University of Groningen
Literary and Cultural Research Master Thesis:
The Foundations of the Neo-Gothic: A Comparison of Eighteenth-Century Gothic Texts with Contemporary Gothic Texts
Rachael Fletcher
S2680734
Professor Richard Lansdown
Table of Contents:
Introduction 2
Literature Review 5
Key Terms 20
Chapter 1: Form and Text 23
Introduction 23
Narratives within the Novels 27
Rationalisation of Supernatural 41
They Lived Happily Ever After - Gothic Endings 49
Conclusion 56
Chapter 2: Monstrosity 58
Introduction 58
Eyes and Monstrosity 63
Corruption and Monstrosity 71
Identity and Hybridity 77
Conclusion 84
Chapter 3: The Gothic Sense of Space 85
Introduction 85
Confinement 90
Repurposing of Space 99
The Invasion of Space 105
Conclusion 111
Conclusion 113
Introduction
The Gothic has become increasingly popular in contemporary Western culture, as evidenced not just in literature but also “across disciplinary boundaries [. . .] from fashion and advertising to the way contemporary events are constructed in mass culture” (Spooner 8). We are continually confronted with elements of the Gothic in the media; from popular Gothic and horror television series, such as Penny Dreadful (2014-2016) or The Haunting of Hill House, to a number of recently published Gothic novels, such as Sarah Perry’s Melmoth (2018) or Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein: A Love Story (2019). Given this surge in popularity it is important to ask the question why contemporary Western culture is so fascinated with all things Gothic. We could consider whether contemporary Gothic is just a way for audiences and consumers to get a cheap thrill or whether it has deeper roots. These questions are ones I attempt to answer as I outline a new analytical framework or category with which to approach contemporary Gothic texts: the neo-Gothic. In the same way that neo-Victorian texts reflexively engage with the Victorian past, creating texts that speak to, and for, contemporary culture, so too can neo-Gothic texts engage with its late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century counterparts. Therefore, using neo-Victorianism as a framework to compare and contrast late eighteenth-century Gothic novels with late twentieth-century and twenty-first century novels, I aim to explore whether “neo-Gothic” can be considered a separate category or approach, and if so, what the adaptations of the original eighteenth-century Gothic motifs or themes for a contemporary audience convey about meaning.
It is important that the classic Gothic novels I select are novels that are considered to be part of the original Gothic canon. Scholars tend to agree that the “Gothic novel began with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto” (Miles “The 1790s” 41) and ended with Charles
Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) and that the period “roughly between 1760 and 1820” (Kilgour 3) marked the first Gothic moment. Therefore I have selected a number of late
analyse and compare. The classic Gothic texts have been selected based on what most scholars believe to be canonical Gothic texts from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. These texts are: Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764); William Beckford’s Vathek (1786); “the originator of the conservative female gothic” (Kilgour 113) Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794); “the archetype of the horror Gothic” (‘Gothic in Western Culture’ Hogle 8) Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796); The Vampyre (1819) by John William Polidori; and finally, Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin (1820). These novels address similar themes, yet they also approach the Gothic differently; for example, Radcliffe’s “rational” use of the supernatural in which all elements of the supernatural are revealed to have a rational
explanation contrasts with Lewis’s explicit inclusion and retention of supernatural elements. The similarity in themes is useful as this paper looks at what made a novel Gothic in its origins. In selecting possible neo-Gothic novels, I wanted to include some more canonical works (or authors) as well as a selection of contemporary novels. For this reason, starting with Angela Carter’s Gothic fairy tale retellings, The Bloody Chamber (1979), was a clear choice; I also would argue that like Walpole’s Otranto, Carter’s The Bloody Chamber is the first neo-Gothic novel in this contemporary Gothic moment. Just as the first Gothic moment that starts in 1764 gains momentum in the 1790s and ends around 1820, the contemporary Gothic moment is also jumping ahead a few years to Sarah Waters' novel Affinity (1999) and then even later to Laura Purcell’s recent novel The Silent Companions (2017). The last two novels selected are of particular interest as they are explicit retellings of classic Gothic novels: Melmoth by Sarah Perry, published in 2018, and Frankissstein: A Love Story by Jeanette Winterson, published in 2019. As mentioned above, the period between 1760 and 1820 has been defined as the first Gothic moment, and while the Gothic never completely went away, its continuing popularity in today’s Western culture signals a new and current Gothic moment. Because of this, a
comparative analysis of these two Gothic moments will shed light on whether or not
considered neo-Gothic - having a direct relationship with the original eighteenth-century Gothic. A comparative analysis between these two moments of Gothic will also demonstrate the ways in which the Gothic has changed or been adapted for a contemporary audience.
