unseen gothic

Question 1

3rd person narrator

Answer 1

Presents an omniscient narrator who is essentially watching over the characters and telling the story from afar => this elicits feelings of unease/tension etc. as the reader is left unaware of the character’s true emotions (often told in the passive voice)

Question 2

structure

Answer 2

Discontinuities/delays in the narrative => builds inner tension
- Shifts in voice => creates confusion
- Sentence lengths (short vs long for different effects)
- Convoluted or simple discourse (dialogue)

Question 3

1st person narrator

Answer 3

Told through a singular character => heightens the emotional experience of the reader as our emotions are based on their experiences (vicarious attachment) [can create an unreliable narrator]

Question 4

settings

Answer 4

• Metaphors + personification etc. => atmosphere of dread
• Visibility + darkness => obscurity of danger
• Stressing the physicality of the environment with violent/powerful imagery
• Manifestation of the character’s feelings
• The setting becomes a metonymy/reflection of inner thoughts
• Everything mirrors something => rhetoric of binaries/contrasts

Question 5

mystery/ suspense

Answer 5

• Usually created in the middle of an extract
• Deliberate obscuration/reader is left in the dark
• An inherent Gothic trope is not having full knowledge of their surroundings
• Usually leads to the reader’s realisation of the character’s vulnerability in an unknown setting

Question 6

Terror

Answer 6

• Used by Ann Radcliffe, it is primarily concerned with a greater psychological and intellectual response
• Reflects the powerlessness of individuals in the face of more dominant forces
• Common sources include grotesque, light/dark motifs, sublime settings etc.

Question 7

Horror

Answer 7

• Deals with alarmingly concrete imagery
• A more physical response
• Lurking force (personification)
• Characters’ inability to communicate their emotions
• Loss of control

Question 8

Stream of consciousness

Answer 8

A literary style whereby the narrative form reflects the thoughts of a character (either through first or third person narrative)

Question 9

Unreliable narrator

Answer 9

One whose account is limited either by their absence from certain events or their biased perspective

Question 10

Epistolary

Answer 10

• The narrative is told in the form of letters
• The advantage of this was that it allowed the reader an insight into the perspectives and emotions of many characters
• It also meant that many details could be hidden from the reader by unreliable narrators, which adds to the overall sense of intrigue and suspense
• the yellow wallpaper is an epistolary as its her diary entry

Question 11

Chinese Box structure

Answer 11

A narrative structure where the central story is framed by another but is completely separate

Question 12

Pre-Gothic

Answer 12

1721-1763

Question 13

Early Gothic

Answer 13

1764-1788

Question 14

Height of Gothic

Answer 14

1788-1838

Question 15

Post-Gothic

Answer 15

1839-1898

Question 16

Modern Gothic

Answer 16

1898 - present

Question 17

Characterisation of men

Answer 17

Gothic heroes that battle evil and act in a chivalrous way toward women
Promethean Hero / Byronic Hero / Satanic Hero

Question 18

promethean hero

Answer 18

: a Hero-Villain who has done good but only by performing an over-reaching or rebellious act. Prometheus from ancient Greek mythology saved mankind but only after stealing fire and ignoring Zeus’ order that mankind should be kept in a state of subjugation.
- Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is tellingly subtitled the “Modern Prometheus.”

Question 19

satanic hero

Answer 19

a Hero-Villain whose nefarious deeds and justifications of them make him a more interesting character than the rather bland good hero.
- The origin of this prototype comes from Romantic misreadings of Milton’s Paradise Lost, whose Satan poets like Blake and Shelley regarded as a far more compelling figure than the moralistic God of Book III of the epic. Gothic examples: Beckford’s Vathek, Radcliffe’s Montoni, Wordsworth’s Rivers (in The Borderers), Polidori’s Ruthven, and just about any vampire who is not of the Nosferatu ilk.

Question 20

byronic hero

Answer 20

The Byronic hero is a character type often associated with the English Romantic poet Lord Byron ( most notably in Don Juan ) , but with roots extending back to Hamlet. Byronic heroes are arrogant, intelligent, educated outcasts, who somehow balance their cynicism and self-destructive tendencies with a mysterious magnetism and attraction, particularly for heroines.
Byron’s protagonists are typically morally ambiguous, isolated, brooding, and overly passionate
- Rochester, in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Heathcliff from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
- Both Rochester and Heathcliff harbor the Byronic characteristics of secrecy and unfulfilled desires. Rochester is infatuated with Jane but cannot act on his desires for her since he is already married, while Heathcliff is rejected by Catherine when she refuses to marry him.

Question 21

Characterisation of women

Answer 21

• Gothic heroines that demonstrate chastity and moral purity (Damsel-in-Distress)
• Or sexualised deceiver (Femme Fatale)

Question 22

damsel in distress in the gothic

Answer 22

Early examples in this genre include Matilda in Horace Walpole’s ‘The Castle of Otranto’ and Emily in Ann Radcliffe’s ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho.’
- Ellena in The Italian
- This trope has undergone tremendous development over time, and in modern Gothic novels, the traditional damsel in distress is replaced by a fully independent and self-reliant woman
- These types are always opposite pairs: the saint and the sinner, the virgin and the whore or the angel and the witch. Women are extremes in their eyes; they are either extremely good or extremely bad persons. They are either innocent, pure and dependent on men or dangerous, seductive and independent.

