The Dark Allure of Gothic Literature

This week I participated in an engrossing #LitChat discussion of Gothic Romance and an hour just wasn’t enough time to explore all the questions that came up so I thought we’d continue the chat on #ScribeChat, the chat for writers that I host every Thursday for The ScribeChat Review.

Now, lads, before you throw up your arms and run away screaming thinking this is only for the girls, I’ve got to tell you that Gothic Romance isn’t what it sounds like.The ‘romance’ refers to the genre’s genesis as a throwback to the medieval romantic movement, but with a dark twist, and only took off in the late 18th and 19th centuries in England as a genre that combines elements of both horror and romance (as in legends and courtliness).

In this 18th and 19th century re-emergence, Gothic romances were mysteries, moving away from the fantastic and magical realms of the medieval romances and into the realm of the eerie. Often involving the supernatural and heavily tinged with horror, they were frequently set against dark backgrounds of medieval ruins and haunted castles.

Characteristics of the Romantic:

• The Romance is of loftier origin than the novel and approximating poetry.
• Standards are very much those of the epic
• Invests individuals with an absorbing interest, hurries them rapidly through crowding and exacting events in a narrow space of time, requiring unities of plan, purpose and harmony of parts
• Seeks for its adventures among the wild and wonderful, not confining itself to what is known, or even what is probable, grasping instead at the possible.
• Places a character in hitherto untried situations and exercises ingenuity in extricating him from them, describing his feelings and fortunes in the process.

(Adapted from William Gilmore Simm’s prefatory letter to The Yemassee, quoted in Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition, p. 16)

Characteristics of the Gothic:

• An atmosphere of gloom, terror, or mystery
• Elements of the uncanny (unheimlich) that challenge reality, including mysterious events that cause the protagonist to question the evidence of his or her senses and the presence of seemingly supernatural beings
• An exotic setting isolated in time or space from contemporary life, often a ruined mansion or castle. The building may be associated with past violence and contain hidden doors, subterranean secret passages, concealed staircases, and other such features.
• Events, often violent or macabre, that cannot be hidden or rationalized despite the efforts of the narrator.
• A disturbed or unnatural relation between the orders of things that are usually separate, such as life and death, good and evil, dream life and reality, or rationality and madness.
• A hidden or double reality beneath the surface of what at first appears to be a single narrative.
• An interrupted narrative form that relies on multiple methods—inserted documents, letters, dreams, fragments of the story told by several narrators—to tell the tale.

(Definition supplied by Dr. Donna Campbell at the WSU website)

In many ways, the 19th century version of the genre was a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the darkness of the settings and the sense of decay reflecting the pessimism many felt about the environmental and lifestyle changes being wrought by global industrialization. It provoked a quest for atmosphere in a world where the machine threatened craftsmanship in its race for homogeneity and mass production.

Yet despite this doom and gloom, as a literary offshoot of the Romantic Movement, Gothic literature also embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness, awe of the sublime, admiration of the grand or heroic, and a quest for atmosphere. In the ruins of gothic buildings were represented the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations. 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.

Today, many people once more feel that we live in a maelstrom of change, that technology is moving faster than we are, and that there’s little time to think about the path we’re on developmentally. So what do we see? A re-emergence of dystopian novels and gothic literature reveals that writers, ever the litmus paper of social change, explore the beast within by exploring beasts on the page. By facing the shadows of decay and mortality in literature, we are more able to appreciate the light of life.

Of course, not all writers are aware of the reasons why they’re drawn to this genre. For some it’s merely a personal preference for the dark and dangerous, for living vicariously on the edge in a way they wouldn’t dare to do in real life.

Explore WSU’s site for a more complete academic definition.

{ Why do you read or write Gothic literature? Leave a comment to be entered in the drawing for an online gift card to feed your reading habit }

Tonight #ScribeChat will ask the following:

• What are the primary elements of gothic literature?
• How much or how little have these elements changed since the genre’s early beginnings?
• What is the source of its enduring commercial appeal?
• What are your favorite traditional and contemporary gothic reads?
• Is Hannibal Lecter a Gothic romance? Or horror?
• Why do you think this genre has such a hold on the young adult market?

Special Guest:

• @ sjaejones / Sarah Jae-Jones, writer and editorial assistant at St. Martin’s Press
• Read JJ’s epic post on Gothic literature: A Good Gothic Story

Read the transcript:

• The ScribeChat Review

Want to know how to join future chats?

• Go to: SCRIBECHAT (at 6-7 pm Pacific or 9-10 pm Eastern)
• Sign in using your Twitter id

FURTHER INFORMATION:

Prominent features of Gothic fiction include:

Terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, secrets, and hereditary curses.

The stock characters of Gothic fiction include:

Tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales, monks, nuns,madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, angels, fallen angels, revenants, ghosts,perambulating skeletons, the Wandering Jew and the Devil himself.

Examples of Early Gothic Romantic Literature:

• The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764)
• Glenarvon by Lady Caroline Lamb (1816)
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)
• The Vampyre by John William Polidori (1819)
• Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin (1820)

Victorian Gothic Literature:

• The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo (1831)
• The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe (1839)
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (1847)
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847)
• The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens (1870)
• Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)
• Trilby by George du Maurier (1894)
• The Turn of the Screw Henry James (1898)
• Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897).

Contemporary Gothic Literature:

• The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (1910)
• The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft (1926)
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938)
• Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote (1948)
• “The Lottery”  by Shirley Jackson (1951)
• Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake (1946–1959)
• I am Legend by Richard Matheson (1954)
• A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson (1958)
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1963)
• Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin (1967)
• Last Summer by Evan Hunter (1968)
• Don’t Look Now by Daphne du Maurier (1970)
• The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin (1972)
• The Bloody Chamber (1974) By Angela Carter
• The Chocolate War (1974) By Robert Cormier
• Salem’s Lot (1975) by Stephen King
• Julia (1975) by Peter Straub
• Interview with the Vampire (1976) by Anne Rice
• The House Next Door (1976) by Anne Rivers Siddons
• The Shining (1977) by Stephen King
• Bellefleur (1980) by Joyce Carol Oates
• The Elementals (1981) by Michael McDowell
• The Keep (1981) by F. Paul Wilson
• The Woman in Black (1983) by Susan Hill
• The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tartt
• My Heart Laid Bare (1998) by Joyce Carol Oates
• The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red (2002) by Ridley Pearson and Stephen King
• The Little Friend (2002) by Donna Tartt
• Shutter Island (2003) by Dennis Lehane
• The Thirteenth Tale (2006) by Diane Setterfield
• Nachtstürm Castle: A Gothic Austen Novel (Girlebooks Contemporary) by Emily C.A. Snyder (2009)

Contemporary Gothic Young Adult Literature:

• The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier (1974)
• Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer (2009)

Satire of the genre:

• The Heroine by Eaton Stannard Barrett (1813)
• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (1817)
• Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock (1818)
• The Ingoldsby Legends by Thomas Ingoldsby (1840)

Useful Links:

• WSU’s Definitions of Novel, Romance and Gothic
• Gothic Romance Writers of America
• Gothic Romance Forum
• Gothic Poets and Writers Literary Club
• The Gothic Literature Page by Zittaw Press
• Gothic Fiction Bookshelf at Project Gutenberg
• Literary Gothic: A Web Guide to Gothic Literature
• “Typical Elements of American Gothic Fiction”