Gothic 101

• Terror involves sense of psychological suspense/uncertainty rather than more visceral reactions

  • "uncertainty and obscurity"
• Terror "is seen in glimpses through obscuring shades"

  • letting one's imagination swell in distress and dreadful anticipation
  • triggers readers' mental capacity to areas they fear to explore
• the uncanny - something strangely familiar

  • complex psychological experience - where something encountered is simultaneously hauntingly beautiful and terrifying
• gothic horror - startles the reader with the grotesque, vulgar, entrapping and disturbingly loading their senses

  • "a representation of what terrifies and disgusts, what one fears and secretly desires"

  horror - paralysing fear of something concrete and tangible

  
  

  • "terror creates an intangible atmosphere of spiritual psychic dread, a certain superstitious shudder at the other world"
• gender associations - the female gothic considered as "coded expression of women's fears of entrapment within the domestic and female body"

  • women expressed their discontent towards patriarchy and suppression of "the maternal"
  • depicted as helpless victims of male desire with little agency/control
  • men fear "the Other", women fear "the terror of the familiar - the routine brutality and injustice

  e.g. patriarchal family, conventional religion and classist social structures

  • prevalent gender stereotypes - feminine horror perceived as subtler and purer, men horror = more physical and harsher
• • more sombre aspects of human nature and probe darker intricacies of the human psyche
  • fluid interplay of elements of horror and terror
• late 18th century, Romantics sought to conserve nature against unfolding Industrial Revolution


  • sublime becomes elusive + enigmatic concept that transcends boundaries of the human mind
  • evoking sense of the infinite, eternal and challenging limits of human perception
• five sources of sublimity: effects are loss of rationality + alienation

  1. great thoughts
  2. strong emotions
  3. certain figures of thought and speech
  4. noble diction
  5. dignified word arrangement
• 18th century sublime - implied inherent instability and lack of control
• Romantics claimed that encouraging reason and science hindered inspiration, and that it came from beauty + the sublime - especially in their natural state

  • used unique powers of observation to transform the mundane into the sublime
  • interested in natural experiences that consume human existence - not restrained to definitive meaning of beauty
• religious connotations - faith is means of understanding truths that transcend rationality and empirical experience

  • sublimity of God/experiencing the divine, overwhelmed by its immensity and grandeur
• Romanticism emerged as reaction against the period of Enlightenment by emphasising emotional response + intuition over clinical knowledge

  • explore psychological and emotional complexities of human experience

  Gothic literature subverts aesthetic response by generating delight and perplexity out of horror
• Female agency of the Damsel in Distress: portrayed as feeble and helpless, paradoxically seems to constitute to ultimate threat to system of patriarchy
• defining the damsel in distress

  Young women placed in life/death situations, depicted as an object of desire - her beauty + vulnerability appealing to male characters

  • women are passive and need male protection, further entrenching the male gaze
  • sexualised objects for male consumption + notion women exist solely for pleasure and gratification of men

  female role of "the predator" embodies pain/pleasure paradox - dangerous BUT powerfully attractive

  • female characters reach extremities - femme fatales/damsel in distress
  • either innocent, pure and dependent OR dangerous, seductive and independent
• male gothic genre tends to project male desires and lust onto female characters
• underlying meaning of the damsel

  • 18th century patriarchal society - political, social and economic power lies with men

  "problematises obsession with proper male succession and the domestication of women"

  
  

  • exerting agency, displaying physical courage and empowerment are key struggles of virtuous heroine - lack of agency reflected with polarisation of women through patterns of antithesis + gender stereotypes
• deeply entrenched patriarchal values - notion women are intrinsically weak and require male intervention to be safeguarded from harm
• archetype of the damsel symbolic of female disempowerment - call to empower women and strive for gender parity

  • extricate themselves from oppression + injurious situations
• Emergence of Supernatural Effect

  "important aspect of the Victorians' intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and imaginative worlds, and took its place in the domestic centre of their daily lives"

  18th century "invented the uncanny" - feeling disillusioned + disconnected from natural world

  • exploring dark, mysterious aspects of human experience
• Victorian ghost story: had entertainment and cultural commentary

  "offered evidence that the home was no haven from powerful and exacting social pressures"

  • instrument for cultural criticism - created dread on superficial level
  • what couldn't be hidden in the domestic comfort of the hearth
• realistic aspect of supernatural - use of unreal/imaginary elements alongside a believable plot, create unsettling feeling in the reader - "uncanny" effect

  • " it is so close; it permeates"
  • natural and what is other-worldly are blurred, creating "materialisation of the spiritual"
  • supernatural haunts protagonists - symbolises their psychological/emotional state
• Female Power + Supernatural: plight largely caused by supernatural - have more agency than protagonists

  Male characters' ability to employ supernatural to benefit their position - showcases how supernatural favours masculinity

  • gendered power dynamics
  • framing of women in obscure setting is common

  Gothic heroines fall victim to larger, patriarchal force orchestrated by supernatural

  • female characters' inability to act "stems from larger exterior patriarchal force disguised as supernatural"
• supernatural delivers more meaning than simply the horrific spectacle

  • by manipulating effect of the supernatural, each contribute to broader political + societal criticism
• The Gothic world is the fallen world, living in fear and alienation

  • chronic sense of apprehension + premonition of impending but unidentified disaster