Question 23

the monk - matthew lewis

Answer 23

The main plot tells the story of the devout Spanish monk Ambrosio who falls in love with a woman who comes to his monastery disguised as a young novice. The woman, Matilda, tempts him to break his celibacy. After he broke his vows by starting a sexual relationship with her, he wants to seduce the young and guiltless Antonia. Despite the fact that Matilda really loves Ambrosio, she helps him to accomplish his vicious goal with performing magical spells. With her aid, he is able to rape and kill Antonia. But then Ambrosio and Matilda are captured by the Inquisition and are tortured in order to confess all their sins. She tells her evils and gets burnt. Ambrosio escapes his death by selling his soul to the devil, but Satan reveals to him that his victim Antonia was his sister and that he sent Matilda especially to seduce him because he was too sinless in Satan’s eyes. In the end, he dies a painful death to atone all his sins.

Question 24

charecterization of villains

Answer 24

Usually from foreign countries or possess supernatural powers

Question 25

examples of the 1st person in gothic literature

Answer 25

Woman in Black
by Susan Hill The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe

Question 26

examples of 3rd person

Answer 26

The Picture of Dorian Grey
by Oscar Wilde
The Monk
by Matthew Gregory Lewis

Question 27

example of pursued protagonist

Answer 27

The Italian
by Ann Radcliffe
- the persecution of the Holy Inquisition

Question 28

Supernatural examples

Answer 28

Woman in Black
by Susan Hill
- the dead child calls out for help from the moors
- the presence of the mother is stuck

Question 29

Sexuality and Desire

Answer 29

-The Monk
by Gregory Lewis
- the Monk is commonly described as ‘lustful’ and enchanted by Antonia’s body
- around his brutish desire to rape her

Question 30

darkness

Answer 30

Woman in Black
- the woman in black turns the lights off and the protagonist is alone in the darkness with the cries of the child and the presence of the woman
The Raven (1845)
by Edgar Allen Poe
- takes place upon ‘a midnight dreary’
The Red Room (1894)
by HG Wells
- protagonist runs around trying to relight the candles, when a man reveals the only thing to be afraid of is ‘A Power of Darkness’ as it is the curse
Northanger Abbey
by Jane Austen
- Catherine is disappointed to discover that the abbey is no more than an ordinary house

Question 31

dreams

Answer 31

-Dreaming is characterized as a form of
mental activity that takes place during the act of sleep. Dreams invoke
strong emotions within the dreamer, such as ecstasy, joy and terror.
Dreams dredge up these deep emotions and premonitions that reflect
tellingly upon the dreamer, what one might conceal during waking
hours but what emerges in sleep to haunt and arouse the dreamer
The Monk
by Matthew Gregory Lewis
- Anotinia’s mother came to the chamber because she saw her daughter calling out for her to save her in a dream
- s Frankenstein. Following two years of difficult work, Victor
Frankenstein re-animates a once dead corpse. However, the elation he
expected to feel at this conquest does not occur because he is horrified
at the monster’s loathsome appearance. Exhausted and saddened by
his prolonged work and dashed expectations, he falls into a dream
state that begins with his kissing of Elizabeth, his love. However, this
kiss changes her in the most drastic way as she transforms into the
rotting corpse of Caroline, Victor’s dead mother. Upon awakening
from this horrifying dream, Victor finds himself staring into the face of
the monster he has created.

Question 32

the outsider

Answer 32

A Rose for Emily
by William Faulkner
- the outsider is Emily and she hides her dead love interest in her house and sleeps with his corpse

Question 33

Established well regarded male protagonist

Answer 33

The Woman in Black
by Susan Hill
- junior solicitor
Dracula
by Bram Stoker
- junior solicitor
Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley
- from a well thought of family, at university

Question 34

unreliable narrators

Answer 34

Turn of the Screw
By Henry James
- ambiguous narration of the ghosts of her predecessor and the woman’s lover are haunting the two children in her charge, and she refrains from telling us what’s really going on, leaving the story open for much interpretation
- the yellow wallpaper- she is descending into madness and her husband is in charge of her so she doesnt have a lot of knoweldge or control over her situation

Question 35

Mystery in a house

Answer 35

Rebecca (1938)
by Daphne Du Maurier
- innocent young woman in a house with the ghost of her husband’s first wide and she must unravel the mystery about her death
- The Castle of Otranto is a novel by Horace Walpole. It tells the story of Manfred, the lord of the castle, who tries to marry his son’s fiancée, Isabella, after his son is killed by a giant helmet. She is entrapped in the castle

Question 36

Stories telling the point of view of the monster

Answer 36

Interview with a Vampire (1976)
- showed the story from the vampire’s perspective, with a more sympathetic approach

