"Rappaccini's Daughter" is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne first published in the December 1844 issue of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, and later in the 1846 collection Mosses from an Old Manse. It is about Giacomo Rappaccini, a medical researcher in medieval Padua who grows a garden of poisonous plants. He brings up his daughter to tend the plants, and she becomes resistant to the poisons, but in the process she herself becomes poisonous to others. The traditional story of a poisonous maiden has been traced back to India, and Hawthorne's version has been adapted in contemporary works.
Also contained in:
Add to your library to track progress and write reviews
Find Rappaccini's Daughter Nathaniel Hawthorne in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
5 books in catalog
Long-form American dark romantic fiction and allegorical short stories established a foundational exploration of colonial history, guilt, and religious orthodoxy, led by key nineteenth-century publications such as The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne crafted complex narratives that probed the moral tensions of early New England settlement, transforming historical records and Puritan theology into psychological drama. His tales examined secret sin, social judgment, and the lingering influence of ancestral history on individual conscience.
Born in Salem, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1804, he was descended from early Puritan settlers, including John Hathorne, a judge who presided over the 1692 Salem witch trials. To distance himself from this legacy, he altered his surname in his early twenties. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825 and anonymously published his first novel, Fanshawe, in 1828. He gained broader public recognition after publishing the short story collection Twice-Told Tales in 1837. To secure financial stability, he worked at the Boston Custom House and briefly joined the Transcendentalist utopian community at Brook Farm. In 1842, he married Sophia Peabody, and the couple resided at The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts. He later published The Scarlet Letter in 1850 while living in Salem, followed by The House of the Seven Gables in 1851 during his residency in the Berkshires. After serving as United States consul in Liverpool following a political appointment, he returned to his Concord home, The Wayside, in 1860. He died on May 19, 1864, leaving behind his wife and three children.
As a prominent figure within the American Romantic movement, his fiction relied heavily on allegory, symbolism, and psychological introspection. Many of his narratives, including short works like Rappaccini's Daughter and novels like The Blithedale Romance and The marble faun, explore the destructive consequences of pride, isolation, and moral rigidity. Rather than treating New England's colonial past as mere historical backdrop, his writing presents moral allegories inspired by Puritan doctrine to examine the human heart's capacity for redemption and corruption. His technique frequently incorporated ambiguous supernatural elements, symbolic artifacts, and detailed examinations of hidden guilt.
