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Dramatic Irony
Definition of Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved directly or indirectly, by making... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the... read full definition
Key Examples in Rappaccini’s Daughter
Rappaccini’s Daughter
Explanation and Analysis—A Twisted Eden:
"Rappaccini's Daughter" can be read as an allegorical representation of the biblical Fall of Man. Rappaccini's garden resembles the Garden of Eden in many ways: it is a beautiful and bountiful garden, populated by one man and one woman—that is, Giovanni and Beatrice. In the biblical narrative, Eve tempts Adam into sin by eating the forbidden fruit. Likewise, Giovanni succumbs to the temptation of Beatrice's beauty and becomes poisonous himself.
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Explanation and Analysis—Lethal Sisters:
Using similes, the story repeatedly compares Beatrice herself to the flowers of the garden. Watching Beatrice tend to the garden, Giovanni thinks she resembles them:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] for the impression which the fair sister made upon him was as if here were another flower, the human sister of those vegetable ones, as beautiful as they, more beautiful than the richest of them, but still to be touched only with a glove, nor to be approached without a mask.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Least Wise Path:
Early in the story, the narrator foreshadows the tragic end that awaits Giovanni and thus heightens the story's atmosphere of Gothic horror. After Giovanni's first conversation with Beatrice, which leaves him troubled and apprehensive, the narrator observes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The wisest course would have been [...] to quit his lodgings and Padua itself at once; the next wiser, to have accustomed himself, as far as possible, to the familiar and daylight view of Beatrice [...]. Least of all, while avoiding her sight, ought Giovanni to have remained so near this extraordinary being that the proximity and possibility even of intercourse should give a kind of substance and reality to the wild vagaries which his imagination ran riot continually in producing.
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Explanation and Analysis—Baglioni's Jealousy:
After Baglioni warns Giovanni about Rappaccini’s immorality and his professional stature as a scientist, the narrator uses dramatic irony to foreshadow Baglioni's cruel machinations at the end of the story:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[Giovanni] might have taken Baglioni's opinions with many grains of allowance had he known that there was a professional warfare of long continuance between him and Dr. Rappaccini, in which the latter was generally thought to have gained the advantage. If the reader be inclined to judge for himself, we refer him to certain black-letter tracts on both sides.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Statue of Vertumnus:
When Giovanni first comes across Rappaccini's garden, the story calls attention to a statue of "Vertumnus," which is an allusion to the god of change and the seasons in Roman mythology:
Unlock with LitCharts A+One plant had wreathed itself round a statue of Vertumnus, which was thus quite veiled and shrouded in a drapery of hanging foliage, so happily arranged that it might have served a sculptor for a study.
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