Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as
Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothicism's origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel
The Castle of OtrantoThe Castle of Otranto is a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole. It is generally regarded as the first gothic novel, initiating a literary genre which would become extremely popular in the later 18th century and early 19th century...
, subtitled "A Gothic Story". The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of
RomanticRomanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel. Melodrama and parody (including self-parody) were other long-standing features of the Gothic initiated by Walpole.
Early Gothic romances
The Castle of Otranto
Horace WalpoleHoratio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford was an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician. He is now largely remembered for Strawberry Hill, the home he built in Twickenham, south-west London where he revived the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors,...
's
The Castle of OtrantoThe Castle of Otranto is a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole. It is generally regarded as the first gothic novel, initiating a literary genre which would become extremely popular in the later 18th century and early 19th century...
(1764) is often regarded as the first true Gothic romance. Walpole was obsessed with medieval Gothic architecture, and built his own house,
Strawberry HillStrawberry Hill is the Gothic Revival villa of Horace Walpole which he built in the second half of the 18th century in what is now an affluent area of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in Twickenham, London...
, in that form, sparking a fashion for
Gothic revivalThe Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...
.
His declared aim was to combine elements of the medieval romance, which he deemed too fanciful, and the modern novel, which he considered to be too confined to strict realism The basic plot created many other Gothic staples, including a threatening mystery and an ancestral curse, as well as countless trappings such as hidden passages and oft-fainting heroines. The first edition was published disguised as an actual medieval romance from Italy discovered and republished by a fictitious translator. When Walpole admitted to his authorship in the second edition, its originally favourable reception by literary reviewers changed into rejection. The romance, usually held in contempt by the educated as a tawdry and debased kind of writing, had only recently been made respectable by the works of Richardson and Fielding. A romance with superstitious elements, and moreover void of didactical intention, was considered a setback and not acceptable as a modern production. Walpole's forgery, together with the blend of history and fiction that was contravening the principles of the
EnlightenmentThe Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, brought about the Gothic novel's association with fake documentation.
Clara Reeve
Clara ReeveClara Reeve was an English novelist, best known for her Gothic fiction work The Old English Baron .Reeve was born in Ipswich, England, one of the eight children of Reverend Willian Reeve, M.A., Rector of Freston and of Kreson in Suffolk, and perpetual curate of St Nicholas...
, best known for her work
The Old English BaronThe Old English Baron is an early gothic novel by the English author Clara Reeve. It was first published under this title in 1778 although it had anonymously appeared in 1777 under its original name of The Champion of Virtue....
(1778), set out to take Walpole's plot and adapt it to the demands of the time by balancing fantastic elements with 18th century realism. The question now arose whether supernatural events that were not as evidently absurd as Walpole's would not lead the simpler minds to believe them possible.
Ann Radcliffe
Ann RadcliffeAnne Radcliffe was an English author, and considered the pioneer of the gothic novel . Her style is romantic in its vivid descriptions of landscapes, and long travel scenes, yet the Gothic element is obvious through her use of the supernatural...
developed the technique of the
explained supernatural, in which every seemingly supernatural intrusion is eventually traced back to natural causes. Radcliffe made the Gothic novel socially acceptable. Her success attracted many imitators, mostly of low quality, which soon led to a general perception of the genre as inferior, formulaic, and stereotypical. Among other elements, Ann Radcliffe also introduced the brooding figure of the Gothic villain, which developed into the
Byronic heroThe Byronic hero is an idealised but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings of English Romantic poet Lord Byron. It was characterised by Lady Caroline Lamb, later a lover of Byron's, as being "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"...
. Radcliffe's novels, above all
The Mysteries of UdolphoThe Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe, was published in four volumes on 8 May 1794 by G. G. and J. Robinson of London. The firm paid her £500 for the manuscript. The contract is housed at the University of Virginia Library. Her fourth and most popular novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho follows...
(1794), were best-sellers, although along with all novels they were looked down upon by well-educated people as sensationalist women's entertainment, despite some men's enjoyment of them.
Radcliffe also provided an aesthetic for the genre in an influential article "On the Supernatural in Poetry", examining the distinction and correlation between horror and terror in Gothic fiction
Developments in continental Europe, and The Monk
Contemporaneously to English Gothic, parallel Romantic literary movements developed in continental Europe: the
roman noir ("black novel") in France, by such writers as
François Guillaume Ducray-DuminilFrançois Guillaume Ducray-Duminil, born in 1761 in Paris, died on 29 October 1819 in Ville-d'Avray, was a French novelist.-Career:From 1790 onward, Ducray-Duminil was the literary editor of Les Petites Affiches where he was known for the great forbearance of his reviews...
,
Gaston LerouxGaston Louis Alfred Leroux was a French journalist and author of detective fiction.In the English-speaking world, he is best known for writing the novel The Phantom of the Opera , which has been made into several film and stage productions of the same name, notably the 1925 film starring Lon...
, Baculard d'Arnaud, and Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de St-Albin, Madame de Genlis and the
Schauerroman ("shudder novel") in Germany by such writers as
Friedrich SchillerJohann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
, author of
The Ghost-SeerThe Ghost-Seer ; or the Apparitionist is an unfinished novel by Friedrich Schiller. It first appeared in several instalments from 1787 to 1789 in the journal Thalia, later appearing as a three-volume book in its own right...
(1789) and
Christian Heinrich SpiessChristian Heinrich Spiess , German writer of romances, was born at Freiberg in Saxony.For a time an actor, he was appointed in 1788 controller on the estate of a certain Count Königl at Besdiekau in Bohemia, where he died, almost insane, the result of his weird fancies, on 17 August 1799.Spiess, in...
, author of
Das Petermännchen (1791/92). These works were often more horrific and violent than the English Gothic novel.
The fruit of this harvest of continental horrors was Matthew Gregory Lewis' lurid tale of monastic debauchery, black magic, and diabolism
The MonkThe Monk: A Romance is a Gothic novel by Matthew Gregory Lewis, published in 1796. It was written before the author turned 20, in the space of 10 weeks.-Characters:...
(1796). Though Lewis' novel could be read as a pastiche of the emerging genre, self-parody was a constituent part of the Gothic from the time of the genre's inception with Walpole's
Otranto.
Lewis' tale appalled some contemporary readers; however his portrayal of depraved monks, sadistic inquisitors and spectral nuns, and his scurrilous view of the Catholic Church was an important development in the genre and influenced established terror-writer Anne Radcliffe in her last novel
The ItalianThe Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents is a Gothic novel written by the English author Ann Radcliffe. It is the last book Radcliffe published during her lifetime...
(1797). In this book the hapless protagonists are ensnared in a web of deceit by a malignant monk called Schedoni and eventually dragged before the tribunals of the
InquisitionThe Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...
in Rome, leading one contemporary to remark that if Radcliffe wished to transcend the horror of these scenes she would have to visit hell itself.
The
Marquis de SadeDonatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer famous for his libertine sexuality and lifestyle...
used a Gothic framework for some of his fiction, notably
The Misfortunes of Virtue and
Eugenie de Franval, though the marquis himself never thought of his work as such. Sade critiqued the genre in the preface of his
Reflections on the novel (1800) which is widely accepted today, stating that the Gothic is "the inevitable product of the revolutionary shock with which the whole of Europe resounded". This correlation between the
French revolutionaryThe French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
TerrorThe Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...
and the "terrorist school" of writing represented by Radcliffe and Lewis was noted by contemporary critics of the genre Sade considered
The Monk to be superior to the work of Ann Radcliffe.
