rappucchini's daughter v frankenstein

I have highlighted the major parts...read the stories, they are wonderful.
A little factoid on frankenstein, it was written as part of a contest between Lord Byron, Persey Shelly and Mary Shelly. They all decided to see who can come up with the best horror story and in the morning Mary Shelly won when she showed them Frankenstein.

In a world of science, we constantly find ourselves being helplessly spun in the midst of a spiraling chiasm of scientific experiments and research. Sometimes one may chance to come across a newspaper or view a program on television that documents some new wonders of science and we are often left dumfounded and amazed by the miracles of science. However there are instances when we are horrified by some of the schemes that man employs science for. Some of the scientific experiments boarder on the bizarre and evoke emotions of disgust and fear from the onlooker. It is this fear of science and the evils of knowledge and curiosity that has been the fuel for many writers as they craftily spun horror stories that evaded the heart of the reader with a dreadful terror as they created monsters born from the curious tendrils of science. Two stories that reflect the horrors of scientific experimentation are Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. There are certain similarities between Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that begs sympathy from the reader as we are introduced to the utmost human suffering as the themes of isolation and withdrawal from society is illustrated in these stories.
There are major controversies that act on these scientific experimentations as man wonders whether science is taking away religion and weaving its own cult around the hearts of men. There has always been a dark cloud associated with the study of medicine. In both these stories we see a victim of science, a person who has been created by a doctor as a fearful being. In these stories, society views the individual as a creature rather than a person. Rappachini’s Daughter is a dark romance that tells the sorrowful yet uncanny story of a tragic love affair star-crossed by science rather than fate. The story is set in southern Italy where a young man Giovanni meets the daughter of a mysterious doctor and falls in love with her. However their love affair takes a disastrous turn after Giovanni realizes that Beatrice is cursed with a poison that evades her body and is issued from her breath. The movie Frankenstein introduces us to a doctor who finds the notes of his teacher and decides to experiment despite a warning. Doctor Frankenstein uses various limbs and appendages from different corpses and creates a living being. After creating this creature Frankenstein becomes fearful of his creation and abandons it. The creature after realizing the error of his master seeks revenge on his creator and becomes the monster that society saw him as.
In both Rappaccini’s Daughter and Frankenstein there is a heart rendering portrayal of the theme of isolation that draws sympathy from the reader or viewer. The theme of isolation is apparent from the very beginning in Rappaccini‘s Daughter as Beatrice is introduced. She is isolated from society not only by her father but by her beauty. The setting is important here as she is amongst beautiful, rare and exotic plants and the reader becomes aware that she is the human counterpart of those exotic plants. Beatrice is described as thus, “… here was another flower, the human sister of those vegetable ones, as beautiful as they, more beautiful than the richest of them , but still to be touched with only a glove, nor to be approached without a mask”.
The reader is acquainted with Beatrice in the garden at all times and we never see her out of her sanctuary. She withdraws to the garden because it houses the only inhabitants who can endure her poison, her vegetative sisters. Beatrice loves the plants and she treats them with the tenderness of a mother to a babe. The setting of the garden here is important because it lends to the theme of isolation not only by representing a garden of Eden but it is also contains beautiful, exotic and poisonous species like her so it represents a place of belonging for her.
Setting plays an integral role in the movie Frankenstein as it represents the turmoil of emotions that rages through the creature and shows the seclusion and isolation that he feels. The movie Frankenstein opens with a tempest. This storm not only foreshadows the impending horror in the movie but also gives us a glimpse at the raging sea of emotions that was unleashed in the monster. Unlike Beatrice the monster is not calm and sweet tempered. His outward hideousness is a mirror into the rage that he feels towards his creator. The monster knows that he is horrendous and not acceptable to society and men, so he chooses to live in the shadows and hide from men. In the movie, the theme of isolation is embodied by a forest and ice sea. First the monster takes to the forest and stays there hiding from men learning about himself while hoping to find a companion. However, as he learns that he was created and not born, he seeks Doctor Frankenstein but he opts to stay in the snow while waiting for him. The white of the snow may represent his isolation and the coldness symbolizes the lack of warmth from human companionship.
The theme of friendship and a hunger for love is illustrated in both stories. Beatrice knows only her father until Giovanni comes along. Although she is shy at first, she eventually becomes familiar with him and falls in love. Beatrice’s love is pure and true, probably because she desires friendship and companionship so immensely. Rappaccini knows of his daughter’s need for a companion and tries to create one for her by using Giovanni. Giovanni himself is a handsome youth and Rappaccini probably sees in him the potential mate for his daughter since they are both beautiful and Giovanni is studying medicine just like him.
The first word that the creature utters in the movie is friend; he is desperate for a companion. He shows a compassion and desire to be accepted when he helps a family in the forest harvest potatoes. The family is unaware of his form and fondly takes to referring to him the spirit of the forest. We see him happy in the instances where he is given a present from the children and accepted by a blind old man. He is accepted when one cannot distinguish his form. Human nature plays out as man distinguishes his form, as the men try to destroy or kill whatever frightens them. Doctor Frankenstein creates and Adam but does not bless his creation with a companion. The monster wants a wife and searches for Frankenstein in order to obtain one. He says that he is filled with an incomprehensible love and rage. He wishes for a friend and mate because he says that if he cannot satisfy his love then he will indulge his hatred. However Frankenstein does create an Eve and when she discovers that she is a monster as well she kills herself, leaving both Frankenstein and the monster without a wife to love.
