ENGL227---essay 1----Write a 2-3 page essay.

John Smith

Prof. C. Simmons

English 227

30 January 2014

Gothic Imagery in Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter

The word “gothic” gives a connotation of gloom, despair, and the decay of time. The grotesque and horrifying are used in Gothic literature for atmosphere, foreshadowing, and symbolism. Nathaniel Hawthorne is an early American example of a writer of Gothic tales. In “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” Hawthorne uses Gothic conventions to tell a story of dual natures and doomed love.

In the opening scene, Giovanni, a university student and the hero of our tale, is shown to his new lodgings in Padua. Here Hawthorne utilizes two Gothic conventions to create a grim sense of foreshadowing: the ancient, ruined building, and the mysterious old woman. Giovanni’s lodgings are in a “high and gloomy chamber of an old edifice which looked not unworthy to have been the palace of a Paduan noble” (Hawthorne 178). He is reminded of Dante’s Inferno, and imagines that a member of this ancient household “[partook] of the immortal agonies” described in the poem (178). This foreshadows the “agonies” of Giovanni’s love for Beatrice, the heroine. Giovanni is with his new landlady, a strange and vaguely superstitious woman named “dame” Lisabetta. She makes frequent reference to the Virgin and the Saints, and directs Giovanni to the view of Dr. Rappaccini’s herb garden. She tells Giovanni that he may see Rappaccini and his daughter at work in the garden, cultivating plants that “are as potent as a charm” (179). Later in the story, Lisabetta is the means by which Giovanni and Rappaccini’s daughter Beatrice meet clandestinely in the deadly garden (187).

The garden itself is the scene of the majority of Hawthorne’s Gothic symbolism and foreshadowing. It is dominated by “the ruin of a marble fountain in the centre, sculptured with rare art, but so woefully shattered that it was impossible to trace the original design from the chaos of the remaining fragments” (179). The fountain is beautiful, “rare,” and destroyed. It is a symbol for the dual nature of the garden itself, with its beautiful, deadly flowers; for Beatrice Rappaccini, who is beautiful, but literally poisonous; and the love/obsession Giovanni has for Beatrice, which is beautiful, but kills.

In the end, the Gothic tone of Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter” portrays the dual nature of love and obsession in the story. Hawthorne brilliantly displays symbolism and foreshadowing as techniques by which an author can show the deeper meaning of surface imagery.

Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Rappacini’s Daughter.” The Art of the Short Story. Ed. Wendy Martin.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 178-197. Print.