Gothic texts and their link to texts

• Terror


  Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen 1817): use of the chest to create suspense/fear of the unknown, satirical and therefore the danger is completely imagined by Catherine.
• Horror


  -Frankenstein (Mary Shelley 1818): appearance of Frankenstein's monster, the murder of Victor's family.

  -Jekyll and Hyde (Robert Stevenson 1886): Hyde beats to death Sir Danvers Carew and tramples over a young girl.
• The sublime 


  Wuthering Heights (Emily bronte 1847): wild, remote setting of the Yorkshire moors, power of nature and vastness of the setting.
• The Uncanny (Das unheimliche coined by Sigmund Freud, unhomely, both familiar and unfamiliar)


  -Jekyll and Hyde: Hyde's animalistic qualities, appears almost human/familiar but not quite.

  -Frankenstein: monster pieced together from parts of human bodies, making strange what is familiar.

  -consider the peculiarity of characters such as Heathcliff and Dracula.
• Taboos


  -Sex: the manifestation of Catherine's desires in her dreams in Northanger Abbey, eroticism and corruption in the Monk.

  -Incest: the Castle of Otranto (Horace Walpole 1764), Isabella preyed on by father-in-law, Manfred. Rebecca's relationship with her cousin.

  -Homosexuality: relationships between Basil/Henry/Dorian in the Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde 1890) linked to Oscar Wilde's own homosexuality, homoeroticism in both Dracula and Jekyll and Hyde.

  -Polygamy: Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte 1847) discovers that Mr Rochester is already married and hiding his wife in his attic.
• The supernatural/Abhuman


  -Northanger Abbey/Jane Eyre/Villette(Charlotte Bronte 1853): seemingly supernatural occurrences have a rational explanation

  -Wuthering Heights: Heathcliff aligned with the devil, suggested that he is not entirely human.

  -Frankenstein: the monster appears supernatural but is a result of failed scientific experimentation, reflection of fears of scientific development.
• The supernatural/Abhuman


  -The Vampyre (John Polidori 1819) /Dracula (Bram Stoker 1897) /Carmilla (Sheridan LaFanu 1872): use of supernatural vampires to personify desire/need to consume.

  -The Picture of Dorian Gray: Dorian's sacrifice of his soul, losing his humanity as the portrait ages in his place.
• Oppositions


  -Wuthering Heights: consider forbidden love between Cathy and Heathcliff.
• Other: Describes people that are strange and inferior in terms of appearance, knowledge and abilities


  -Beloved (Toni Morrison 1987): otherness and separation of the black community following the abolition of slavery.

  -Frankenstein: treatment of the monster by Frankenstein, as well as the family that he finds in the Alps.
• Obscurity


  -Fog used in both Jekyll and Hyde and the Woman in Black (Susan Hill 1983) to create a sense of suspense/hidden danger.

  -Darkness/nighttime setting of many scenes in Northanger Abbey.

  -Wuthering Heights: arrival of Cathy's ghost at night.
• Revenant


  -Ghosts/haunting presences in the Woman in Black, Wuthering Heights, Beloved, Rebecca (Daphne Du Maurier 1938).

  -the Castle in Dracula and the Castle of Otranto, an ancient setting used to explore aristocratic corruption and the human psyche - a brooding and oppressive spectre of the past.

  -Castle developed into the ancient houses seen in Jane Eyre, Villette, and Rebecca.
• 


  Doppleganger:

  • Hyde as the "evil" part of Jekyll's psyche.
  • Frankenstein's monster is made of human body parts.
• Housekeepers(stock characters)


  Central to the narratives of both Wuthering Heights and Rebecca, Nelly Dean tells much of the narrative of Wuthering Heights.
• Embedded narratives/Multiple narrative voices


  Used in Beloved and Wuthering Heights to create a sense of confusion/disorder.
• Insanity


  -Jane Eyre: the madwoman in the attic.

  -Dracula: Harker's trauma and doubt of his own sanity after his experiences at Dracula's castle
• Young vulnerable women

  -Castle of Otranto: Isabella as the first Gothic heroine, endangered by the pursuit of Manfred and vulnerable to his threat of sex/violence.

  -Mrs De Winter (Susan Hill 1993): young, unsure, remains unnamed throughout suggesting a lack of fully formed personal identity.

  -Jane Eyre/Sethe (in beloved): we begin to see more developed female characters, more curious and independent.
• Women - seductresses and corrupters


  -Beloved's pursuit of Paul D. and impregnation.

  -The vampire women in Dracula.
• Foreign setting


  -Radcliffe's 'Romance of the Forest (1791): set in a fictional Italian castle.

  -Harker's journey to Transylvania
• Byronic hero


  brooding, intelligent, arrogant, tormented outcasts, Gothic archetype coined by Lord Byron and is seen in characters such as Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights) and Mr Rochester (Jane Eyre).