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:
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.
"Rappaccini's Daughter" falls within the Dark Romanticism genre. Dark Romanticism is a sub-genre of Romanticism that emphasizes the importance of emotion and intuition over nature and the fallibility of human judgment. Indeed, characters in the story who choose reason over intuition are duly punished: Giovanni harms his lover and becomes poisonous, while Rappaccini's experiment is foiled. Moreover, Giovanni's rational assessment of Beatrice is proven false, revealing the fallibility of his judgment. Dark Romanticism is also characterized by its fascination with the grotesque and demonic. In the story, this aspect of the genre manifests in Beatrice, the monstrous and toxic result of scientific manipulation of the human body. "Rappaccini's Daughter," then, is emblematic of Dark Romanticism.
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