Gothic horror literature is a very specific type of fiction that started in the late 18th century as an offshoot of Romantic literature. Gothic literature often deals with the macabre and the terrifying – its subject matter is uniquely dark and brooding, with deeply entrenched subtexts about the changing nature of the world, and mankind’s fear of the unknown. According to Fincher, the "Gothic novel reflects a deep anxiety in eighteenth-century culture about the changing status of masculinity and femininity in a period of political and social change" (Fincher, 2001). A great deal of Gothic horror fiction deals with the changing or questioning of identities, such as Shelley's Frankenstein's monster questioning whether or not he is a real man or a creature - people in the eighteenth century were drawn to and repulsed by the abnormal, which helps to explain the Gothic novel's success. The Gothic horror genre of literature dealt with themes of isolation, alienation, death, darkness and more, injecting a much-needed bit of macabre darkness to the field of literature, and its influence remains strong today.
Haunted castles and mansions are often a staple of Gothic horror literature – Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, published in 1764, was an important establisher of the genre, and featured many of the original Gothic staples. The titular Castle is a typical Gothic structure, as it is a huge, lonely place occupied by a mysterious, Byronic figure named Manfred. Prophecies about the ownership of Otranto lead to many mysterious deaths at the hands of Manfred, tragic revelations about family histories, and the characters are often consumed with sorrow. These dark, dreary and dramatic plot elements were carried from this novel to much of the Gothic literature that followed it.
Another Gothic trait that The Castle of Otranto carried over to the rest of the Gothic horror genre was the supernatural – it was never enough that scheming villains would seek to murder people in isolated, foreboding castles, but some ghostly or uncanny element had to be present as well. In the case of Walpole’s novel, there are mysterious, spooky sounds everywhere, doors open for no reason, and murder by strange circumstances (a helmet falls and kills someone without any explanation). The presence of the prophecy is yet another supernatural element; it creates a sense of foreboding and magic that many other Gothic authors would carry over into their works.
Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein was one of the most elegant and horrifying pieces of literature written in its time, and is still widely considered a Gothic horror classic. The book follows Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a reclusive mad scientist, who seeks to create new life by sewing together the limbs and remains of several other dead bodies and reanimate them. The book and its monster have been compared to many different things in a variety of subtexts, but one of the clearest readings of the book indicates that the monster represents the dangers of knowledge, especially as the book posits that the pursuit of said knowledge can lead us to give up our humanity and ability to love. The monster's own tragic existence comes about as the result of mankind abusing its gifts, as well as accomplishing things it is not ready to be responsible for - namely, the raising of the dead and the creation of artificial life. This exploration of the horrors of science, taking place primarily in Gothic castles and estates, makes it a classic of the Gothic horror literature genre.
Shelley's writing and characterization of Victor implies that the pursuit of knowledge is something that was instilled in Victor from a very young age, restricting his ability to have romantic feelings and behave as a sexual creature. The lack of affection that Victor receives as a child is extended, as a consequence, to the monster; neither know how to love properly (Williams, 2003). While, on the surface, his parents were loving and affectionate, the writing implies that Victor is unhappy about that. By being his parents' "plaything and idol," they do not allow him to be an individual or a part of the family (Shelley, p. 33). Victor's childhood recollections are sarcastic and ill-considered; there is no way that "every hour of [his] infant life [he] received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control" (p. 34). This is made particularly true when it is revealed that he does not have those qualities (Claridge, 1985). Later, when Elizabeth is added to the family, Frankenstein considers her an object of infatuation, which borders on obsession. This prefaces the obsession that he will have with the monster, which acts as representative of the pursuit of knowledge replacing romance (Nicolson, 2010).
After the creature disappears, Victor recovers from his illness and goes to search for him. Finding his brother William murdered, he knows it was by the creature; this makes him feel primarily responsible. "I was the true murderer" (p. 89). Eventually, Victor owns up to all of the death that the creature wrought before it was put down, though not without an ounce of apology: "I abhorred the face of manoh, not abhorred! I felt attracted even to the most repulsive among them" (pp. 184-185). Though he attempts to justify his own motivations by saying he truly respected life in the end, he knows that ultimately he was responsible, and that he did try to play God with the creation of life.
