摘 要

纳撒尼尔·霍桑以长篇小说《红字》的成功奠定了其在世界文学上的地位。但在他的作品中，许多非常优秀的短篇小说也都值得研究和分析，《拉帕西尼的女儿》就是其中的一篇。原罪是霍桑作品中的一个突出主题，《拉帕西尼的女儿》也极佳地展现出了他对于原罪的思想。本论文将对他的短篇小说《拉帕西尼的女儿》中所体现出的原罪进行分析。论文内容由导论、正文和结论组成。导论部分对作者以及小说内容进行介绍，并提出本论文的研究重点。第二部分为正文,包括三个部分：首先，介绍原罪的定义以及宗教背景；其次，结合小说内容分析小说中人物与原罪的关系；最后，阐述霍桑的原罪思想对其写作风格的影响以及对美国文学中关于人性探究的深远影响。第三部分是论文的结尾部分，论述他在恶与善之间徘徊,不仅承认了人性的阴暗，同时也肯定了人性之恶对善的启示作用。

关键词: 拉帕西尼的女儿；原罪；罪恶；人性

Abstract

The success of his novel The Scarlet Letter has established Nathaniel Hawthorne’s status in the world literature. Among his works, Rappaccini’s Daughter is considered as one of the most excellent short stories which are worth of studying. Original sin is an eminent theme in Hawthorne’s literary works. Rappaccini's Daughter perfectly displays his thoughts on the original sin. This paper aims to analyze original sin in Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter. The content is composed of introduction, body and conclusion. The first section is the introduction to the author, the content of Rappaccini’s Daughter and what will be studied. The second section is the main body and it includes three parts. Firstly, the well-known formulation of original sin and the religious background of original sin are introduced. Secondly, the characters with original sin in the story are elaborately analyzed. And finally it mentions the influence of Hawthorne’s original sin on his writing, which has a profound inspiration on the exploration of human nature in American literature. The last section is the conclusion, which points out that Hawthorne’s hesitation between evil and good not only admits the evil human nature but also affirms its functional enlightenment of human being’s goodness.

Key Words: Rappaccini’s Daughter; original sin; evil; human nature

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Nathaniel Hawthorne and his works 1

1.2 General View of Rappaccini’s Duaghter 1

1.3 Background and Innovation of the Paper 2

2 Original Sin 4

2.1 The Definition of Original Sin 4

2.2 The Religious Background of Original Sin 4

3 Analysis of Original Sin in Rappaccini's Daughter 6

3.1 Rappaccini with Pride and Baglioni with Envy 6

3.2 Giovanni with Lust 8

3.3 Beatrice's Tragic Death Because of Original Sin 10

4 The Influence of Hawthorne’s Original Sin 13

5 Conclusion 15

References 16

Acknowledgments 17

Study on Original Sin in Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter

1 Introduction

1.1 Nathaniel Hawthorne and his works

Nathaniel Hawthorne is the greatest Romantic novelist of the nineteenth century in American literature and is regarded as one of the pioneers of short stories. He has authored these novels, The Scarlet Letter, Fanshawe, The House of Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun, Septimius Felton, Dr. Grimshaw’s Secret, and A Biography Life of Franklin Pierce. There are more than 140 short stories published in his seven anthologies: The Twice Told Tales, Grandfather’s Chair, The Snow-Image and Other Twice-Told Tales, Mosses from an Old Manse, A Wonder Book for Boys and Girls, Tangle-wood Tales and Our Old Home.

Although the success of his novel The Scarlet Letter has established his status in the world literature, yet he is famous as a writer who writes short stories at the very beginning of his writing career. What’s more, Hawthorne writes more than one hundred short stories and essays during his lifetime. It is said that his works belong to the highest region of art (Xing, 2013). Hawthorne holds the view that each person has had the nature of devil and original sin since his birth because of the deep influence of the family life and the Puritan belief of Depravity. Therefore, Hawthorne, who is also the first American psycho-analytical writer, always probes the nature of human heart and thinks about original sin of human in his works.

1.2 General View of Rappaccini’s Duaghter

Rappaccini’s Daughter is considered as one of the most classic short stories and it perfectly displays his thoughts about the original sin. This story is among the few short stories which are not founded on the background of New England. It takes place in Padua, Italy, in a distant and unknown past. From the residence, Giovanni Guasconti, a young college student at the University of Padua, happens to see Beatrice, the stunning daughter of Dr. Rappaccini, a scientist who is always working in isolation. Cut off from the outside world, Beatrice is restricted to the flourishing but locked garden, which is crowded with poisonous and scaring plants grown by her father. Observing everything in the garden from the window, Giovanni notices Beatrice’s oddly intimate relationship with those plants together with the withering of fresh flowers and the death of an insect when they are closed to her skin or breath. Having been in love with Beatrice, Giovanni comes into the garden and meets up with her for a quantity of times, with ignoring Professor Baglioni at the same time, who constantly gives him the warnings that Rappaccini is devious and that both he and his work should be prevented. Giovanni understands that Beatrice, having been brought up in the world of poison, is toxic herself. Beatrice wishes Giovanni to see through her poisonous exterior to perceive her pure and innocent heart, bringing about intense feelings of doubt in Giovanni. He starts to suffer the serious consequences resulting from those poisonous plants, the love for Beatrice and the discovery that he himself has also become poisonous; after another meeting with Bagliouni, Giovanni brings a potent antidote to Beatrice hoping that they can be together without the trouble of poison, but the antidote kills Beatrice directly rather than cure her poisonous nature effectively. In the end, Baglioni shows his satisfaction with his extraordinary ability because he thinks that he defeats competent but devious Rappaccini.

1.3 Background and Innovation of the Paper

With further textual analysis of this story, it can be learned that Rappaccini’s Daughter has references to Dante’s Divine Comedy，the Garden of Eden, and Milton’s Paradise Lost in that it juxtaposes the scientific aspects of research (Professor Rappaccini and Professor Baglioni) with spirituality (Giovanni and Beatrice）and explores original sin. There have been many papers and articles which study Rappaccini’s Daughter from some perspectives. For example, in Edward A. Abramson’s article, he makes a contrast between Nathaniel Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter and Bernard Malamud's The Lady of the Lake from the perspective of comparing gardens and Edens, and he emphasizes that the complexities of plot, theme, and character are developed in relation to the garden settings. In Liu Wenyang’s articles, he exemplifies that the poison of Beatrice symbolizes the original sin and reflects man’s secret evils, and that the story is an allegory of a couple of lovers in a fallen garden, which is the image that has rich implications, as new Adam and Eve in Eden.

This paper mainly focuses on the analysis of Beatrice's tragic death as well as the inner torment of people around her, hoping to explain on what sense Hawthorne is deeply haunted by the Calvinist Puritanism and its great effect upon his writings together with American literature. However, the analysis on original sin revealed through the scientists’ behavior and Beatrice's tragic death in this story, the focus of this paper, is rarely done before.