Question

Who says this: "What mean you, foolish girl? Dost thou deem it misery to be endowed with marvelous gifts, against which no power nor strength could avail and enemy? Misery, to be able to quell the mightiest with a breath? Misery, to be as terrible as thou art beautiful? Wouldst thou, then, have preferred the condition of a weak woman, exposed to all evil, and capable of none?"

Answer 1

Answer:

Rappaccini said these lines.

Explanation:

Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Rappaccini's daughter" tells the story of a scientist Giacomo Rappaccini who selfishly kept his daughter Beatrice confined with him in his experimentation with poisonous plants. Along the way, she also became poisonous for other people, herself being immune to the poison of the plants.

Beatrice had began to love a young man named Giovanni, but is fatal for him. She wants to be with him but hadn't realized that he had also became just like her. The excerpt is from when Rappaccini asked her why she claimed to be miserable when she had been endowed with something that no one else has. He could not understand why Beatrice wants to be like a "weak woman, exposed to all evil, and capable of none". According to him, he had given her the greatest gift of being able to withstand any poison but can be destructive over others, whereas she wants to be like other women who can love openly and be like them.