An evident similarity between these two stories is the introduction of the literary “mad scientist.” Hawthorne is noted for his use of a crazy doctors and villainous alchemists in his literature. (Stoher) Both Rappaccini’s Daughter and Frankenstein relate the story of a doctor who toyed with the limits of science in a search for more knowledge. Although Doctor Rappaccini, makes an appearance only twice in the story, he is an integral character since it is his eccentric nature and insatiable thirst for scientific knowledge that creates the very axis of the story, Beatrice and the Garden. A similarity that manifests here is an allusion to the doctors as being God or Creator. Rapaccini created an Eve and then set forth to make her a companion as well. He also created a Garden of Eden and allowed his Eve (Beatrice) to be nourished by it. Rappaccini made his daughter almost invincible and tried to isolate her from society, an even though she as his earthly child she lived amongst the children of his intellect the plants. Maybe one can see that Hawthorne sees a scientist as trying to play the role of God, but we see the fatal mistake here because his creation is destroyed.
Frankenstein embarked upon creating life because he could not deal with death. He said “No one need ever die, I will stop this…” at his mother’s grave. He wanted to cheat death by creating life. A memorable yet eerie scene in the movie is Frankenstein standing atop his experiment screaming Live! Live! as he tried to breath an electrical life to the monster. Frankenstein tried to play God because he wanted to create life instead of fulfilling his duty as a doctor and preserving it. Man can create a monster but he cannot control it. It is here when we can clearly see that science should have its boundaries and man should not use his brother as a test subject.
When science crosses it boundaries and man tries to play God, a sea of pain and regret follows. The scientist, Frankenstein finds the notes which his teacher had abandoned and uses them against his wishes of his teacher in order to create a monster. Immediately after Frankenstein had created the monster he was taken aback with fear as he realizes the consequences of what had he done. In both stories the doctors tried to isolate their creations although one was out of fatherly love and the other fear. In Frankenstein Shelley introduces the reader to the monster right away because he was made for the parts of corpuses. Frankenstein had hoped that since the monster was a ‘newborn’ it would be stricken by a cholera epidemic and die and so he abandoned it. He had resolved to destroy his notes and all evidence of his experiment right after seeing what he had created. He had called the creature vile, malformed and hideous to behold.
The danger of scientific experimentation is clearly shown in pieces of the movies where Frankenstein gathers the raw materials for his experiment. He is comparable to a butcher as he raids graveyards to subjects a pregnant woman to torture in order to obtain the raw materials. He refers to human limbs and amniotic fluid as raw materials in his journal, this is frightening because it shows a lack of human compassion and remorse as man goes through any means to answer the call of science.
Doctor Rappaccini can be seen an even more inhuman scientist because he uses his own daughter as a test subject in his experiment. He isolates her and then tries to right his wrong by experimenting on another innocent person. Doctor Baglioni is even more devious than Rappaccini because he does not even notice the innocent and beauty of Beatrice but instead uses Giovanni as a means to destroy Rappaccini’s creation, while feeding his envy.
Human suffering is depicted in these stories as we see their withdrawal from society. In both stories neither character fights for their life, they calmly accept death which shows that a life of isolation and scorn may lead one to welcome death and maybe wish for it instead of having to trudge through a painful and merciless life. Both characters Beatrice and the monster consider themselves monsters and they are very powerful. In the movie Frankenstein the monster knows of his powers and strength and men fear him because of his appearance. The monster sobs after he is chased out of the house of his only friend and he lets out heart wrenching sobs. He knows that he is a monster and withdraws from society. Both characters portray innocence in them by their longing for love and acceptance, but due to their isolation they simply withdraw from man.
From these stories we learn of our own nature and the cruelty of our fears. Because of fear theses two individuals were isolated from society. We think of the creature as a monster because on may think that it lacks a soul, an entity which can only be given by God, however there are instances in the movie where on may think that it is the doctor who lacks a soul and not the monster. At the end of the movie though the creature shows that he has better understanding than the doctor because he allows his isolation as he realizes that he probably will never be accepted in society, he prefers death with his father (Frankenstein) rather than living a life of isolation and scorn. Here we see a theme of self loathing which is a major factor in human nature, when we feel abandoned and people scorn or fear us we feel as if we are useless and it would be a blessing to society if we were dead.
Beatrice’s death clearly depicts human nature as we see man attempting to perfect what is beautiful and trying to alter Nature or God’s creation to suit his own needs. In this story all three male characters try to change Beatrice and in doing so they all play a role in here demise. (Tharpe) However, when Giovanni scorns Beatrice, we see that she is the only innocent character and that her love is pure, she does not hesitate to drink the potion for love even though it kills her. Beatrice welcomes death rather than being afraid of it, since she realizes that her existence may only cause more grief. However we can look at her death as her liberation from the cage of isolation that she was raised in. Death assumes the role of a liberator for Beatrice since she is now free and cannot be an experiment for the people who governed her life.
From Rappaccini’s Daughter and Frankenstein there are many lessons to be learned. Mary Shelly had said on Frankenstein, “I busied myself to write a story which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature…” This is true since we learn of human suffering from two unlikely characters. Both Beatrice and the monster are victims of the horrors of science and although these are fictional characters we can imagine the catastrophes that may be unleashed when man tries to assume the role of a creator. We learn of the pain of isolation and the longing for companionship. In Beatrice we see a love that is pure and true and the monster shows an almost childish longing for acceptance. These two experiments of science show more human compassion and feeling than their fathers who sacrificed them for science. We see the lengths man would go to obtain knowledge and his transformation into a monster as he rejects all humanity and becomes a slave to science. These tales portray human nature beautifully and we may learn to accept man with his flaws and to see the cruelty in society’s rejection of that which is different or ugly.