The Gothic Imagery in Red Room by Nicci French Essay

In this short story, Poe uses a decaying setting in a castellated abbey away from the rest of the town where he brought only his friends. Poe explains, “When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys”(1). The plague was reaching everyone, so the prince decided to bring his friends up to his castle to party while the people in the town are getting sick and dying. Not only did “The Masque of The Red Death” use a decaying setting as a characteristic in the story, but also Poe uses darkness as another characteristic throughout the story. Poe describes the seven rooms in the Prince’s castle, and how each one is a different color and theme. Poe illustrates, “But in the western or black chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all”(1). Poe uses many characteristics in his short story, “The Masque of The Red Death,” that show it is a gothic

Although many gothic novels are written in a complex manner, the novel “We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” is very different. This gothic novel is written in a simplistic fashion which is understandable on the surface. However, if one digs deeper than the surface of this novel, “We Have Always lived in the Castle,” proves to be full of details and themes. There are many important themes in this story and some which are not as important. In the novel, “We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” there are many extremely important themes such as, domesticity, rich vs. poor, and sibling relationships. Also, in the novel, “We Have Always lived in the Castle,” there is one theme which is not essential to the novel, which is the supernatural and potential witch elements in this story. All of these themes help to portray the message of Shirley Jackson’s novel, “We have Always Lived in the Castle.”

With a low word count and deep sentence structure Wells focuses on a small group and a single plot over a short period of time. It fits to the rules of an epical short story by the use of realism throughout. This is confirmed by Wells ‘through the withholding of a part of the narrative’. (Unknown.2016). ‘The Red Room’ works well as a gothic novel due to the descriptive wording and by not personalising the characters. With the use of psychology Wells tappers into irrational fears a trait everyone has. Therefore, without personalising characters the reader can still draw on identifiable characteristics portrayed by the narrator. This in turn delivers an epical short gothic story that is timeless in its relevancy to

In Gothic Literature, it is common for the setting to be taken place in a castle. This castle could be haunted, ruined, or abandoned.etc The authors used this setting to make the character and reader convey a feeling of fear, terror, and suspense. With the setting taken place being at a castle, it gives a dark and uneasy mood that anything could take place at any given time; “...Gothic gave Romantic writers and readers a way to describe accounts of terrifying experiences in ancient castles and ruined abbeys-experiences connected with subterranean dungeons, secret passageways, flickering lamps, screams, moans, ghosts, and graveyards.” (Greenblatt, 584)

Gothic tales are dismal and disturbing. “The Feather Pillow”, “Prey”, and “The Black Cat” the main character is broken down by events. The immense pain suffered by each character is intertwined with personal relationship.

In most Gothic literature stories, imagination plays a big role in creating fear that for the reader to feel. Both of the stories that were read in class, “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “House Taken Over” included elements of Gothic literature which made the reader use their mind and have a imagination. These short stories involve many examples of imagination conquering of reason.

The Tell Tale Heart and The Red Room are two short stories that share the genre of a gothic horror story. They are both based in the nineteenth century but the plots are very diverse from one another. The Tale Tell Heart tells the story of a man driven to insanity by his landlord’s eye whereas The Red Room is a story about an ignorant man whose disbelief in ghosts leads to him spending the entire night in a haunted room with ominous consequences. With both stories set pre 1914, the writers could expand upon their main ideas as the current time was one of huge conflict between religion and science. People were worried by the thoughts of witchcraft and magic in that era, but at the same time it intrigued them.

One of the spookiest experiences in Harley’s life was on a cold, dark Halloween night when Harley and her friends, Lauryn and Heidi, got chased by a clown for 3 blocks on a gloomy narrow road. This scenario relates to traits  of Gothic Literature and Magical Realism because, that experience was in a dark setting and contained weird incidents and a disturbing plot. Those two genres are similar because they both usually have unrealistic characters and scary plots. However, in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher” is an example of Gothic Literature because, the story’s setting is in an isolated, creepy, and large house with odd characters and a frightening plot line, while Julio Cortazar’s “House Taken Over” is an example of  Magical Realism because the realistic characters are accepting the unimpressed narrative tone in an ordinary way of life. Gothic Literature is a style of writing that is characterized by elements of fear, horror, death, and gloom. Settings are usually in a isolated and haunted location in a big house or castle with trap doors, dark rooms, and secret passages. Characters are usually supernatural beings or monsters.

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.

Davison, Carol Margaret. "Haunted House/Haunted Heroine: Female Gothic Closets in "The Yellow Wallpaper." Women's Studies, vol. 33, no. 1, Jan/Feb2004, pp. 47-75. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/00197870190267197.

"The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe has a gothic horror story setting. Gothic means that the author emphasizes the mysterious, the horrible, the ghostly and the fear that can be aroused in the reader. Everyone knows that a gothic story or a ghost story will often have a setting that will be in an old, decaying mansion far out in a desolate countryside. The mansion will be filled with cobwebs, strange noises, bats, and an abundance of secret panels and corridors, in which people might be running and screaming in terror. The author uses every literary trick to give us an eerie sensation or to scare us if we hear an unexpected noise. The

Gothic elements are used throughout literature to create a sense of angst and horror. Gothic

The story takes place in a abbey will seven different halls that the prince and his closest friends lock themselves in. The rooms all have diverse colors the first Blue, then purple, green, orange, white, violet, and finally black. Blue is the symbol of birth, the color of a blanket a baby boy is swaddled in. Purple is a child's way for describing violet, so it represents childhood. Green is adolescence, orange is adulthood, summer is when the brightly colored fruit on trees ripen and mature, adulthood is when you are fully matured. White is old age when your hair turns white, violet is the the last bit of your life before you die it’s the sickness and sadness of your final days. Finally black is death, “...the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes was ghastly in the extreme…” black is darkness, what people wear to funerals, what monsters and ghosts hide in, it is the final stage in your

An opinion on the critical essay “Haunted House/Haunted Heroine: Female Gothic Closets in “The Yellow Wallpaper”” by Carol Margaret Davison

Gothic literature has an incredibly vast and important history. It is based off of gothic architecture and became a genre in literature in the late 1700s. This genre was created by the rejection of predictability and this sent writers to the “murky past”, The Middle Ages, to write about (Snodgrass). Overall, this time period provided substantial inspiration for gothic literature because it was highly contrasting with its prominent improvements and horrible crimes. Later on, in the 18th century, gothic literature evolved from being about the Middle Ages to current problems with contemporary culture and social problems of the specific time era. Each time period and each different place in the world had different subjects that gothic literature