With his tale of corrupt patriarchy filled with mystery, romance, and tragedy, Horace Walpole bridged the gap between the wantonly romantic and the excessively realistic (Scott 11); filling the space with dark settings, stark characters and tangled narratives. It was the sum of all these parts that became the formula that is still followed today by writers of the genre. This essay will outline various elements of the typical gothic novel, and the way in which they are associated with excess in the themes, characterisation, and style of writing. In doing so, the differences in the techniques used in Walpole’s novel Castle of Otranto, and M.R James’s short story Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad, will be identified and discussed. The primary objective of Gothic novelists is to rouse the reader into eliciting emotional responses such as shock or fear (Hume 284).
In 1764 Horace Walpole combined horror and romance in his novel The Castle of Ortranto. He effectively created the gothic novel. Tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femme’s fatales, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters demons, revenants, ghosts, perambulating skeletons, wandering lew, and the devil are all characters included in Gothic fiction. As I mentioned, Gothic literature contains Byronic heroes. Byronic heroes were used to describe Lord Byron by his jilted lover, Lady Caroline.
Caitlin Batchelor Dracula and How to Read Literature like a Professor 30 August 2012 Bram Stoker’s Dracula is in a word - perfect. It is the perfect example of gothic literature, and it is the perfect book to apply the techniques for reading like a professor, learned in Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature like a Professor. It is filled with symbols and has hidden themes. As a piece of gothic fiction, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is dark, but after reading How to Read Literature like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster Dracula becomes more of a tragic love story fueled by sex and religion containing many symbols that create a new way to view the story. Dracula is a book with many hidden surprises.
Language is a key element of The Lady of The House of Love which lends itself to the gothic genre. Through the endless connotations of light and dark, and the use of symbolism, Carter shapes a gothic short story by utilising key gothic conventions portrayed by the complex use of language. One way Carter uses language to not only reveal character but elicit gothic convention is through the description of the Countess; presented to us wearing "an antique bridal gown" trapped in a "chateau." The idea the Countess is wearing a bridal gown reiterates Miss. Havisham in Great Expectations; where the readers are introduced to a woman trapped in time, and unable to let go.
Consequently, the young heroine finds herself involved in many embarrassing situations throughout the novel. However, as the story goes on, Catherine eventually learns to distinguish between fantasy and reality and between her own wild imaginings and her intuition. Northanger Abbey has long been considered an ironic parody of the Gothic novel, which was very popular in Austen’s time. The purpose of this essay is to explore the elements of the Gothic novel present in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and to analyze the way in which they have been satirized by the author. Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey: a Gothic Parody The Gothic fiction is a literary genre that combines elements of both horror and romance.
In the most important aspects of Frankenstein; Frankenstein is compelling in and of itself. This book has stories that surround other stories, setting them up in one way or another. Frankenstein is a gothic novel that focuses on mysterious or supernatural features. It takes place in dark, often exotic settings. Readers feel uneasy and in terror after reading the novel.
In each of these texts the Gothic influence is used to shape the literature in differing ways, creating different effects. In this essay I will highlight these influences and explain reasons why the Authors chose to use the ‘Gothic’ devices. The earliest of these is Austin’s Northanger Abbey. This Austin’s first published Novel is often referred to as a "Gothic parody"1 because it satirizes the form and conventions of the Gothic novels that were popular during the time. A number of Gothic novels are mentioned in the book, including most importantly The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian by Ann Radcliffe.
Analyze the gothic features of the creation scene in Frankenstein The Creation scene in Frankenstein is rife with gothic tropes, ranging from excessive emotion and extreme reactions to elements of the supernatural, transgression of boundaries and symbolic representation of the various parts of the human mind. The most obvious gothic feature in this scene, and perhaps the entire book has to be the idea of the supernatural or otherworldly. Though technically speaking the monster is created through science, it would be impossible to say that it is not a supernatural feature in the text; the science used to bring the ‘inanimate body’ back to life is simply referred to as ‘the instruments of life’. This is the only explanation we get for how the creature is brought to life, all we know is that something that would have been considered only just the wrong side of the impossible to a contemporary readership, happened in Frankenstein’s Laboratory. This idea of the supernatural being something just out of reach to be considered possible is common in gothic texts in relation to the views contemporary readers of the texts would have had.
The main theme of marry Shelly’s Frankenstein is Gothicism. Within marry Shelly’s novel Frankenstein we see elements of gothic and the supernatural, sometimes represented through the grotesque. The gothic supernatural is described as being real and disturbing according to Linda Bayer. In fact it can be described as simply being something we are used to and implementing it in the world around us making it more immediate, more believable. Within this theme we see the reoccurring element of gothic villains where “the exaggeration of just one aspect of the beautiful can produce the hideous,” (Bayer 80) in this case it is literal and can be applied to the monster where this is achieved with “combinations of the normal or even beautiful through an unexpected fusion of different realms.
Both of these writers includ women as an element of their Gothic fiction, but they are used in contrasting fashions. In the Gothic genre, women are often times portrayed as either oppressed by a tyrannical masculine character, or in a forced position to make a tough decision. The former is the case in “The Black Cat,” although the beginning of the story makes it seem otherwise. This is exemplified by the narrator when he states, I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife.