rival, Rappaccini. Beatrice is a woman who is misunderstood, mysterious for Giovanni, considered as a scientific specimin by her father and finally, as only a side effect by Baglioni. All three men, and the central figure of virgin seductress, play their parts, winding inexorably to their fates. All but one are horrified: Beatrice seems almost relieved to drink what is, to her, the elixir of life, preferring it to the death she has been living all her life.
