Is Science A Poison?
In Rappaccini's Daughter a crazy scientist turns his daughter into a poison exhaling freak, and traps her in his garden of deadly plants. As she lies dying before him he lectures her on the merits of the amazing gift of being poisonous which he selflessly gave to her. Obviously Rappaccini has a screw loose, and would probably have been a psycho whether he had become a scientist or not. Throughout the piece Baglioni seems to be his rational counterpart, possessing all the moral integrity and respect for human life that Rappaccini lacks. However, in the final sentence of the text after Rappaccini's daughter has just died Baglioni shouts "in a tone of triumph mixed with horror, 'Rappaccini! Rappaccini! And is this the upshot of your experiment?'". In this instant Baglioni betrays his true nature, or at least a sinister side of his true nature, showing a callous disregard for the death of an innocent young girl as well as an all consuming triumph in the failure of his rival. To me this raises the question of whether or not science itself is something of a poison, taking a presumably decent man (Baglioni seems like he could've been a good guy at some point) and making him cold, calculating, and unsympathetic to his fellow human beings. Science as a poison is present in The Birthmark, and is blaringly obvious in Frankenstein as well. Why does this theme have such a strong presence in the literature of Shelley and Hawthorne? After all today some of the most pure heroes of our history are men like Einstein, Newton, Galileo, and other great scientific minds. However, in the period of time at which our texts were written learning was reserved for the privileged, and most scientific experimentation was performed behind closed doors, virtually unaccessible to the general population. Thus it is not too surprising that science may have seemed more like some kind of sorcery to be feared and mistrusted than a tool for the betterment of mankind.
posted by David Staub at 1:21 PM
3 Comments:
I agree with your point that it seems strange that people during the 19th century were so afraid of science, but I would ask how much different the world is now. Much of our science has become common place (like computers) but the newer forms of science are still highly debated and viewed as troublesome (like cloning). In their world scientific discovery was completely new so they had absolutely no idea what any branch of experimentation could really do.
The idea of science being a poison (something dangerous) is definitely a unifying theme in many of the works we’ve read. I think that the predominant reason is that these authors were expressing a common feeling of fearing the unknown. This is a frequent theme throughout literature, no matter when or where it was written. People will always fear the unknown, whether its the manipulation of nature in the 1800s or Orwell’s 1984, 100 years later, describing a fear of the government taking totalitarian control via technology.
I read a little on Hawthorne’s background to see if he personally had any experience with science, and Hawthorne is actually a descendent of a judge of the Salem Witch Trials. Some theorize that Hawthorne added the ‘w’ to his name to distinguish himself from his ancestors). Therefore, it’s possible that Hawthorne may have somehow connected the progression of science to the witchcraft he had heard about.
I also think that it is important to consider the different "experiments" that we have read about in Hawthorne and Shelley, all of which have involved other people--fixing people's imperfections, creating people, poisoning people, combining humans with nature. It is easy to see why anyone reading these pieces of literature would consider science to be poison. The role that science plays here in one of tampering with natural creation, and as we can see from the ending of all of these stories, no good can come of this tampering. Obviously we now know that there are all different types of science having nothing to do with humans, their anatomy, or behavior; however, it is not a stretch of the imagination to understand how the public would have felt about scientific experiments after reading these pieces of literature.
Post a Comment
<< Home