Literature Review
Most scholars agree that the first example of a Gothic novel is Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, first published in 1764. The first edition of Otranto was subtitled A Story (Walpole 1), and the preface goes to great lengths to present the text as an Italian work “printed at Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529” with the “style [of] the purest Italian” (5). The preface suggests that the time of writing was probably “between 1095, the æra of the first crusade, and 1243” (5). In the second edition, in which Walpole acknowledged that he wrote the novel, the term ‘Gothic’ was ascribed to it, and the title was changed to The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story (3). In that second edition Walpole claimed that with Otranto he had “created a new species of romance” (13) by “blend[ing] the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern” (9). Here the ancient refers to “old romance [which] was the product of the Gothic societies of the Middle Ages” (Ann Radcliffe Miles 39), while the modern refers to the “modern” development of the novel (Clery 24, Miles 37), a more “realistic idiom (think of Robinson Crusoe)” (Heiland 4). Essentially, as Clery puts it, Walpole is combining the “unnatural occurrences associated with romance and the naturalistic characterization and dialogue of the novel” (24).
While scholars agree that the start of the Gothic as a literary genre began with Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, it was “the 1790s that witnessed an explosion in what was most
commonly referred to then as the ‘terrorist system of novel writing’” (Cambridge Companion Miles 41). This increase in popularity of the genre in the 1790s is also referred to by Jerrold Hogle, who states that while the Gothic novel began with Walpole, it gained momentum “in the 1790s [. . .] throughout the British Isles (‘Gothic In Western Culture’ 1). This period was
therefore “arguably the high point of gothic fiction” (Heiland 3). Maggie Kilgour also notes that, “like so many of its hero-villains [the Gothic’s] development is one of rapid rise and fall”
(Kilgour 3) and she estimates the Gothic rise and fall to be “roughly between 1760 and 1820” (3) with Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) as the final novel of this originary
explosion. But what did Gothic actually mean, and why was it so popular during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries?
During the eighteenth century, the term Gothic carried with it a number of connotations. In its original context Gothic fiction was a response to, and a reflection of, social anxieties at the time; it also provided an outlet to explore transgressive themes and behaviour “of all sorts: across national boundaries, social boundaries, sexual boundaries, the boundaries of one’s own identity” (Heiland 3). As mentioned above, following the publication of Otranto, the “1790s witnessed an explosion” (Cambridge Companion Miles 41) of Gothic writing. The 1790s was also a period dominated by the French Revolution, a period that included, The Reign of Terror. Many critics suggest that the Gothic was “collateral damage from the French Revolution” (Miles 42). The Marquis de Sade was perhaps the first critic who connected the Gothic with the
atrocities of the French Revolution, arguing that “the genre was the inevitable product of the revolutionary shocks with which the whole of Europe resounded” because the Gothic was able to “situate in the land of fantasies” the violent atrocities that were “common knowledge, from mere observation of the history of man” (quoted by Clery in Handbook to Gothic Literature). Sade viewed the violence and horrors of the French Revolution as what “pushed novelists to new extremes of imaginary violence, as they strove to compete with the shocking reality” (Miles 43), which is clearly demonstrated in novels like Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796), for example.
