Rappaccini's Daughter is a very creepy story to me. Creepy in a beautiful way. Italy fosters this creepy-esque-ness of the piece. In the piece, Italy is a place of unknown knowledge and beauty. The flowers especially represent this unknownness because they are something that Giovanni has never been exposed to. He says himself that these flowers are the temptation that was in the Garden of Eden for Adam. But he cannot stay away, because of Beatrice. She is the reason that these flowers are so intriguing to him, she loves them like they are her sisters (when in fact they pretty much are).
This piece couldn't be set anywhere else but Italy because of that quest for knowledge. This place is the breeding ground for all things knowledgeable. It was here that the Enlightenment took off and brought out a whole new way of thinking. This is seen in Doctor Rappaccini. His "experiment" of getting flower poison into his daughter from childhood to make her resistant to the effect could be seen as a sense of enlightened thinking. This is something someone would only think about (or at least act on) after this new wave of thought was introduced. Italy is a place that fosters this new thought. In the Italia Romantica, Italy is this place that is starting to lose its intellectual "boil." If Nathaniel Hawthorne experienced this idea of Italy losing its intellectual power at any point in time, then Rappaccini's Daughter could be considered a response to this idea. It could be a way for someone to point out why Italy is brilliant in their thinking, yet flawed in the procedure. Italy becomes a place that is humanized and flawed: just like these flowers that Giovanni and Beatrice are so taken with as well.
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