Gothic Elements In Gothic

A querying of normative gender behaviour and sexuality pervades the 19th century gothic fiction text. What does this reveal about the cultural context within the tale exists?

Gothic novels consist of supernatural and inexplicable elements, prophecies and curses that have a major influence on the theme over the literature. Gothic is a method of literature with particular traits. Gothic elements are present in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter through Puritanism, sin and suspense and Gothic structure. The underlying theme within the novel suggests that sins of the past are unavoidable as they haunt the protagonist of the story.

Richardson explains how this confusion was relevant of the historical and cultural context of Austen’s era. Both the Gothic and the sentimental genres were regularly criticised for influencing readers to project fictional elements into real life. As Richardson explains, the Gothic was singled out for condemnation through its ‘thematics of female constraint and persecution and its fictive indulgence in forbidden lusts and passions, and the sentimental novel, with its ideal or ‘romantic’ picture of life and its over-valuation of erotic love as the key to female happiness (Richardson 2005:399). This projection is reflected in Northanger Abbey when Catherine is invited to Northanger Abbey: ‘Northanger Abbey! These were thrilling words, and wound up Catherine’s feelings to the highest point of ecstasy’ ( Austen pp.99-100). The use of ‘ecstasy’ reflects Catherine’s excessive personality and self-transcendence. Catherine’s gothic idealist vision of the abbey and her pursuit of pleasure, signifies her lack of self-directedness in which she dismisses her own control of life and puts herself in the position of the gothic heroine as portrayed in her reading of Radcliffe’s ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’. The prominent role of ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’ in Northanger Abbey is highly symbolic in representing Austen’s concerns of the excesses of sensibility and the gothic and how they can distort the reader’s interpretation of life. Barker-Benfield (p.111) highlights how ‘Radcliffe’s Mysteries typically hinted at its apparent dangers but continued to convey its tenets. And no one could prevent readers from identifying with figures the author intended as warnings against sensibility’s ‘excesses’.

Various authors develop their stories using gothic themes and characterizations of this type to lay the foundation for their desired reader response. Although Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Peter Taylor’s “Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time” are two completely different narratives, both of these stories share a commonality of gothic text representations. The stories take slightly different paths, with Poe’s signifying traditional gothic literature and Taylor approaching his story in a more contemporary manner.

Gothic literature is a style of writing dating back to 1764, some of the most important elements of this writing style are of an eerie setting and mental decay, stories that made great use of these elements are: “The Raven”, “Black Cat”, “The House of Usher”, and “The Devil and Tom Walker”. The authors use the gothic element of eerie setting so that they can enhance the mood of the story and of mental decay to highlight what the conflict in the characters’ lives is causing.

Gothic literature has been criticized as being a dreary, dark, and death-involving subset of Romanticism (a literary movement accentuating human individuality, imagination, and subjectivity). In addition, gothic lit incorporates several themes- not all about deathly acts - but includes some emotional and surprising themes such as dreams, nightmares, or hallucinations, and grotesque or bizarre occurrences. Two short stories, both written by Edgar Allan Poe, entitled “The Raven,” and “The Black Cat,” as well as the novel The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, all encompass these gothic elements, found throughout each story.

Orczy’s book, The Scarlet Pimpernel, is set in 1972 during the beginning stages of the French Revolution. Marguerite St. Just, a young a beautiful French women, is married to Sir. Percy Blakeney. Blakeney is a rich man who appears to be a fool. Before Blakeney and Marguerite’s marriage, Marguerite took revenge on the Marquis de St. Cyr for ending a romantic relationship that her brother had the the marchis’ daughter. Unintentionally, Marquis de St. Cyr was went to the gillentine. When Blakeney found this information out, he distanced himself from his wife.

In Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen's witty parody of Ann Radcliffe's gothic classic The Mysteries of Udolpho, offers a euphemism of Gothic romances. A comic study of the ironic discrepancies between the ordinary world in which Catherine Morland lives in and the fantasy that shapes her imagination, fed by gothic novels, gives to that world. Austen shows the differences between the heroine’s real situation and the gothic world she fantasizes. Northanger Abbey is an ironic and realistic counterstory instead of the usual mysterious and dark gothic fiction. In Northanger Abbey, Austen uses parody for comic effect.