The eighteenth century was not only a period of Revolutions, but it was also the time of the Enlightenment, a “modern era that privileged the powers of reason, experience, and the individual over superstition, an unquestioning adherence to the teachings of the ‘ancients,’ and willing submission to the dictates of authority” (Heiland 3). Fred Botting points out that it was the Enlightenment and its “models of modern culture” (New Companion 13), that “invented the Gothic” (13). Eighteenth-century writers viewed “their present as ‘modern’ and thus distinct form both a classical antiquity appreciated in its historical continuity and a feudal past regarded as a barbaric and primitive stage” (13). In this way David Punter highlights the distinction
writers drew between the civilised ‘present’ and the barbaric past. Building on this, Botting suggests that due to this comparison of the civilised present and barbaric past, “gothic figures thus mark turning points in cultural historical progress, points at which feudalism is
apprehended and dismissed as a ruined past in a movement toward a more enlightened future” (“Aftergothic” 278), suggesting that the Gothic was in fact a reminder of just how civilised the Enlightened present was. He also suggests that the Enlightenment carried with it a number of anxieties:
has the barbaric past really been surpassed? Have primitive energies and passions really been overcome? Gothic figures come to represent these anxieties and give them fearful form as monsters, ghosts, and demons whose return terrifies bourgeois normality and undermines ordered notions of civilized humanity and rational progress. (Botting 279)
In other words, the Gothic reflected anxieties surrounding whether the barbaric past was really done away with; after all, the violence of the French Revolution and The Terror would suggest that barbarity existed in their present.
However, not all critics share this stance. In The Rise of The Gothic Novel, Maggie Kilgour suggests that the emergence of the Gothic in the eighteenth century can also be read “as a sign of the resurrection of the need for the sacred and transcendent in a modern enlightened secular world which denies the existence of supernatural forces, or as the rebellion of the imagination against the tyranny of reason” (3); so rather than Gothic representing a fear of returning to the past, it actually represents a need for it. As Heiland points out, this was a period that witnessed a number of changes: “capitalism was on the rise, as was a middle class capable of challenging the authority of the ruling aristocracy” (3), and it was a period “characterized by massive instabilities in its socio-political structures” (3). So by the 1790s people were already losing faith in the Enlightenment as “the decade was haunted by a sense of social and
metaphysical dislocation” (Ann Radcliffe Miles 38), and following the religious revivals that took place both in Germany and England, it was therefore a “natural breeding ground for nostalgia” (38) and Romanticism. The Middle ages seemed like a more ideal time, as “the Goths with their superstitions may have been childish and credulous, but they were steeped in faith, were simpler, closer to nature, had imaginations untrammelled by the ambiguous gifts of reason” (38). Such a past was an alternative to the Enlightened present of reason and experience, where religion and faith were exposed to philosophical scepticism.
However, to do away with religion completely was not the only reaction to the
Enlightenment. As Roy Pointer explains, “religion, held the enlightened, must be rational” (100) and so Enlightenment Britain also sought “a rational religion, involving the destruction of idolatry and priestly power. Enlightenment in Britain took place within, rather than against, Protestantism” (99). Camille Paglia argues that this rational religion is rejected by the Gothic: “Protestant rationalism is defeated by Gothic’s return to the ritualism and mysticism of medieval Catholicism, with its residual paganism” (265), but this is far too simplistic. Paglia’s argument ignores the fact that many Gothic novels carry “anti-Catholic associations” (Gothic Literature Davison 26) as evidenced in Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer and Matthew Lewis’ The Monk in which the corruption and cruelty of the Catholic Church is foregrounded. However, it is also important to point out that in contrast to The Monks’ depiction of the supernatural to incite irrational terror, Ann Radcliffe’s novels actually move away from irrational thought and events and instead foreground the importance of reason and rational thinking. Her novels always provide rational explanations for any supernatural or seemingly unexplainable events. In this way the Gothic as a reaction to the Enlightenment is far more complex than just being a complete rejection of Enlightenment ideals. Instead, “Gothic works hesitate between the
revolutionary [The Monk] and conservative [works of Ann Radcliffe]” (“Introduction” Hogle 13), at once appearing both to embrace religion and reject reason, but also presenting an extreme and corrupt form of religious revival within its texts.
