The Danger of the 'Unnatural"
Today in class we discussed the complications of the hybridity and evil relationship in "Rappaccini's Daughter" through the binary of science and nature. These dual forces and the intricate concepts they represent have been in constant battle throughout our readings; whether it be in Frankenstein where the nature of man as a being is brought into question by the creation of a man in an "unnatural" way, or if it is woman who, through science, has been made part nature like in "Rappaccini's Daughter".
The central theme of these issues are the design of science to recreate natural occurrences, but in doing so the result is unnatural. And it is a fear of what is unnatural, what is not meant to be, that is at the heart of these stories. Particularly, as we think about the time period in which these were written, when the world was undergoing substantial technological advances and setting the stage for the technological franticness that is the world of today. The issue on the minds of all, it would seem, was how far would science push and would it be too far.
The story of "Rappaccini's Daughter" is a clear demonstration of that as we see Hawthorne elaborate on the dangers of going against nature and creating something that is not "meant to be". In making the daughter a mixture of the natural and human, by the use of science, he furthers expands on this binary and draws our attention directly to the dangers of such activity. The difficulty is that in our society this seems not to apply as such things as mixing plants is commonplace, but the dangers of these "unnatural" occurrences is still real as there continue to be scientific exploration in numerous areas and controversy still arises (like with cloning and stem cell research).
The central theme of these issues are the design of science to recreate natural occurrences, but in doing so the result is unnatural. And it is a fear of what is unnatural, what is not meant to be, that is at the heart of these stories. Particularly, as we think about the time period in which these were written, when the world was undergoing substantial technological advances and setting the stage for the technological franticness that is the world of today. The issue on the minds of all, it would seem, was how far would science push and would it be too far.
The story of "Rappaccini's Daughter" is a clear demonstration of that as we see Hawthorne elaborate on the dangers of going against nature and creating something that is not "meant to be". In making the daughter a mixture of the natural and human, by the use of science, he furthers expands on this binary and draws our attention directly to the dangers of such activity. The difficulty is that in our society this seems not to apply as such things as mixing plants is commonplace, but the dangers of these "unnatural" occurrences is still real as there continue to be scientific exploration in numerous areas and controversy still arises (like with cloning and stem cell research).
posted by Zach at 1:06 PM
2 Comments:
I agree with your binary interpretation of the situation in which there is definite perturbation of nature by science. In our readings they seem to be expressed as mutually exclusive items. If you have nature, then science is absent, and anything scientific is by definition unnatural. As a physics major my personal belief is that all nature can be described systematically and scientifically.
a-ha. thanks for the physics perspective David.
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