Rappaccini's Daughter

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Nathaniel Hawthorne reveals his attitude toward 19th-century society’s treatment of women through Beatrice’s interactions with her father, Giovanni, and Professor Baglioni.

• What do Beatrice’s interactions with these three men reveal about Hawthorne’s views on society’s treatment of women? (topic sentence)
• In defense of your topic sentence, identify and discuss one interaction each between Beatrice and her father, between Beatrice and Giovanni, and between Beatrice and Professor Baglioni that exemplifies Hawthorne’s interpretation.
• In your concluding sentences, consider what Hawthorne might have hoped to achieve by illuminating an aspect of his society.

2. Rappaccini and Baglioni are both great men of science, but they represent very different views of the role of scientific experimentation regarding its ethical use in human subjects.