Therefore, because the eighteenth century was characterised by such instability, it is no surprise that many authors invented the subversive Gothic as an outlet, or a mode of expression. In this way then, the Gothic suggested one of two things:
on the one hand, it conjured up the barbarism and savagery of unlawful invading forces [The Goths], and was understood as all that threatens life. On the other hand, it took one back to the “dark ages” of the English medieval period, viewing it as a purer expression of English national identity than the neo-classical present. (Heiland 4)
While there exists this double view of the past, one thing is clear: the Gothic engages, and is very much involved, with the past. Steven Bruhm states that since its origin “the Gothic has always played with chronology, looking back to moments in an imaginary history, pining for a social stability that never existed, mourning a chivalry that belonged more to the fairy tale than to reality” (259). There is an emphasis in the Gothic on an idealised past where people mourn what they believe to have been a more stable time.
On the other hand, there are a number of critics who argue that the term Gothic has lost its original purpose or meaning. Jarlath Killeen refers to the “imprecision [which] has invaded critical writing about the Gothic” (1) and that because the term has been used “to cover writing so different in nature from the ‘original’ tradition, its ‘fundamental’ meaning is being obscured” (1). One such original tradition or fundamental meaning is the fact that to be considered a Gothic text, the text should engage in some way with the past. Fiona Robertson defines the Gothic as “a type of fiction which invites readers’ fears and anxieties in highly stylised mystery-tales, using a limited set of plots, settings, and character-types, and including an element of history” (71), asserting that “a novel should not be categorized as Gothic if it makes no attempt to situate the events of the its plot in a historical setting, however inaccurate or implausible” (71-2). Likewise, Robert Mighall’s definition of the Gothic also highlights history and geography as
fundamental necessities. He argues that since its emergence the Gothic is essentially concerned “with the historical past, and adopts a number of rhetorical and textual strategies to locate the past and represent its perceived iniquities, terrors, and survivals” (xiv), and that “such strategies are central to Gothic tradition” (xiv). Mighall points to Walpole’s Otranto to support his view, highlighting that it was A Gothic Story “because it was ‘Medieval’” (xvi) and because “principal events take place in Catholic countries” (xvi).
This view is echoed by Maurice Levy as he also laments the appropriation of the Gothic. In addition to the Gothic as having to engage with the past, Levy has an issue with the
development of “American Gothic”. He argues that the Gothic “cannot be dissociated from the manifestations of the first Gothic Revival and the culture of Georgian England” (4) and that the “naturalization of the word [Gothic] in a country with no medieval past and whose fiction owes more to Indian folklore than to European legends” (4) is not convincing. The Gothic has “feudal, aristocratic English origins” (5) and it is for this reason that Levy laments the appropriation of the term to include categories such as “Yankee Gothic” and “Southern Gothic” (10). Levy further argues that it is the Faustian theme of temptation and the fall which “justified for many critics the use of the sublime word” (6). He argues that because critics are so quick to label any text Gothic if it happens to include certain Gothic themes, they have “created a situation in which the original meaning of the word is hardly ever to be found” (9). The root of Gothic is found in the way a text plays with “medieval architecture, and [. . .] the sense of the marvelous it convey[s], [and] the alleged goal of emulating medieval romances” (9), which essentially harks back to Walpole’s Otranto. The Gothic’s “capacity for adaptation” (9) is something Levy does not seem convinced of.
Further research on the Gothic has also been done from a feminist approach. In Gothic & Gender: An Introduction Donna Heiland argues that Gothic novels, from their origin in the eighteenth century, “explored the workings of patriarchal politics through an aesthetic based in the subjective realities of sensibility and the sublime” (5). Here there is a clear focus not just on
sensibility and the sublime as key characteristics of the Gothic, but on the idea that the Gothic mainly reflected patriarchal politics, arguing “that the transgressive acts at the heart of Gothic fiction generally focus on corruption in, or resistance to, the patriarchal structures that shaped the country’s political life and its family life” (5), which is something that other authors also refer to in their feminist approaches. For this school of critics, the Gothic has “long confronted the cultural problem of gender distinctions, including what they mean for western structures of power and how boundaries between the genders might be questioned to undermine or reorient those structures” (“Gothic In Western Culture” Hogle 9). While many feminist approaches address issues relating to the confining patriarchal structures that Gothic heroines often find themselves restricted and confined by, others look at the way the Gothic is used by female writers for their own purposes. For example, Diana Wallace discusses the way female writers have used the Gothic to “reinsert them[selves] into history and symbolise their exclusion” (11), illustrating how the genre can be used to give female writers a voice.