Other notable writers in the continental tradition include
Jan PotockiCount Jan Nepomucen Potocki was a Polish nobleman, Polish Army Captain of Engineers, ethnologist, Egyptologist, linguist, traveler, adventurer and popular author of the Enlightenment period, whose life and exploits made him a legendary figure in his homeland...
(1761–1815) and E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822).
The Romantics
Further contributions to the Gothic genre were provided in the work of the Romantic poets. Prominent examples include
ColeridgeSamuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
's
The Rime of the Ancient MarinerThe Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–98 and was published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Modern editions use a later revised version printed in 1817 that featured a gloss...
and
Christabel and
Keats'John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819) and
Isabella, or the Pot of BasilIsabella, or the Pot of Basil is a narrative poem by John Keats adapted from a story in Boccaccio's Decameron . It tells the tale of a young woman whose family intend to marry her to "some high noble and his olive trees", but who falls for Lorenzo, one of her brothers' employees. When the brothers...
(1820) which feature mysteriously fey ladies (Skarda and Jaffe 1981: 33-5, 132-3). In the latter poem the names of the characters, the dream visions and the macabre physical details are influenced by the novels of premiere Gothicist Anne Radcliffe (Skarda and Jaffe 1981: 132-3).
Percy Bysshe ShelleyPercy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
's first published work was the Gothic novel
ZastrozziZastrozzi: A Romance is a Gothic novel by Percy Bysshe Shelley first published in 1810 in London by George Wilkie and John Robinson anonymously, with only the initials of the author's name, as "by P.B.S."...
(1810), about an outlaw obsessed with revenge against his father and half-brother. Shelley published a second Gothic novel in 1811,
St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian, about an alchemist who seeks to impart the secret of immortality.
The poetry, romantic adventures and character of
Lord ByronGeorge Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...
, characterised by his spurned lover
Lady Caroline LambThe Lady Caroline Lamb was a British aristocrat and novelist, best known for her affair with Lord Byron in 1812. Her husband was the 2nd Viscount Melbourne, the Prime Minister...
as 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' were another inspiration for the Gothic, providing the archetype of the
Byronic heroThe Byronic hero is an idealised but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings of English Romantic poet Lord Byron. It was characterised by Lady Caroline Lamb, later a lover of Byron's, as being "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"...
. Byron features, under the codename of '
Lord RuthvenLord Ruthven may refer to:*Lord Ruthven , the fictional lead character of the 1819 novel The Vampyre.*Lord Ruthven , a title in the Peerage of Scotland - see Earl of Gowrie...
', in Lady Caroline's own Gothic novel:
Glenarvon (1816).
Byron was also the host of the celebrated ghost-story competition involving himself,
Percy Bysshe ShelleyPercy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
,
Mary ShelleyMary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
, and John William Polidori at the Villa Diodati on the banks of
Lake GenevaLake Geneva or Lake Léman is a lake in Switzerland and France. It is one of the largest lakes in Western Europe. 59.53 % of it comes under the jurisdiction of Switzerland , and 40.47 % under France...
in the summer of 1816. This occasion was productive of both Mary Shelley's
FrankensteinFrankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
(1818) and Polidori's
The Vampyre"The Vampyre" is a short story or novella written in 1819 by John William Polidori which is a progenitor of the romantic vampire genre of fantasy fiction...
(1819). This latter story revives Lamb's Byronic 'Lord Ruthven', but this time as a vampire.
The Vampyre has been accounted by cultural critic Christopher Frayling as one of the most influential works of fiction ever written and spawned a craze for vampire fiction and theatre (and latterly film) which has not ceased to this day. Mary Shelley's novel, though clearly influenced by the Gothic tradition, is often considered the first
science fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel, despite the omission in the novel of any scientific explanation of the monster's animation and the focus instead on the moral issues and consequences of such a creation.
A late example of traditional Gothic is
Melmoth the WandererMelmoth the Wanderer is a gothic novel published in 1820, written by Charles Robert Maturin .- Synopsis :...
(1820) by
Charles MaturinCharles Robert Maturin, also known as C.R. Maturin was an Irish Protestant clergyman and a writer of gothic plays and novels.-Biography:...
which combines themes of Anti-Catholicism with an outcast
Byronic heroThe Byronic hero is an idealised but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings of English Romantic poet Lord Byron. It was characterised by Lady Caroline Lamb, later a lover of Byron's, as being "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"...
(Varma 1986).
Victorian Gothic
By the Victorian era Gothic had ceased to be the dominant genre and was dismissed by most critics (in fact the form's popularity as an established genre had already begun to erode with the success of the historical romance popularised by Sir
Walter ScottSir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....
). However, in many ways, it was now entering its most creative phase. Recently readers and critics have begun to reconsider a number of previously overlooked Penny Blood or
Penny DreadfulA penny dreadful was a type of British fiction publication in the 19th century that usually featured lurid serial stories appearing in parts over a number of weeks, each part costing an penny...
serial fictions by such authors as
G.W.M. ReynoldsGeorge William MacArthur Reynolds was a British author and journalist.He was born in Sandwich, Kent, the son of Captain Sir George Reynolds, a flag officer in the Royal Navy. Reynolds was educated first at Dr. Nance's school in Ashford, Kent, and then passed on to the Royal Military College,...
who wrote a trilogy of Gothic horror novels:
Faust (1846),
Wagner the Wehr-wolf (1847) and
The Necromancer (1857) . Reynolds was also responsible for
The Mysteries of LondonThe Mysteries of London is a penny dreadful or city mysteries novel begun by George W. M. Reynolds in 1844. Reynolds wrote the first two series of this long-running narrative of life in the seedy underbelly of mid-nineteenth-century London. Thomas Miller wrote the third series and Edward L...
which has been accorded an important place in the development of the urban as a particularly Victorian Gothic setting, an area within which interesting links can be made with established readings of the work of Dickens and others. Another famous penny dreadful of this era was the anonymously authored
Varney the VampireVarney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood was a Victorian era serialized gothic horror story by James Malcolm Rymer . It first appeared in 1845–47 as a series of cheap pamphlets of the kind then known as "penny dreadfuls". The story was published in book form in 1847...
(1847). The formal relationship between these fictions, serialised for predominantly working class audiences, and the roughly contemporaneous sensation fictions serialised in middle class periodicals is also an area worthy of inquiry.
Influential critics, above all
John RuskinJohn Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
, far from denouncing mediaeval obscurantism, praised the imagination and fantasy exemplified by its Gothic architecture, influencing the
Pre-RaphaelitesThe Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...
.
An important and innovative reinterpreter of the Gothic in this period was
Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
. Poe focused less on the traditional elements of gothic stories and more on the psychology of his characters as they often descended into madness. Poe's critics complained about his "German" tales, to which be replied, 'that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul'. Poe, a critic himself, believed that terror was a legitimate literary subject. His story "
The Fall of the House of Usher"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in September 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. It was slightly revised in 1840 for the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque...
" (1839) explores these 'terrors of the soul' whilst revisiting classic Gothic tropes of aristocratic decay, death, and madness . The legendary villainy of the
Spanish InquisitionThe Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition , commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition , was a tribunal established in 1480 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the Medieval...
, previously explored by Gothicists Radcliffe, Lewis, and Maturin, is revisited in "
The Pit and the Pendulum"The Pit and the Pendulum" is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and first published in 1842 in the literary annual The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1843. The story is about the torments endured by a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, though Poe skews historical facts. The...
