What Is The Moral Of The Story "Rappaccini's Daughter" By Nathaniel Hawthorne?

"Rappaccini's Daughter" is a fantasy in which a great scientist named Doctor Rappaccini gives much more importance to science than human beings. He had developed a strange desire for fame and power through science. He maintains a beautiful garden which is full of various plants and flowers. He is always ready to make experiments that would add new facts to the present store of scientific knowledge. He was working on poisonous plants to discover how they could affect human nature.

Doctor Rappaccini has a beautiful daughter named Beatrice. He makes his daughter the subject of one of his experiments. He develops a scientific formula by which certain poisons filter into the body system of Beatrice. She feels at home in the company of poisonous plants and inhales their poisonous smell as breath. She has become a living poison and her very touch is deadly to other persons. At the same time ordinary air or common smell makes her very ill because her body does not accept them.

A young man named Giovanni fell in love with Beatrice and gave her the gift of fresh flowers. As soon as she touched them, they began to wither away. But the young man was ignorant that Beatrice had become deadly poisonous for him. Beatrice also loved but always avoided to touch him. As a result of close relationship, Giovanni also became poisonous. He brought a medicine to cure her problem, as soon as she took that medicine, she fell dead immediately. In this way Rappaccini scientific research ended on the death of his own daughter.The story shows that without faith in moral values, scientific research may lead to the destruction of humanity.