Novel in particular and literature in general is more than just a work of fiction but in fact the hidden reflection of a specific historical era. Although, Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights and Dracula were written in different times and each leaves its readers with different emotion and contemplation stages, they all share an affinity: the presence of Gothic elements. Indeed, these novels are designed to lead their reader into thrilling journeys through spooky dark setting, suspense horrifying plot, and claustrophobic atmosphere. These elements, though appear in various forms throughout these three novels, still excellently accomplish their mission of enticing the readers to be caught up in the narrative.

Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, is acknowledged by many as the first gothic novel. It was the first of it’s kind and many of the conventions used by Walpole, which put it in a literary genre of it’s own, were continued by authors such as Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis. Many of these defining characteristics can be seen within the very first few pages of the text and for the purposes of this essay, to identify some of these conventions used and the relevance of this text to modernity I shall focus this analysis on the passage between pages twenty-four and twenty-six from the Oxford World’s Classics edition.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles was first published in 1891 to mixed reviews. The book is about the character Tess and it is a haunting and tragic tale set in England in the Victorian times in around about the mid 1800's. The book was intially turned down by publishers because the story included seduction and illegitimate birth. In the book Hardy uses a lot of symbolism, some of which foreshadows the events that occur later in the story. Tess's world is rural Wessex where agriculture was the most important industry. The story contains many rustic characters which are links back to Hardy's own life; the rustic characters are friendly and understanding and do not judge other people as much as the aristocratic chracters.

The term gothic fiction implies a British literary genre from the late eighteenth, and early nineteenth century. The modernized term seems to have been generalized into anything that is dark, gloomy, or depressing. Gothic novels often time posses an emphasis on portraying the terror, a prominent use of supernatural circumstances, the presence of highly stereotyped characters, and the attempt to display techniques of literary suspense. There are also other parallels among this vastly popular genre. Gothic novels often time describe the city of London in corresponding ways. Also a common theme amongst gothic literary works is the duality of human nature, or the quality or characteristic of being twofold. These mutual themes are apparent in

The term gothic serves as the ideal backdrop for a literary era of suspense, mystery, and terror. A haunted mansion bursting with secrets, a naïve helpless heroine, and the male hero that saves the day are all quintessentially gothic. When Ellen Moers first coined the term “Female Gothic” in her 1976 book, Literary Women, she defined it as “the work that women writers have done in the literary mode that, since the eighteenth century have been termed Gothic” (Moers). Her argument that Female Gothic literature is a code for women’s fear of domestic entrapment, especially within their own bodies as was mainly experienced in childbirth and motherhood, was quite influential. Anne Williams, in her book The Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic, argues that Female Gothic can be further dissected to include its intention to criticize the patriarchy while educating and socializing its female readers with an affirmation of absolute independence and strength. The Female Gothic is often pursued and haunted by a villainous patriarchal figure, but finds salvation on her own accord and more importantly, within herself. Another element of Female gothic is madness and monstrosity as an explanation for why the female would deviate from the conventional norm.

Gothic literature’s desire to explore the unknown, the unexplainable, inexplicable and the terrifying can be seen as a reaction to the Enlightenment’s emphasis on the rational and knowable. The Enlightenment rejected the belief in superstition, and religion. Reason, deductive logic, and observation were the methods of examining the world. A clash of these two approaches is noticeable in Otranto. The novel violates 18th century

Tess of the d’Urbervilles written by Thomas Hardy takes place in the 19th century in high class England. One fellow by the name of Jack Durbeyfield learned from a local parson that he is actually descended from the old and forgotten family, the D’Urbervilles. Planning to exact his royal name, he sent his eldest daughter to a nearby town by the name of D’Urberville, to see if she can find out whether or not they are related. Tess came to find out that their name had died off and is no longer related to the noble name, D’Urberville. What Jack and his family do with that information will be uncovered soon.