" (1842). The influence of
Ann RadcliffeAnne Radcliffe was an English author, and considered the pioneer of the gothic novel . Her style is romantic in its vivid descriptions of landscapes, and long travel scenes, yet the Gothic element is obvious through her use of the supernatural...
is also detectable in Poe's "
The Oval Portrait"The Oval Portrait" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe involving the disturbing circumstances surrounding a portrait in a chateau. It is one of his shortest stories, filling only two pages in its initial publication in 1842.-Plot summary:...
" (1842), including an honorary mention of her name in the text of the story.
The influence of Byronic Romanticism evident in Poe is also apparent in the work of the Brontë sisters.
Emily BrontëEmily Jane Brontë 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother...
's
Wuthering HeightsWuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë published in 1847. It was her only novel and written between December 1845 and July 1846. It remained unpublished until July 1847 and was not printed until December after the success of her sister Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre...
(1847) transports the Gothic to the forbidding Yorkshire Moors and features ghostly apparitions and a Byronic hero in the person of the demonic Heathcliff whilst
Charlotte BrontëCharlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are English literature standards...
's
Jane EyreJane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...
(1847) adds
The Madwoman in the AtticThe Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, published in 1979, examines Victorian literature from a feminist perspective...
(
Sandra GilbertSandra M. Gilbert , Professor Emerita of English at the University of California, Davis, is an influential literary critic and poet who has published widely in the fields of feminist literary criticism, feminist theory, and psychoanalytic criticism...
and
Susan GubarDr. Susan D. Gubar is an American academic and Distinguished Professor of English and Women's Studies at Indiana University. She is co-author with Dr. Sandra M. Gilbert of the standard feminist text, The Madwoman in the Attic and a trilogy on women's writing in the twentieth century.Her book...
1979) to the cast of Gothic fiction. The Brontës' fiction is seen by some feminist critics as prime examples of Female Gothic, exploring woman's entrapment within domestic space and subjection to patriarchal authority and the transgressive and dangerous attempts to subvert and escape such restriction. Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily's Cathy are both examples of female protagonists in such a role .
Louisa May AlcottLouisa May Alcott was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women was set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, and published in 1868...
's Gothic potboiler,
A Long Fatal Love ChaseA Long Fatal Love Chase is a suspense novel by Louisa May Alcott. She wrote it in 1866, two years before the publication of Little Women finally established her literary reputation and began to resolve her financial problems...
(written in 1866, but published in 1995) is also an interesting specimen of this subgenre.
Elizabeth Gaskell'sElizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson , often referred to simply as Mrs Gaskell, was a British novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era...
tales "The Doom of the Griffiths" (1858) "Lois the Witch", and "The Grey Woman" all employ one of the most common themes of Gothic fiction, the power of ancestral sins to curse future generations, or the fear that they will.
The gloomy villain, forbidding mansion, and persecuted heroine of
Sheridan Le FanuJoseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was the leading ghost-story writer of the nineteenth century and was central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era....
's
Uncle SilasUncle Silas is a Victorian Gothic mystery-thriller novel by the Irish writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu. It is notable as one of the earliest examples of the locked room mystery subgenre...
(1864) shows the direct influence of both Walpole's
Otranto and Radcliffe's
Udolpho. Le Fanu's short story collection
In a Glass DarklyIn a Glass Darkly is a collection of five short stories by Sheridan Le Fanu, first published in 1872, the year before his death. The second and third are revised versions of previously published stories, and the fourth and fifth are long enough to be called novellas.The title is taken from 1...
(1872) includes the superlative vampire tale
CarmillaCarmilla is a Gothic novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. First published in 1872, it tells the story of a young woman's susceptibility to the attentions of a female vampire named Carmilla...
, which provided fresh blood for that particular strand of the Gothic and influenced
Bram Stoker'sAbraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula...
DraculaDracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...
(1897). According to literary critic
Terry EagletonTerence Francis Eagleton FBA is a British literary theorist and critic, who is regarded as one of Britain's most influential living literary critics...
, Le Fanu, together with his predecessor Maturin and his successor Stoker, form a sub-genre of Irish Gothic, whose stories, featuring castles set in a barren landscape, with a cast of remote aristocrats dominating an atavistic peasantry, represent in allegorical form the political plight of colonial Ireland subjected to the
Protestant AscendancyThe Protestant Ascendancy, usually known in Ireland simply as the Ascendancy, is a phrase used when referring to the political, economic, and social domination of Ireland by a minority of great landowners, Protestant clergy, and professionals, all members of the Established Church during the 17th...
The genre was also a heavy influence on more mainstream writers, such as
Charles DickensCharles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
, who read Gothic novels as a teenager and incorporated their gloomy atmosphere and melodrama into his own works, shifting them to a more modern period and an urban setting, including
Oliver TwistOliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens, published by Richard Bentley in 1838. The story is about an orphan Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to...
(1837-8),
Bleak HouseBleak House is the ninth novel by Charles Dickens, published in twenty monthly installments between March 1852 and September 1853. It is held to be one of Dickens's finest novels, containing one of the most vast, complex and engaging arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his entire canon...
(1854) (Mighall 2003) and
Great ExpectationsGreat Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens. It was first published in serial form in the publication All the Year Round from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. It has been adapted for stage and screen over 250 times....
(1860–61). These pointed to the juxtaposition of wealthy, ordered and affluent civilisation next to the disorder and barbarity of the poor within the same metropolis. Bleak House in particular is credited with seeing the introduction of
urban fogSmog is a type of air pollution; the word "smog" is a portmanteau of smoke and fog. Modern smog is a type of air pollution derived from vehicular emission from internal combustion engines and industrial fumes that react in the atmosphere with sunlight to form secondary pollutants that also combine...
to the novel, which would become a frequent characteristic of urban Gothic literature and film (Mighall 2007). His most explicitly Gothic work is his last novel
The Mystery of Edwin DroodThe Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens. The novel was left unfinished at the time of Dickens' death, and his intended ending for it remains unknown. Though the novel is named after the character Edwin Drood, the story focuses on Drood's uncle, choirmaster John Jasper, who...
(1870). The mood and themes of the Gothic novel held a particular fascination for the Victorians, with their morbid obsession with mourning rituals,
mementosMemento mori is a Latin phrase translated as "Remember your mortality", "Remember you must die" or "Remember you will die". It names a genre of artistic work which varies widely, but which all share the same purpose: to remind people of their own mortality...
, and mortality in general.
The 1880s, saw the revival of the Gothic as a powerful literary form allied to
fin de siecleFin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...
, which fictionalized contemporary fears like ethical degeneration and questioned the social structures of the time. Classic works of this
Urban GothicUrban Gothic was a horror based series of short stories shown on Five running for two series between May 2000 and December 2001. Filmed on a comparatively low budget, it nonetheless acquired a cult following despite its late air time and the patchy coverage of Five...
include
Robert Louis Stevenson'sRobert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886),
Oscar Wilde'sOscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
The Picture of Dorian GrayThe Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine...
(1891),
George du Maurier'sGeorge Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier was a French-born British cartoonist and author, known for his cartoons in Punch and also for his novel Trilby. He was the father of actor Gerald du Maurier and grandfather of the writers Angela du Maurier and Dame Daphne du Maurier...
TrilbyTrilby is a novel by George du Maurier and one of the most popular novels of its time, perhaps the second best selling novel of the Fin de siècle after Bram Stoker's Dracula. Published serially in Harper's Monthly in 1894, it was published in book form in 1895 and sold 200,000 copies in the United...