Question 37

good and evil

Answer 37

Frankenstein (1818)
by Mary Shelley
- the presence of the creature’s side of the story makes it unclear who is the evil one

The Monk (1796)
by Gregory Lewis
- the religious setting and characters serves to heighten the tension between good and evil

Question 38

vampirism

Answer 38

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published The Bride of Corinth in 1797: ‘From my grave to wander I am forc’d Still to seek The God’s long-sever’d link, Still to love the bridegroom I have lost, And the life-blood of his heart to drink.’ Later, Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1871 Carmilla, about a lesbian vampire, could have inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula, or Varney the Vampire, a lengthy penny dreadful serial from the mid-Victorian period by James Malcolm Rymer. John Polidori created the image of a vampire portrayed as an aristocratic man, like the character of Dracula, in his tale The Vampyre (1819). He wrote Vampyre during a summer which he spent with Frankenstein creator Mary Shelley, her husband poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron in 1816.

Question 39

ancestral curse

Answer 39

Ancestral Curse Evil, misfortune, or harm that comes as a response
to or retribution for deeds or misdeeds committed against or by one’s
ancestor(s). Figures largely in the “first” gothic romance, Walpole’s
Castle of Otranto. Example: A deserved ancestral curse can be found
in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables. In the story,
Colonel Pyncheon steals the home and land of Matthew Maule, who,
in turn, curses the Colonel and his descendants for the Colonel’s
heinous act. A slight variation of this convention is the “burden of
the past,” which, like the ancestral curse, concerns misfortunes and evil
befalling one as a result of another’s past actions. However, this
particular form is not necessarily restricted to one character and his or
her descendants, and usually the actions which have caused the present
character’s ill fate occur closer to the present than in the case of the
ancestral curse. Such an example exists in Henry James’ The Turn of the
Screw, when the two children are “possessed” by the evil spirits of the
dead maid and caretaker.

Question 40

claustrophobia

Answer 40

Claustrophobia An abnormal dread of being confined in a close or
narrow space. Often attributed to actual physical imprisonment or
entrapment, claustrophobia can also figure more generally as an
indicator of the victim’s sense of helplessness or horrified mental
awareness of being enmeshed in some dark, inscrutable destiny
-Sophia Lee’s The Recess chronicles the story of two ill-fated
sisters literally born into an underground recess; in this novel the idea
of claustrophobia extends beyond just the obvious physical entrapment
to serve as a metaphor of woman’s recessive existence in a world of cruel
court and male intrigue.
Melville’s “Bartelby, the Scrivener.” Bartelby occupies a very small and
dark cubicle. It has no view other than that of a brick wall. This small
space without much light and no view creates a feeling of
claustrophobia, but, oddly, this sense seems to afflict the narrator and
reader more than it does the inscrutable scrivener.

Question 41

doppleganger

Answer 41

-A dopplegänger is often the ghostly counterpart of
a living person. It can also mean a double, alter ego, or even another
person who has the same name.
-In Psycho, by Robert Bloch,
Norman Bates becomes so distraught after killing his mother in a
jealous rage that he gradually takes on her personality. She becomes his
alter ego, and by the end of the novel has taken over his mind
completely. Other famed doubles in Gothic lore include Jekyll/Hyde,
Victor Frankenstein/his monster, Caleb Williams/Falkland, and Jane
Eyre/Bertha. Perhaps the most perfect literary example of a
dopplegänger can be found in Henry James’ “The Jolly Corner.”

Question 42

entrapment

Answer 42

Example: Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher.” Madeline
Usher is buried alive in a coffin (the ultimate entrapment) to cure a
strange malady but then left by Roderick who thinks she is dead. The
reader experiences the full Gothic horror of her awakening within her
own tomb.

Question 43

incubus

Answer 43

The incubus is characterized as a male demon who forces
himself sexually upon mortal women as they sleep. This type of
coupling is theorized to result in the subsequent births of demons,
witches, sorcerers or children with noted deformities.
: In
the movie Village of the Dammed an entire town suddenly lapses into a
type of forced sleep state which lasts several hours. In the weeks
following awakening, it is discovered that eight women within the
town are pregnant through malign means that occurred during the
sleep. Six of the eight children which result from this bizarre process
are inherently evil and thrive upon the pain of others

Question 44

Pursuit of the Heroine

Answer 44

The pursuit of a virtuous and idealistic (and
usually poetically inclined) young woman by a villain, normally
portrayed as a wicked, older but still potent aristocrat. While in many
early Gothic novels such a chase occurs across a Mediterranean forest
and/or through a subterranean labyrinth, the pursuit of the heroine is
by no means limited to these settings. This pursuit represents a threat
to the young lady’s ideals and morals (usually meaning her virginity), to
which the heroine responds in the early works with a passive courage
in the face of danger; later gothic heroines progressively become more
active and occasionally effective in their attempts to escape this pursuit
and indict patriarchy. Examples: The pursuit of the heroine can be
physical, such as in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, or more of
an emotional/mental pursuit, as found in Joyce Carol Oates “Where
Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”