In a short paragraph, describe Beatrice from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter."

It is
likely that your teacher or professor wants you to write a paragraph describing Beatrice in your
own words and phrasing; however, I can remind you of some of her characteristics and attributes
in order to help you write your paragraph.

Beatrice is the title character in
's short story "." Though she is not theof this story, her father, Doctor Giacomo
Rappaccini, is theand she is his victim. He is a rather mad scientist who is more concerned
about advancing his scientific studies than he is about his only child, whom he is raising by
himself. 

Beatrice is 

a young girl,
arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of the flowers, beautiful as the
day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid that one shade more would have been too much. She looked
redundant with life, health, and energy; all of which attributes were bound down and compressed,
as it were and girdled tensely, in their luxuriance, by her virgin zone.

Her voice inexplicably reminds Giovanni (the man she will come to
love) of flowers, and her appearance is strikingly similar to one particular flowering bush in
the garden Beatrice so loves. We learn later that Rappaccini planted that flower on the day
Beatrice was born, so they are, in fact, close to being sisters, as Hawthorne so often describes
them.

Beatrice is as beautiful inside as she is outside, and she is also
quite skilled in the area of medicine. Hawthorne says she is "brilliant," and Doctor
Pietro Baglioni tells Giovanni "she is already qualified to fill a professor's chair."
Despite everyone's desire to see her, Beatrice is a recluse, almost always limited to the
confines of her house and garden. 

When she and Giovanni become a couple,
they only spend time together in the garden; however, they never touch. Beatrice is careful that
even her dress does not touch her young lover. All is well with their romance until Giovanni
sees an extraordinary and appalling sight one day. As he watches Beatrice from his window above
the garden, he sees that this kind, thoughtful girl inadvertently kills an insect by breathing
on it, and the bouquet of flowers he throws her withers immediately after she grasps
it. 

Beatrice begins to realize that she and the garden have been infused (by
her father) with a deadly poison which is capable of killing anything that comes in contact with
either. She is horrified by the discovery. One day when Giovanni, who has come to virtually the
same conclusion about her, tries to reach for a flower, Beatrice grabs his hand to protect him;
the next day Giovanni sees that on "the back of that hand there was now a purple print like
that of four small fingers, and the likeness of a slender thumb upon his wrist."

In a final confrontation between the two young lovers and Rappaccini, Giovanni is
relieved to learn that Beatrice was an innocent regarding her father's sinister experiment,
Beatrice is horrified at what her father has done to her, and Rappaccini is shocked that
Beatrice is not more grateful for the "gift" he has given her. 

Realizing that she will never experience the "normal" kind love and happiness
she so desires, Beatrice drinks the antidote which Baglioni gave Giovanni. Rather than saving
her, it kills her.