With this in mind it is also important to note that a number of scholars also seem to differentiate between, or at least mention the existence of, Male Gothic and Female Gothic (Hogle, Kilgour, Miles, Wallace, Williams, Wisker). In Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic Anne Williams refers to four conventions that differentiate Male Gothic from Female Gothic. First, while Female Gothic focuses on the female point of view and “generates suspense through the limitations imposed by [this] chosen point of view” (102), Male Gothic uses “multiple points of view” (102) to create “dramatic irony” (102). Second, Female Gothic explains the
supernatural, Male Gothic “simply posits the supernatural as a ‘reality,’” (103). Third, “the Male Gothic has a tragic plot. The female formula demands a happy ending, the conventional
marriage” (103). Finally, the Female Gothic is organised around “the resources of terror” (104) that comes as a result of an imagined threat, whereas the Male Gothic “specializes in horror–the bloody shroud, the wormy corpse” (104); horror having a stronger emphasis on violence and gore. Other critics have criticised Williams’ formula, suggesting that while it works when applied
to eighteenth-century Gothic novels, it does not work for all Gothic novels written by women (Wallace 18). Wallace further suggests that part of the problem with Williams’ formula is that it is based “on the work of Ann Radcliffe” (18) and falls short when applied to other Female Gothic texts, “including those by Daphne du Maurier” (18).
Furthermore, as pointed out by Wallace, Chris Baldick and Robert Mighall have also criticised Williams’s use of psychoanalysis, suggesting that Gothic criticism tends to produce large amounts of psychoanalytic interpretations, giving weight to “the psychological more than the historical” (276). This is not just true for Williams, since a number of critics either take a psychoanalytic approach or their research contains residues of Sigmund Freud’s the uncanny or Julia Kristeva’s concept of the abject (Hogle, Savoy, Kavka, Bruhm, Punter, to name but a few). For this reason Baldick and Mighall not only criticise Williams and the Female Gothic for its psychoanalytic tendencies, but accuse Gothic criticism in general of “collaps[ing] history into universal psychology” (276), taking issue with the “Freudian agenda for Gothic Criticism” (274) and arguing in favour of historical interpretations. In his book, A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History’s Nightmares, Mighall points out that “psychology dominates
criticism of the Gothic” (xii), and that this ranges from “application of psychoanalytic formulae to texts” (xii) to exclusive concern with “a protagonist’s psyche, subjectivity, or emotional state” (xii). Mighall argues that this emphasis on psychology actually “inhibits other lines of enquiry” (xii) as it suppresses both historical and geographical readings, which he asserts are integral factors that make up Gothic texts.
It is clear that a lot of has been researched and written about regarding the Gothic tradition, particularly in relation to eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century examples. A number of Gothic tropes and elements have been identified, and agreed on, by scholars. Robert Miles presents a succinct list of what he calls “marketing cues” (41) of the Gothic:
(the recess, ruins, the rock, Alps, black valley, black tower, haunted cavern); architectural features (priory, castle, abbey, convent, nunnery, ancient house, cloister); generic
pointers (historical romance, legends, tales, memoir, traditions); ghost and its cognates (apparition, specter, phantom, the ghost-seer, sorcerer, magician, necromancer, weird sisters); exotic names (Manfredi, Edward de Courcy, Wolfenbach); and generic or
historical figures (the monk, the genius, the minstrel, knights, the royal captives, Duke of Clarence, Lady Jane Grey, John of Gaunt). (Companion Miles 41-2)
Among scholars there is a broad consensus regarding the transgressive nature of the Gothic. They all identify the themes of Faustian ambition, subterranean passages (found in texts by Walpole, Radcliffe and Lewis, to mention but a few) of old castles and ruins; they mention the fragmented nature of Gothic texts, the incomplete manuscript, and the narrative techniques of suspense; they list the helpless heroine, the religious institutions, and the feudal system. However, to list all of the features that make a text Gothic would become extensive and a number of scholars have already pointed out such elements and features. For this reason, I will only discuss the Gothic elements and features that are relevant for my research in the following chapters of my thesis.
