The Gothic Genre

Gothic literature is dominated by gothic horror, for instance dark and mysterious objects or events. It is a type of literature that combines fiction, horror, and romanticism. As Bram Stoker wrote his famous novel, Dracula he makes sure to include many different characteristics of gothic literature. Three important motifs that are stated in Dracula which also fit into the gothic literature category would be; blood, dreaming or nightmares, and superstition. This particular novel has many gothic motifs, but these are three that I believe really stand out.

Gothic Literature is characterized by elements of fear, horror, death, and gloom, as well as romantic elements, such as nature, individuality, and high

Gothic literature was a popular writing tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is still used today. Gothic literature explores the wicked, perverse and dark desires. Gothic conventions can include burial alive, ghosts, hysteria, ruined bodies, tales within tales, undead characters, underground spaces, and more. Gothic themes are guilt, sex, violence, death, and cosmic struggle. Gothic stories or poems should inspire terror or horror. Edgar Allen Poe was one of the many well-known Gothic writers. In his stories he uses a variety of themes to carry out the gothic theme.

Although Gothic Elements can be very sadistic and twisted the use of it is seen in all types of stories. Some of the more famous stories that Gothic Elements are used in are the following “ A Rose for Emily,” “ The Minister’s Black Veil,” and “ The Tell- Tale Heart”. In these stories, gothic elements are found all over the place do you know why? Well the reason is that all these stories are darker stories than most. Gothic Elements are needed to make a superb scary story.

Gothic literature usually brings to mind Edgar Allen Poe and dark foggy London streets but that's not all gothic literature is. Gothic literature usually has themes of mystery and eerie settings or characters. Themes such as physical and mental decay and isolation, abandonment, and entrapment are very prominent in Prey by Richard Matheson, The Feather Pillow by Horacio Quiroga and The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe.

Gothic Literature is a writing style that has dark setting, it has an overall atmosphere of mystery, exoticism, death. A Gothic story will revolve around a large, ancient house or an obscure setting that conceals a terrible secret or that serves as the refuge of an especially frightening and threatening character

The main themes of Edgar Allan Poe’s works are death, perversity, revenge and destruction. The settings he employed in the given short stories, especially in The Fall of the House of Usher and The Black Cat are Gothic. Therefore, naturally the mood of these stories would be dark and sepulchral. However, this is not a trivial employment undertaken to put the reader in a certain kind of zone.

popular at the time. The elements of a Gothic novel are, it is set at

The Gothic genre often reproduces a conservative paranoid structure when it comes to homophobia and other moral panics over sex (Hanson, Pg. 176). Eve Sedgwick depicts this in her work, ‘Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosexual Desire’ as she discusses how these ideas (paranoia) are represented within the Gothic, in what she describes as the ‘homosocial’ in reference to male bonds (Sedgwick, Pg. 86). She also discusses how bonds between men exist as the backbone of social form and forms (Sedgwick, Pg. 86). Thus, a consequence of said structure is the ability to define, control, and manipulate male bonds, which in turn becomes an inexplicably powerful instrument of social control (Sedgwick, Pg. 86). Thus, homosexuality is represented as the ‘unspeakable’ within the Gothic, as it has been defined, controlled, and manipulated to be such though social control. Therefore, this paper will discuss how ‘homosocial’ bonds between men, are used as a tool in social control and used as a way to produce paranoia and moral panic, thus in reference to the Gothic, these forms epitomize homosexuality as the ‘unspeakable,’ especially through homosexual representations within the contexts of ghosts and haunted houses.

A strong example of Gothic Literature is “The Fall of the House of Usher”, by Edgar Allen Poe. This is a strong example of Gothic Literature because, Roderick is a mentally ill man who asks his friend, the narrator, to come visit because he’s always nervous. Roderick, and with the assistance of the narrator, buried his sister, Madeline, alive. She eventually came back and haunted Roderick and killed him. Based on this, That plot contains several elements of Gothic Literature. As well as some of the things the narrator said. For example, at the beginning of the story, when the narrator shows up at the House of Usher, he describes the feeling he gets while looking at the house. The narrator says, “There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of imagination could torture into aught of the sublime” (14). The narrator’s feelings of the house are a superb example of Gothic Literature because, his description being very dark and gloomy display some of the elements of Gothic Literature. Therefore, “The Fall of

Different works of gothic literature share similar gothic elements such as ambiguity, death, and nightmares. Each element contributes a different tone to the stories that bring the reader into the work. Every story contains a different element that come together to bring out the same feelings.

     The very first characteristic of a Gothic novel is its sinister setting. The opening sentence in Frankenstein sets the mood

John Bowen says, “[a] genre isn’t like a box in which a group of texts all neatly fit and can be safely classified…it is more like a family. All family members don’t look alike or have a single trait in common but they have overlapping characteristics.” The gothic genre is made to shock its readers and induce strange thought. John Bowen compiled a list of characteristics that he has seen among great works of Gothic literature. These characteristics include: strange places, clashing time periods, power and constraint, terror vs. horror, and a world of doubt.

One type of gothic literary elements in this story is where the story is based. The story is based on dull, dark soundless day in autumn. It is also based in a gloomy mansion with gray sedge, ghastly tree stems, and vacant eye-like windows. The mansion has arched doorways and dark, intricate pathways. The mansion also has dark draperies hung on the wall and all the furniture is antique, tattered and comfortless.

Gothic literature includes elements of style that is usually portrayed in tales and deals with horror, despair, the grotesque, and mysteries. In the novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, there are many elements of gothic literature that is found throughout the book. The term gothic is very broad in literature, and gothic can mean many different things from characteristics of people, feelings and reactions of a specific setting, mood, actions that happen being people, and so much more. All of this thrived in the 19th century. Gothic is categorized by an emphasis on the dark, gloomy, and mysterious. Ideas such as magic, hidden passages, wind, ghosts, and other supernatural elements, love, etc were all elements in the Gothic movement during the 19th century. Specifically, the descriptions of the settings, both outside and inside, in the novel, the actions of the main protagonists in the novel, and the love between Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights all add on to this idea of a gothic literature or tradition.