The dangers of knowledge, as presented in Frankenstein, are manifest in the creation of a creature that is immediately shunned and displaced from society, as well as permits Victor Frankenstein as a character to become a cold, socially awkward and amoral person, who cannot handle the consequences of actions taken as a result of his scientific know-how. As a result, this leaves both him and the monster broken people, and illustrates the Gothic horror of science going awry, as well as a dangerous emphasis of the human spirit on the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
Gothic works often dealt with issues of sexual repression and taboos, which was part of their appeal. In William Beckford's 1786 novel Vathek, the titular character, an Arabic caliph with endless sexual passion and thirst for knowledge, delves slowly but inexorably toward damnation with the help of his astrologist mother, Carathis, and a Jinn known as Giaour. This book, along with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, demonstrate early examples of Gothic fiction. In particular, however, Vathek can be cited as an example of queer Gothic fiction; as Gothic literature deals greatly with the unknown, Vathek's journeys and the characters he meets along the way can be interpreted as homosexual (or at least fluid in their sexuality and gender identity). Vathek, Gulchenrouz, the fifty sons of Vathek's viziers, Giaour and others have a great deal of anxiety and sexual tension regarding their identities, which forms a substantial part of the queer subtext of the novel Vathek. Vathek, when read as a queer Gothic novel, displays an immense fascination with non-cisgendered characters and desires, as well as homosexual and bisexual behavior in its characters, creating an important way of understanding 18th century attitudes towards sex and gender.
Vathek is important as a work of queer Gothic literature for many reasons. Gothic literature, by definition, explores and explicates the scandalous fascinations of its eighteenth-century audience, and queer Gothic focuses particularly on their focus on alternative sexualities. The novel's characters and situations depict a world of fluid sexuality and gender identity, from Gulchenrouz's feminine asexuality to Vathek's confusion and anxiety regarding his latent homosexuality. Finally, the novel's subtexts, when viewed through a queer Gothic reading, reveal Beckford as a man dealing with similar issues of his homosexuality through the characters in the book, thus providing Gothic audiences with the kind of work they were demanding. This results in a classic and influential work that can be viewed successfully and productively through a queer Gothic lens.
In light of these works and many others, it is easy to see Gothic horror’s influence on fiction and media, even today. The horror genre has been heavily influenced by Gothic literature, and ever since that time some of the best horror works have had Gothic elements. The works of Stephen King and Chuck Palahniuk frequently contain Gothic elements, from the Overlook Hotel in The Shining to the supernatural switching of bodies in Palahniuk’s Lullaby. New genres have been made from Gothic literature’s roots, from the pulp fiction genre to Southern Gothic (like works by Faulker and others, which combine the aesthetics of the American South with the sense of isolation and tropes of the Gothic horror genre). Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire and subsequent books explore the same kind of isolation in empty places, and powerful men with large estates, in the midst of supernatural happenings (i.e. vampirism) (Davenport-Hines 358). With these works and more, it is abundantly clear that Gothic horror literature has left an indelible impression on audiences up to this day.
In conclusion, the Gothic horror literature genre is a compelling and long-running type of literature that combines the uncanny with the romantic to create unspeakable terrors in its audience. From its humble beginnings as an offshoot of Romanticism in Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, the Gothic genre established its major tenets – large castles, portentous prophecies, and murder by mysterious circumstances. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Gothic horror included the realm of science fiction, using the Gothic staples to show the foolishness of messing with science and playing God. In Vathek, the darkness and strangeness of Gothic literature was also used to convey sexual and romantic subtexts, even queer subtexts. These attributes are still alive today in the works of modern Gothic writers who take the same principles and apply them to different contexts and settings. With these writers and others, the Gothic horror genre shows no signs of fading away in terms of its effect and influence.
Works Cited
Beckford, William. Vathek. J. Johnson, 1786.
Fincher, Max. "Guessing the Mould: Homosocial Sins and Identity in Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto." Gothic Studies 3.3, 2001, pp. 229-245.
Davenport-Hines, Richard. Gothic: 400 Years of Excess, Horror, Evil and Ruin. London:
Fourth Estate, 1998.
Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto. London: 1764.
Wolfreys, Julian. Victorian Hauntings: Spectrality, Gothic, the uncanny, and literature.
Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002.