It has been made clear that the first Gothic moment in literary history began with the publication of Otranto and ended with Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). Yet as I pointed out in the opening paragraph, there is currently a sustained interest in the Gothic today, as evidenced not just in literary publications and television series but also in the academic attention that contemporary Gothic has been receiving. This academic interest in contemporary or
postmodern Gothic signals that we are in the middle of yet another distinct moment for the Gothic. This new Gothic moment and its current popularity are illustrated by the extensive research that has already been done on contemporary Gothic.
There has been a wide range of research done on contemporary or modern Gothic works. In the introduction to The Cambridge Companion to the Modern Gothic, Jerrold Hogle outlines his aim to look at the Gothic across time, from the late nineteenth century and modernism, to postmodernism, as well as looking at “global gothic” (11). The Companion approaches modern Gothic by providing an overview of the Gothic tradition as a whole and looking at “what the Gothic has become as the drives of modernity have proliferated themselves” (11). This implies that the Gothic tradition is simply one consistent tradition ranging from the eighteenth century up until today (with perhaps a few changes here and there). This approach is quite common, as Daniel Olsen also focuses on the Gothic tradition as it exists today. In his book, 21st-Century Gothic: Great Gothic Novels since 2000, Olsen highlights a gap in literary scholarship regarding “interpretations of the lastest Gothic fictions” (xxii). To clarify, Olsen’s statement that there is a gap in scholarship does not contradict my statement that that there is a wide range of scholarly research on contemporary Gothic. Olsen is simply pointing out that at the time of compiling his book, there was a large number of Gothic-themed novels listed on “the New York Times best-sellers list” (xxvii) and the gap in scholarship that he refers to is about these new novels that have just been published. He points out that because of this gap, a number of novels in the twenty-first century are overlooked, and it is his aim to “launch a Gothic discourse that enlarges the Gothic canon” (xxvii) by accepting a number of more recent works into the Gothic tradition. Once again, Olsen is less concerned with defining contemporary Gothic and more concerned with providing an anthology of essays that give critical interpretation to a number of
contemporary Gothic novels. David Punter also provides a comprehensive overview of the Gothic, ranging from its origins in the eighteenth century up to the present day.
These approaches essentially suggest that the Gothic has just continued throughout the ages, with one Gothic revival after another, something Catherine Spooner concurs with when she argues that the Gothic depends on “all kinds of revenants and returns from the dead, Gothic has through its history taken the form of a series of revivals” (10). For Spooner the notion of
Gothic revivals is important in an attempt to “understand Gothic in its myriad contemporary forms” (11). While Hogle, Olsen, and Punter may note the ways in which contemporary Gothic texts “reflect [. . .] preoccupations of our times” (Punter 179), there is not really an attempt to provide a category or a specific approach with which to look at contemporary Gothic. Punter perhaps comes closest to this as he outlines three factors that are integral if we are to make sense out of Gothic fiction, in both contemporary and classic Gothic texts. The first point is “the concept of paranoia” (183), the second has to do with the “notion of the barbaric” (183), and the third, “the nature of taboo” (184), or transgression. He argues that these three concerns are vital to Gothic fiction and also applicable when looking at contemporary Gothic fiction.
Like the many feminist approaches to traditional Gothic, it is no surprise that there has also been a number of feminist approaches to contemporary Gothic. Punter clearly points out that it is “critical commonplace that one of the important features of Gothic is that it was in its inception a ‘woman’s fiction’” (Literature of Terror 191) as many of the key canonical writers themselves were women (Ann Radcliffe, Clara Reeve, Mary Shelley). It is also no surprise that such a subversive genre is not only being used by female writers, but receives a number of feminist interpretations. Gina Wisker’s book, Contemporary Women’s Gothic Fiction: Carnival, Hauntings and Vampire Kisses, dedicates itself to providing extensive feminist interpretations of Gothic fiction. This approach implicitly supports the ideas mentioned previously regarding distinctions between Male and Female Gothic, as like Williams, she highlights that “women’s Gothic deals with the domestic, with sex and sexuality, spaces, places, behaviours and norms which oppress women, [. . .] control and power relations” (7). It is significant that such themes are evident in both traditional Gothic and also many contemporary texts that Wisker discusses. However, like many others, Wisker does not seem concerned with distinguishing between eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century Gothic; instead Gothic is used more as a blanket term applied to any text, in any period, that she identifies as Gothic. Like Wisker, Sarah
contemporary women’s Gothic. Splattered Ink looks at “how female gothic fiction of the twenty-first century both powerfully critiques postfeminism’s candy-colored world and uneasily lives within it, proffering strategies to manage women’s fears in dangerous times” (2). The chapters in this book approach a very specific branch of Gothic fiction, specifically what Whitney calls “postfeminist gothic” which is a “powerful but underacknowledged strain of American women’s fiction that tells tales of gendered violence and pain” (2).