(1894),
Richard MarshRichard Marsh may refer to:* Richard Marsh , the pseudonym of author Richard Heldman* Richard Marsh, Bishop of Durham , Lord Chancellor of England and Bishop of Durham* Richard Marsh , British Touring Car Championship racer...
's
The Beetle: A Mystery (1897),
Henry James'Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
The Turn of the ScrewThe Turn of the Screw is a novella written by Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story.Due to its ambiguous content, it became a favourite text of academics who subscribe to New Criticism. The novella has had differing interpretations, often mutually exclusive...
(1898), and the stories of
Arthur MachenArthur Machen was a Welsh author and mystic of the 1890s and early 20th century. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. His novella The Great God Pan has garnered a reputation as a classic of horror...
. The most famous Gothic villain ever,
Count DraculaCount Dracula is a fictional character, the titular antagonist of Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula and archetypal vampire. Some aspects of his character have been inspired by the 15th century Romanian general and Wallachian Prince Vlad III the Impaler...
was created by
Bram StokerAbraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula...
in his novel
DraculaDracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...
(1897). Stoker's book also established Transylvania and Eastern Europe as the
locus classicus of the Gothic .
In America, two notable writers of the end of the 19th century, in the Gothic tradition, were
Ambrose BierceAmbrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...
and
Robert W. ChambersRobert William Chambers was an American artist and writer.-Biography:He was born in Brooklyn, New York, to William P. Chambers , a famous lawyer, and Caroline Chambers , a direct descendant of Roger Williams, the founder of Providence, Rhode Island...
. Bierce's short stories were in the horrific and pessimistic tradition of Poe. Chambers, though, indulged in the decadent style of Wilde and Machen (even to the extent of having a character named 'Wilde' in his
The King in YellowThe King in Yellow is a collection of short stories written by Robert W. Chambers and published in 1895. The stories could be categorized as early horror fiction or Victorian Gothic fiction, but the work also touches on mythology, fantasy, mystery, science fiction and romance...
).
Parody
The excesses, stereotypes, and frequent absurdities of the traditional Gothic made it rich territory for satire . The most famous parody of the Gothic is
Jane Austen'sJane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
novel
Northanger AbbeyNorthanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication, though she had previously made a start on Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. According to Cassandra Austen's Memorandum, Susan was written approximately during 1798–99...
(1818) in which the naive protagonist, after reading too much Gothic fiction, conceives herself a heroine of a Radcliffian romance and imagines murder and villainy on every side, though the truth turns out to be much more prosaic. Jane Austen's novel is valuable for including a list of early Gothic works since known as the
Northanger Horrid NovelsThe Northanger Horrid Novels are seven early works of Gothic fiction recommended by Isabella Thorpe to Catherine Morland in Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey :*Clermont, a Tale by Regina Maria Roche. London: Minerva Press....
. These books, with their lurid titles, were once thought to be the creations of Jane Austen's imagination, though later research by
Michael SadleirMichael Sadleir was a British novelist and book collector.-Biography:He was born Michael Sadler, though upon beginning to publish novels he altered the spelling of his name to differentiate himself from his father, Michael Ernest Sadler, a historian and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds...
and
Montague SummersAugustus Montague Summers was an eccentric English author and clergyman. He is known primarily for his scholarly work on the English drama of the 17th century, as well as for his idiosyncratic studies on witches, vampires, and werewolves, in all of which he professed to believe...
confirmed that they did actually exist and stimulated renewed interest in the Gothic. They are currently all being reprinted by Valancourt Press .
Another example of Gothic parody in a similar vein is
The Heroine by
Eaton Stannard BarrettEaton Stannard Barrett was an Irish poet and author.-Career:Born in County Cork, Barrett studied law at Middle Temple, London. He is best known for his satirical poems about British political figures. The lines on the headstone of Thomas Moore’s daughter, usually ascribed to Joseph Atkinson, are...
(1813). Cherry Wilkinson, a fatuous female protagonist with a history of novel-reading, fancies herself as the heroine of a Gothic romance. She perceives and models reality according to the stereotypes and typical plot structures of the Gothic novel, leading to a series of absurd events culminating in catastrophe. After her downfall, her affectations and excessive imaginations become eventually subdued by the voice of reason in the form of Stuart, a paternal figure, under whose guidance the protagonist receives a sound education and correction of her misguided taste
Pulp
Notable English twentieth century writers in the Gothic tradition include
Algernon BlackwoodAlgernon Henry Blackwood, CBE was an English short story writer and novelist, one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. He was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator. S. T...
,
William Hope HodgsonWilliam Hope Hodgson was an English author. He produced a large body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction and science fiction. Early in his writing career he dedicated effort to poetry, although few of his...
,
M. R. JamesMontague Rhodes James, OM, MA, , who used the publication name M. R. James, was an English mediaeval scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge and of Eton College . He is best remembered for his ghost stories, which are regarded as among the best in the genre...
,
Hugh WalpoleSir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE was an English novelist. A prolific writer, he published thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two plays and three volumes of memoirs. His skill at scene-setting, his vivid plots, his high profile as a lecturer and his driving ambition brought him a large...
, and Marjorie Bowen. In America
pulp magazinePulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
s such as
Weird TalesWeird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....
reprinted classic Gothic horror tales from the previous century, by such authors as Poe,
Arthur Conan DoyleSir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton and printed new stories by modern authors featuring both traditional and new horrors . The most significant of these was
H. P. LovecraftHoward Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
who also wrote an excellent conspectus of the Gothic and supernatural horror tradition in his
Supernatural Horror in Literature"Supernatural Horror in Literature" is a long essay by the celebrated horror writer H. P. Lovecraft surveying the field of horror fiction. It was written between November 1925 and May 1927 and revised in 1933-1934. It was first published in 1927 in the one-shot magazine The Recluse...
(1936) as well as developing a Mythos that would influence Gothic and contemporary horror well into the 21st century. Lovecraft's protégé,
Robert BlochRobert Albert Bloch was a prolific American writer, primarily of crime, horror and science fiction. He is best known as the writer of Psycho, the basis for the film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock...
, contributed to
Weird Tales and penned
Psycho (1959), which drew on the classic interests of the genre. From these, the Gothic genre
per se gave way to modern
horror fictionHorror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
, regarded by some literary critics as a branch of the Gothic although others use the term to cover the entire genre.
New Gothic Romances
Gothic Romances of this description became popular during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with authors such as
Phyllis A. WhitneyPhyllis Ayame Whitney was an American mystery writer. Rare for her genre, she wrote mysteries for both the juvenile and the adult markets, many of which feature exotic locations. Often described as a Gothic novelist, a review in The New York Times once dubbed her "The Queen of the American...
,
Joan AikenJoan Delano Aiken MBE was an English novelist. She was born in Rye, East Sussex, into a family of writers, including her father, American poet Conrad Aiken , her sister, Jane Aiken Hodge and her brother John Aiken Joan Delano Aiken MBE (4 September 1924 – 4 January 2004) was an English novelist....
,
Dorothy EdenDorothy Enid Eden was a novelist and short story writer. She was born on 3 April 1912 in Canterbury Plains, New Zealand, where she attended school and worked as a legal secretary before moving to England in 1954. She died of cancer in London on 4 March 1982.Eden was best known for her writings in...
,
Victoria HoltEleanor Hibbert was a British author who wrote under various pen names. Her best-known pseudonyms were Jean Plaidy, Victoria Holt, and Philippa Carr; she also wrote under the names Eleanor Burford, Elbur Ford, Kathleen Kellow, Anne Percival, and Ellalice Tate...
