Throughout history fathers have been viewed as the masculine figure within many households, however, they are not always best at teaching their children how to love properly. Sometimes causing children to feel oppressed until a point within their lives that they are able to understand and exhibit freewill. Women tend to act on certain matters in life with their heart and not their head making decisions emotional based especially when considering love. Both “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and “A Rose for Emily” demonstrates patriarchal dominance and different but similar restrictions placed on their lives. In the short stories “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and “A Rose for Emily” both Emily and Beatrice (daughters) are products of a single fathered …show more content…
For, both Emily Grierson and Beatrice Rappaccini are limited to the desires of their fathers. In both Emily's and Beatrice's situations their lives are limited by the restrictions placed upon them (by their fathers). As a result of the limitations of their lives, for example, Emily has bachelors turned away by her father because they do not meet his standards. "None of the suitors were quite good enough for Emily" and Beatrice, of course, is unapproachable for bachelors because she has been "nourished with [the poisonous purple flower's] breath" and will poison anyone who kisses her. While Beatrice is a poison; she does not intend harm to anyone. In fact, she prefers death over harming Giovanni, telling her father that she is going. She asks Giovanni, "Oh was there not, from the first, more poison in thy nature than in mine?" On the other hand, Emily "would not be denied," and has acted selfishlessly, unlike Beatrice, to preserve her lover. So, while the two daughters of each story are similar in their having been controlled by stern fathers, they differ in their acts of free will. Resulting in both having a hunger for love after pushing it away for so long, leading to the death of both daughters and even the