,
Barbara MichaelsBarbara Mertz is an American author who writes under the pseudonyms Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels....
,
Mary StewartMary Florence Elinor Stewart is a popular English novelist, best known for her Merlin series, which straddles the boundary between the historical novel and the fantasy genre.-Career:...
, and Jill Tattersall. Many featured covers depicting a terror-stricken woman in diaphanous attire in front of a gloomy
castleA castle is a type of fortified structure built in Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars debate the scope of the word castle, but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble...
, often with a single lit window. Many were published under the Paperback Library Gothic imprint and were marketed to a female audience. Though the authors were mostly women, some men wrote Gothic romances under female pseudonyms. For instance the prolific Clarissa Ross and Marilyn Ross were pseudonyms for the male writer
Dan RossW. E. Daniel "Dan" Ross is a bestselling Canadian novelist from Saint John, New Brunswick who wrote over 300 books in a variety of genres and under a variety of mostly female pseudonyms such as Clarissa Ross, Ann Gilmer, Dan Roberts, and W.E.D. Ross...
and
Frank Belknap LongFrank Belknap Long was a prolific American writer of horror fiction, fantasy, science fiction, poetry, gothic romance, comic books, and non-fiction. Though his writing career spanned seven decades, he is best known for his horror and science fiction short stories, including early contributions to...
published Gothics under his wife's name, Lyda Belknap Long. Another example is British writer
Peter O'DonnellPeter O'Donnell was a British writer of mysteries and of comic strips, best known as the creator of Modesty Blaise, a female action hero/undercover trouble-shooter/enforcer...
, who wrote under the pseudonym Madeleine Brent. Outside of companies like Lovespell, who carry Colleen Shannon, very few books seem to be published using the term today.
Southern Gothic
The genre also influenced
American writingAmerican literature is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States. During its early history, America was a series of British...
to create the
Southern GothicSouthern Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic fiction unique to American literature that takes place exclusively in the American South. It resembles its parent genre in that it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot...
genre, which combines some Gothic sensibilities (such as the
GrotesqueThe word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century...
) with the setting and style of the
Southern United StatesThe Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
. Examples include
William FaulknerWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
,
Eudora WeltyEudora Alice Welty was an American author of short stories and novels about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published...
,
Harper LeeNelle Harper Lee is an American author known for her 1960 Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which deals with the issues of racism that were observed by the author as a child in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama...
, and
Flannery O'ConnorMary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...
. Contemporary American writers in this tradition include
Joyce Carol OatesJoyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...
, in such novels as
BellefleurBellefleur is a magic realist novel by Joyce Carol Oates about the generations of an upstate New York family. It is the first book in Oates' "Gothic Saga"....
and
A Bloodsmoor Romance and short story collections such as
Night-Side (Skarda 1986b) and
Raymond KennedyRaymond Kennedy was an American novelist. He was born in Wilbraham, Massachusetts to James Patrick Kennedy and Orise Belanger and was the youngest of three brothers. Kennedy spent his formative years in Belchertown and Holyoke...
in his novel
Lulu Incognito. The
Southern Ontario GothicSouthern Ontario Gothic is a sub-genre of the Gothic novel genre and a feature of Canadian literature that comes from Southern Ontario. The term was first used in Graeme Gibson's Eleven Canadian Novelists to recognize an existing tendency to apply aspects of the Gothic novel to writing based in...
applies a similar sensibility to a Canadian cultural context.
Robertson DaviesWilliam Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is variously said to have gladly accepted for himself...
,
Alice MunroAlice Ann Munro is a Canadian short-story writer, the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work, a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction, and a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize...
,
Barbara GowdyBarbara Gowdy, CM is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. Born in Windsor, Ontario, she is the long-time partner of poet Christopher Dewdney and resides in Toronto.-Literary career:...
, and
Margaret AtwoodMargaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...
have all produced works that are notable exemplars of this form. Another writer in this tradition was
Henry FarrellHenry Farrell was an American novelist and screenwriter, best known as the author of the renowned gothic horror story What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, which was made into a film starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.-Life and work:He was born Charles Farrell Myers in California, and grew up in...
whose best-known work was the Hollywood horror novel
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is a suspense novel by author Henry Farrell published in 1960 by Rinehart & Company. The novel has earned a cult following and has been made into several movies.-Plot summary:...
(1960). Farrel's novels spawned a sub-genre of 'Grande Dame Guignol' in the cinema, dubbed the '
Psycho-biddyPsycho-biddy is a colloquial term for a sub-genre of the horror/thriller movie also known by the name Older women in peril, which was most prevalent from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s...
' genre.
Modern horror
Many modern writers of horror (or indeed other types of fiction) exhibit considerable Gothic sensibilities—examples include the works of
Anne RiceAnne Rice is a best-selling Southern American author of metaphysical gothic fiction, Christian literature and erotica from New Orleans, Louisiana. Her books have sold nearly 100 million copies, making her one of the most widely read authors in modern history...
, as well as some of the sensationalist works of
Stephen KingStephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
The Romantic strand of Gothic was taken up in
Daphne du MaurierDame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning DBE was a British author and playwright.Many of her works have been adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca and Jamaica Inn and the short stories "The Birds" and "Don't Look Now". The first three were directed by Alfred Hitchcock.Her elder sister was...
's
RebeccaRebecca is a novel by Daphne du Maurier. When Rebecca was published in 1938, du Maurier became – to her great surprise – one of the most popular authors of the day. Rebecca is considered to be one of her best works...
(1938) which is in many respects a reworking of
Charlotte BrontëCharlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are English literature standards...
's
Jane EyreJane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...
. Other books by du Maurier, such as
Jamaica InnJamaica Inn is a novel by the English writer Daphne du Maurier, first published in 1936. It was later made into a film, also called Jamaica Inn, by Alfred Hitchcock...
(1936), also display Gothic tendencies. Du Maurier's work inspired a substantial body of 'Female Gothics,' concerning heroines alternately swooning over or being terrified by scowling
Byronic menThe Byronic hero is an idealised but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings of English Romantic poet Lord Byron. It was characterised by Lady Caroline Lamb, later a lover of Byron's, as being "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"...
in possession of acres of prime real estate and the appertaining
droit de seigneurDroit du seigneur is an alleged legal right allowing the lord of a medieval estate to take the virginity of his serfs' maiden daughters. There is no historical evidence that such a right ever existed.-Terminology:...
.
Other media
The themes of the literary Gothic have been translated into other media. The early 1970s saw a Gothic Romance comic book mini-trend with such titles as
DC ComicsDC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
'
The Dark Mansion Of Forbidden Love and
The Sinister House of Secret Love,
Charlton ComicsCharlton Comics was an American comic book publishing company that existed from 1946 to 1985, having begun under a different name in 1944. It was based in Derby, Connecticut...
'
Haunted LoveHaunted Love was a horror-romance anthology comic book series published by Charlton Comics from 1973 - 1975. It was part of the Gothic Romance comic book mini-trend of the era, which included the short-lived DC Comics series The Dark Mansion Of Forbidden Love and The Sinister House of Secret Love,...
,
Curtis MagazinesCurtis Magazines was an imprint of Marvel Comics that existed from 1971 to 1980. The imprint published black-and-white magazines that did not carry the Comics Code Authority seal. Initially, page counts varied between 68,76, and 84 pages....
'
Gothic Tales of Love, and
Atlas/Seaboard ComicsAtlas/Seaboard is the term comic-book historians and collectors use to refer to the 1970s line of comics published as Atlas Comics by the American company Seaboard Periodicals, to differentiate from the 1950s' Atlas Comics, a predecessor of Marvel Comics...
' one-shot magazine
Gothic Romances.
There was a notable revival in twentieth century Gothic horror films such the classic
Universal HorrorUniversal Monsters or Universal Horror is the name given to a series of distinctive horror, suspense and science fiction films made by Universal Studios from 1923 to 1960...
films of the 1930s,
Hammer HorrorHammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies and in later...
, and
Roger CormanRoger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
's Poe cycle . In
Hindi cinemaBollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai , Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing...
, the Gothic tradition was combined with aspects of
Indian cultureIndia's languages, religions, dance, music, architecture, food and customs differ from place to place within the country, but nevertheless possess a commonality....
, particularly reincarnation, to give rise to an "Indian Gothic" genre, beginning with the films
MahalMahal is a 1949 Indian Hindi film directed by Kamal Amrohi and starring Ashok Kumar and Madhubala....
(1949) and
MadhumatiMadhumati is a 1958 Hindi film produced and directed by Bimal Roy, and written by Ritwik Ghatak and Rajinder Singh Bedi. The music was composed by Salil Choudhury with the lyrics by Shailendra. The film stars Dilip Kumar, Vyjayantimala, Pran, and Johnny Walker. It was one of the earliest films to...
(1958).
Twentieth century rock music also had its Gothic side.
Black SabbathBlack Sabbath are an English heavy metal band, formed in Aston, Birmingham in 1969 by Ozzy Osbourne , Tony Iommi , Geezer Butler , and Bill Ward . The band has since experienced multiple line-up changes, with Tony Iommi the only constant presence in the band through the years. A total of 22...
's 1969 debut album created a dark sound different from other bands at the time and has been called the first ever "Goth-rock" record . Themes from Gothic writers such as
H. P. LovecraftHoward Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
were also used among
gothic rockGothic rock is a musical subgenre of post-punk and alternative rock that formed during the late 1970s. Gothic rock bands grew from the strong ties they had to the English punk rock and emerging post-punk scenes...
and
heavy metalHeavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
bands, especially in
black metalBlack metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, shrieked vocals, highly distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, blast beat drumming, raw recording, and unconventional song structure....
,
thrash metalThrash metal is a subgenre of heavy metal that is characterized usually by its fast tempo and aggression. Songs of the genre typically use fast percussive and low-register guitar riffs, overlaid with shredding-style lead work...
(
MetallicaMetallica is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1981 when James Hetfield responded to an advertisement that drummer Lars Ulrich had posted in a local newspaper. The current line-up features long-time lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo ...
's
The Call of Ktulu),
death metalDeath metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal. It typically employs heavily distorted guitars, tremolo picking, deep growling vocals, blast beat drumming, minor keys or atonality, and complex song structures with multiple tempo changes....
, and
gothic metalGothic metal or goth metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music that combines the aggression of doom metal with the dark melancholy of gothic rock. The music of gothic metal is diverse with bands known to adopt the gothic approach to different styles of heavy metal music...
. For example, heavy metal musician
King DiamondKim Bendix Petersen , better known by his stage name King Diamond, is a Grammy Award nominated Danish heavy metal musician. As a vocalist, he is known for his extensive vocal range, in particular his usage of falsetto. He is the lead vocalist for both Mercyful Fate and the eponymous King Diamond...
delights in telling stories full of horror, theatricality,
satanismSatanism is a group of religions that is composed of a diverse number of ideological and philosophical beliefs and social phenomena. Their shared feature include symbolic association with, admiration for the character of, and even veneration of Satan or similar rebellious, promethean, and...
and
anti-CatholicismAnti-Catholicism is a generic term for discrimination, hostility or prejudice directed against Catholicism, and especially against the Catholic Church, its clergy or its adherents...
in his compositions
Archetypes in the Gothic Novel
As David De Vore states, “The Gothic hero becomes a sort of archetype as we find that there is a pattern to their characterization. There is always the protagonist, usually isolated either voluntarily or involuntarily. Then there is the villain, who is the epitome of evil, either by his (usually a man) own fall from grace, or by some implicit malevolence. The Wanderer, found in many Gothic tales, is the epitome of isolation as he wanders the earth in perpetual exile, usually a form of divine punishment.” Below are classified different stock characters of the Gothic Novel along with examples from popular fiction in the genre.
- Virginal Maiden – young, beautiful, pure, innocent, kind, virtuous. Shows these virtues by fainting and crying whenever her delicate sensibilities are challenged, usually starts out with a mysterious past and it is later revealed that she is the daughter of an aristocratic or noble family.
- Matilda in The Castle of Otranto
The Castle of Otranto is a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole. It is generally regarded as the first gothic novel, initiating a literary genre which would become extremely popular in the later 18th century and early 19th century...
– She is determined to give up Theodore, the love of her life, for her cousin’s sake. Matilda always puts others first before herself, and always believes the best in others.
- Adeline in The Romance of the Forest
The Romance of the Forest is a Gothic novel by Ann Radcliffe that was first published in 1791. It combines an air of mystery and suspense with an examination of the tension between hedonism and morality. The novel was her first major, popular success, going through four editions in its first three...
- “Her wicked Marquis, having secretly immured Number One (his first wife), has now a new and beautiful wife, whose character, alas! Does not bear inspection.” As this review states, the virginal maiden character is above inspection because her personality is flawless. Hers is a virtuous character whose piety and unflinching optimism causes all to fall in love with her.
- Older, Foolish Woman
- Hippolita in The Castle Of Otranto - Hippolita is depicted as the obedient wife of her tyrant husband who “would not only acquiesce with patience to divorce, but would obey, if it was his pleasure, in endeavouring to persuade Isabelle to give him her hand”. This shows how weak women are portrayed as they are completely submissive, and in Hippolita’s case, even support polygamy at the expense of her own marriage.
- Madame LaMotte in The Romance of the Forest – naively assumes that her husband is having an affair with Adeline. Instead of addressing the situation directly, she foolishly lets her ignorance turn into pettiness and mistreatment of Adeline.
- Hero
- Theodore in The Castle of Otranto – he is witty, and successfully challenges the tyrant, saves the virginal maid without expectations
- Theodore in The Romance of the Forest – saves Adeline multiple times, is virtuous, courageous and brave, self-sacrificial
- Tyrant
- Manfred in The Castle of Otranto – unjustly accuses Theodore of murdering Conrad. Tries to put his blame onto others. Lies about his motives for attempting to divorce his wife and marry his late son’s fiancé.
- The Marquis in The Romance of the Forest – attempts to get with Adeline even though he is already married, attempts to rape Adeline, blackmails Monsieur LaMotte.
- Vathek
Vathek is a Gothic novel written by William Beckford...
– Ninth Caliph of the Abassides, who ascended to the throne at an early age. His figure was pleasing and majestic, but when angry, his eyes became so terrible that “the wretch on whom it was fixed instantly fell backwards and sometimes expired”. He was addicted to women and pleasures of the flesh, so he ordered five palaces to be built: the five palaces of the senses. Although he was an eccentric man, learned in the ways of science, physics, and astrology, he loved his people. His main greed, however, was thirst for knowledge. He wanted to know everything. This is what led him on the road to damnation.”
- The Stupid Servant – acts as comic relief by asking seemingly stupid questions, transitions between scenes, brings news, messenger, moves plot forward
- Peter in The Romance of the Forest – whenever he brings information to people, he never gets to the point but prattles on and on about insignificant things. “The reader…eagerly follows the flight of LaMotte, also of Peter, his coachman, an attached, comic, and familiar domestic.”
- Bianca in The Castle of Otranto – a gossip, helps characters get valuable news, provides comic relief
- Clowns – break the tension and act as comic relief
- Diego and Jaquez in The Castle of Otranto – they appear to talk about random things, and argue foolishly with each other in order to lighten the air of the novel.
- Banditti ‑ Ruffians
- They appear in several Gothic Novels including The Romance of the Forest in which they kidnap Adeline from her father.
- Clergy – always weak, usually evil
- Father Jerome in The Castle of Otranto – Jerome, though not evil, is certainly weak as he gives up his son when he is born and leaves his lover.
- Ambrosio in The Monk
The Monk: A Romance is a Gothic novel by Matthew Gregory Lewis, published in 1796. It was written before the author turned 20, in the space of 10 weeks.-Characters:...
– Evil and weak, this character stoops to the lowest levels of corruption including rape and incest.
- Mother Superior in The Romance of the Forest – Adeline fled from this convent because the sisters weren’t allowed to see sunlight. Highly oppressive environment.
- The Setting
- The setting of the Gothic Novel is a character in itself. The plot is usually set in a castle, an abbey, a monastery, or some other, usually religious edifice, and it is acknowledged that this building has secrets of its own. It is this gloomy and frightening scenery, which sets the scene for what the audience should expect. The importance of setting is noted in a London review of the Castle of Otranto, “He describes the country towards Otranto as desolate and bare, extensive downs covered with thyme, with occasionally the dwarf holly, the rosa marina, and lavender, stretch around like wild moorlands…Mr. Williams describes the celebrated Castle of Otranto as “an imposing object of considerable size…has a dignified and chivalric air. A fitter scene for his romance he probably could not have chosen.” Similarly, De Vore states, “The setting is greatly influential in Gothic novels. It not only evokes the atmosphere of horror and dread, but also portrays the deterioration of its world. The decaying, ruined scenery implies that at one time there was a thriving world. At one time the abbey, castle, or landscape was something treasured and appreciated. Now, all that lasts is the decaying shell of a once thriving dwelling.” Thus, without the decrepit backdrop to initiate the events, the Gothic Novel would not exist.
Role of Architecture and setting in the Gothic Novel
Gothic literature is intimately associated with the
Gothic Revival architectureThe Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...
of the same era. In a way similar to the Gothic revivalists' rejection of the clarity and rationalism of the
neoclassicalNeoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
style of the
EnlightenedThe Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
Establishment, the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the
sublimeIn aesthetics, the sublime is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic...
, and a quest for atmosphere.
The ruins of Gothic buildings gave rise to multiple linked emotions by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations—thus the urge to add fake ruins as eyecatchers in English landscape parks. English Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, characterized by harsh laws enforced by torture, and with mysterious, fantastic, and superstitious rituals. In literature such
Anti-CatholicismAnti-Catholicism is a generic term for discrimination, hostility or prejudice directed against Catholicism, and especially against the Catholic Church, its clergy or its adherents...
had a European dimension featuring
Roman CatholicThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
institutions such as the Inquisition (in southern European countries such as Italy and Spain).
Just as elements of Gothic architecture were borrowed during the Gothic Revival period in architecture, ideas about the Gothic period and Gothic period architecture were often used by Gothic novelists. Architecture itself played a role in the naming of Gothic novels, with many titles referring to castles or other common Gothic buildings. This naming was followed up with many Gothic novels often set in Gothic buildings, with the action taking place in castles, abbeys, convents and monasteries, many of them in ruins, evoking “feelings of fear, surprise, confinement”. This setting of the novel, a castle or religious building, often one fallen into disrepair, was an essential element of the Gothic novel. Placing a story in a Gothic building served several purposes. It drew on feelings of awe, it implied the story was set in the past, it gave an impression of isolation or being cut off from the rest of the world and it drew on the religious associations of the Gothic style. This trend of using Gothic architecture began with the
Castle Of Otranto and was to become a major element of the genre from that point forward.
Besides using Gothic architecture as a setting, with the aim of eliciting certain associations from the reader, there was an equally close association between the use of Gothic architecture and the storylines of Gothic novels, with the architecture often serving as a mirror for the characters and the plot lines of the story. The buildings in the
Castle of Otranto, for example, are riddled with underground tunnels, which the characters use to move back and forth in secret. This secret movement mirrors one of the plots of the story, specifically the secrets surrounding Manfred’s possession of the castle and how it came into his family. The setting of the novel in a Gothic castle was meant to imply not only a story set in the past but one shrouded in darkness.
In
The History of the Caliph VathekVathek is a Gothic novel written by William Beckford...
, architecture was used to both illustrate certain elements of Vatheks character and also warn about the dangers of over-reaching. Vathek’s hedonism and devotion to the pursuit of pleasure are reflected in the pleasure wings he adds on to his castle, each with the express purpose of satisfying a different sense. He also builds a tall tower in order to further his quest for knowledge. This tower represents Vatheks pride and his desire for a power that is beyond the reach of humans. He is later warned that he must destroy the tower and return to Islam or else risk dire consequences. Vathek’s pride wins out and, in the end, his quest for power and knowledge ends with him confined to Hell.
In the
Castle of Wolfenbach the castle that Matilda seeks refugee at while on the run is believed to haunted. Matilda discovers it is not ghosts but the Countess of Wolfenbach who lives on the upper floors and who has been forced into hiding by her husband, the Count. Matilda’s discovery of the Countess and her subsequent informing others of the Countesses presence destroys the Counts secret. Shortly after Matilda meets the Countess the Castle of Wolfenbach itself is destroyed in a fire, mirroring the destruction of the Counts attempts to keep his wife a secret and how his plots throughout the story eventually lead to his own destruction.
The major part of the action in the
Romance of the Forest is set in an abandoned and ruined abbey and the building itself served as a moral lesson, as well as a major setting for and mirror of the action in the novel. The setting of the action in a ruined abbey, drawing on Burke’s aesthetic theory of the
sublime and the beautifulA Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful is a 1757 treatise on aesthetics written by Edmund Burke. It attracted the attention of prominent Continental thinkers such as Denis Diderot and Immanuel Kant....
established the location as a place of terror and of safety. Burke argued the sublime was a source of awe or fear brought about by strong emotions such as terror or mental pain. On the other end of the spectrum was the beautiful, which were those things that brought pleasure and safety. Burke argued that the sublime was the more preferred to the two. Related to the concepts of the sublime and the beautiful is the idea of the
picturesquePicturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's...
, introduced by William Gilpin, which was thought to exist between the two other extremes. The picturesque was that which continued elements of both the sublime and the beautiful and can be thought of as a natural or uncultivated beauty, such as a beautiful ruin or a partially overgrown building. In
Romance of the Forest Adeline and the La Mottes live in constant fear of discovery by either the police or Adeline’s father and, at times, certain characters believe the castle to be haunted. On the other hand, the abbey also serves as a comfort, as it provides shelter and safety to the characters. Finally, it is picturesque, in that it was a ruin and serves as a combination of the both the natural and the human. By setting the story in the ruined abbey, Radcliffe was able to use architecture to draw on the aesthetic theories of the time and set the tone of the story in the minds of the reader. As with many of the buildings in Gothic novels, the abbey also has a series of tunnels. These tunnels serve as both a hiding place for the characters and as a place of secrets. This was mirrored later in the novel with Adeline hiding from the Marquis de Montalt and the secrets of the Marquis, which would eventually lead to his downfall and Adelines salvation.
Architecture served as an additional character in many Gothic novels, bringing with it associations to the past and to secrets and, in many cases, moving the action along and foretelling future events in the story.
The Female Gothic and the Supernatural Explained
Characterized by its castles, dungeons, gloomy forests and hidden passages, from the Gothic novel genre emerged the Female Gothic. Guided by the works of authors such as
Ann RadcliffeAnne Radcliffe was an English author, and considered the pioneer of the gothic novel . Her style is romantic in its vivid descriptions of landscapes, and long travel scenes, yet the Gothic element is obvious through her use of the supernatural...
,
Mary ShelleyMary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
and
Charlotte BrontëCharlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are English literature standards...
, the Female Gothic permitted the introduction of feminine societal and sexual desires into Gothic texts. The Medieval society, in which Gothic texts are based, granted women writers the opportunity to attribute “features of the mode [of Gothicism] as the result of the suppression of female sexuality, or else as a challenge to the gender hierarchy and values of a male-dominated culture”.
Significantly, with the development of the Female Gothic came the literary technique of
explaining the supernatural. The Supernatural Explained - as this technique was aptly named - is a recurring plot device in Radcliffe’s
The Romance of the ForestThe Romance of the Forest is a Gothic novel by Ann Radcliffe that was first published in 1791. It combines an air of mystery and suspense with an examination of the tension between hedonism and morality. The novel was her first major, popular success, going through four editions in its first three...
. The novel, published in 1791, is among Radcliffe’s earlier works. The novel sets up suspense for horrific events, which all have natural explanations.
An eighteenth-century response to the novel from the
Monthly ReviewMonthly Review is an independent Marxist journal published 11 times per year in New York City.-History:The publication was founded by Harvard University economics instructor Paul Sweezy, who became the first editor...
reads: “We must hear no more of enchanted forests and castles, giants, dragons, walls of fire and other ‘monstrous and prodigious things;’ – yet still forests and castles remain, and it is still within the province of fiction, without overstepping the limits of nature, to make use of them for the purpose of creating surprise.”
Radcliffe’s use of Supernatural Explained is characteristic of the Gothic author. The female protagonists pursued in these texts are often caught in an unfamiliar and terrifying landscape, delivering higher degrees of horror. The end result, however, is the explained supernatural, rather than terrors familiar to women, such as rape, incest, ghosts or haunted castles.
In Radcliffe’s
The Romance of the Forest, one may follow the female protagonist, Adeline, through the forest, hidden passages and abbey dungeons, “without exclaiming, ‘How these antique towers and vacant courts/ chill the suspended soul, till expectation wears the cast of fear!”
The decision of Female Gothic writers to supplement true supernatural horrors with explained cause and effect transforms romantic plots and Gothic tales into common life and writing. Rather than establish the romantic plot in impossible events Radcliffe strays away from writing “merely fables, which no stretch of fancy could realize.”
English scholar Chloe Chard’s published introduction to
The Romance of the Forest refers to the “promised effect of terror”. The outcome, however, “may prove less horrific than the novel has originally suggested”. Radcliffe sets up suspense throughout the course of the novel, insinuating a supernatural or superstitious cause to the mysterious and horrific occurrences of the plot. However, the suspense is relieved with the Supernatural Explained.
For example, Adeline is reading the illegible manuscripts she found in her bedchamber’s secret passage in the abbey when she hears a chilling noise from beyond her doorway. She goes to sleep unsettled, only to awake and learn that what she assumed to be haunting spirits were actually the domestic voices of the servant, Peter. La Motte, her caretaker in the abbey, recognizes the heights to which her imagination reached after reading the autobiographical manuscripts of a past murdered man in the abbey.
- “‘I do not wonder, that after you had suffered its terrors to impress your imagination, you fancied you saw specters, and heard wondrous noises.’ La Motte said.
- ‘God bless you! Ma’amselle,’ said Peter.
- ‘I’m sorry I frightened you so last night.’
- ‘Frightened me,’ said Adeline; ‘how was you concerned in that?’
He then informed her, that when he thought Monsieur and Madame La Motte were asleep, he had stolen to her chamber door... that he had called several times as loudly as he dared, but receiving no answer, he believed she was asleep... This account of the voice she had heard relieved Adeline’s spirits; she was even surprised she did not know it, till remembering the perturbation of her mind for some time preceding, this surprise disappeared.”
While Adeline is alone in her characteristically Gothic chamber, she detects something supernatural, or mysterious about the setting. However, the “actual sounds that she hears are accounted for by the efforts of the faithful servant to communicate with her, there is still a hint of supernatural in her dream, inspired, it would be seem, by the fact that she is on the spot of her father’s murder and that his unburied skeleton is concealed in the room next hers”.
The supernatural here is indefinitely explained, but what remains is the “tendency in the human mind to reach out beyond the tangible and the visible; and it is in depicting this mood of vague and half-defined emotion that Mrs. Radcliffe excels”.
Transmuting the Gothic novel into a comprehendible tale for the imaginative Eighteenth Century woman was useful for the Female Gothic writers of the time. Novels were an experience for these women who had no outlet for a thrilling excursion. Sexual encounters and superstitious fantasies were idle elements of the imagination. However, the use of Female Gothic and Supernatural Explained, are a “good example of how the formula [Gothic novel] changes to suit the interests and needs of its current readers”.
In many respects, the novel’s “current reader” of the time was the woman who “lay down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame,” according to
Jane AustenJane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
, author of
Northanger AbbeyNorthanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication, though she had previously made a start on Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. According to Cassandra Austen's Memorandum, Susan was written approximately during 1798–99...
. The Gothic novel shaped its form for female readers to “turn to Gothic romances to find support for their own mixed feelings”.
Following the characteristic Gothic
BildungsromanIn literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
-like plot sequence, the Female Gothic allowed its readers to graduate from “adolescence to maturity,” in the face of the realized impossibilities of the supernatural. As female protagonists in novels like Adeline in
The Romance of the Forest learn that their superstitious fantasies and terrors are replaced with natural cause and reasonable doubt, the reader may understand the true position of the heroine in the novel:
“The heroine possesses the romantic temperament that perceives strangeness where others see none. Her sensibility, therefore, prevents her from knowing that her true plight is her condition, the disability of being female.”
Another text in which the heroine of the Gothic Novel encounters the Supernatural Explained is
The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) by Gothic author Eliza Parsons. This Female Gothic text by Parsons is listed as one of Catherine Morland's Gothic texts in Austen's
Northanger Abbey. The heroine in
The Castle of Wolfenbach, Matilda, seeks refuge after overhearing a conversation in which her Uncle Weimar speaks of plans to rape her. Matilda finds asylum in the Castle of Wolfenbach: a castle inhabited by old married caretakers who claim that the second floor is haunted. Matilda, being the courageous heroine, decides to explore the mysterious wing of the Castle.
Bertha, wife of Joseph, (caretakers of the castle) tells Matilda of the "other wing": "Now for goodness sake, dear madam, don't go no farther, for as sure as you are alive, here the ghosts live, for Joseph says he often sees lights and hears strange things."
However, as Matilda ventures through the castle, she finds that the wing is not haunted by ghosts and rattling chains, but rather, the Countess of Wolfenbach. The supernatural is explained, in this case, ten pages into the novel, and the natural cause of the superstitious noises is a Countess in distress. Characteristic of the Female Gothic, the natural cause of terror is not the supernatural, but rather female disability and societal horrors: rape, incest and the threatening control of the male antagonist.
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