There is also a recent connection of postmodernism with Gothic fiction. Critics have suggested that there are clear parallels between the Gothic and postmodernism. In Modern Gothic: A Reader, Allan Lloyd Smith says that there are some “striking parallels between the features identified in discourses concerning postmodernism and those which are focused on the Gothic tradition” (6) and he goes on to highlight these similarities. Hogle also recognises an affinity between the Gothic and the postmodern, stating that the Gothic’s “symbolic features are [. . .] precursors of the postmodern” (Modern Gothic 11). The similarities between the Gothic and the postmodern has resulted in Maria Beville presenting a merging of the two in order to create a new genre called postmodernism, “a literary monster” (16). In
Gothic-Postmodernism: Voicing the Terrors of Postmodernity, she argues for the need to establish a new genre, Postmodern Gothic. She states that such a genre is needed because it will “establish that the Gothic still exists in postmodernist literature, and that ‘terror’ (with all that it involves) remains a connecting and potent link between the Gothic and the postmodern” (9). Rather than attempting to define the Gothic in Contemporary Gothic literature, Beville is placing emphasis on “the presence of fundamental Gothic elements in literary postmodernist texts” (8). In this way postmodern Gothic differs from my attempt at defining the neo-Gothic, as her focus lies mainly with postmodernism and postmodern texts; she aims to distinguish Gothic elements within postmodern works. She argues that such a distinction is necessary because due to the “over-used and over-creative” (8) interpretation of Gothic, it is “less obviously distinguishable in postmodern works” (8).
Another interesting point regarding criticism on contemporary Gothic, one which I think is useful to keep in my mind for my own research, is the concept of candygothic. In the
discussion regarding the history or origins of the Gothic, I mentioned Maurice Levy’s problem with the fact that the term Gothic had been applied so freely to a number of works that,
according to him, are not Gothic at all. Similarly, scholars of contemporary Gothic fiction have also found issue with the fact that many contemporary texts, or even contemporary authors, are using the word Gothic to describe a number of, what they would consider, watered-down Gothic fictions. In his book, Limits of Horror: Technology, Bodies, Gothic, Fred Botting refers to this type of Gothic as candygothic (49). He defines this term as:
an attempt to reassess the function of horror in a (western) culture in which
transgressions, repressions, taboos, prohibitions no longer mark an absolute limit in unbearable excess and thus no longer contain the intensity of a desire for something other, something that satisfyingly disturbs - and defines - social and moral boundaries. (49)
In other words, candygothic is Gothic in which “terror is obviously a novelty and created by special effects and stereotypical Gothic tropes” (Beville 38). Works such as Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or what are known as “drugstore” Gothic novels have been placed in this category. The candygothic essentially draws attention to what Levy was referring to, the idea that “any story which includes an element of terror, whatever its origin, its form or intensity, can also be [. . .] described” (6) as Gothic. In other words, any work that includes typical Gothic stylistic conventions or typical Gothic features is being referred to as a Gothic text, reducing the Gothic to something rather superficial. Yet what is perhaps counter-productive about this, is that by calling something ‘candygothic’ we have simply produced yet another label with which to
identify a certain brand of Gothic, rather than just taking back the term and insisting on returning it to its original function and meaning.
It has become clear from research on contemporary Gothic that there now exists a
number of labels to identify what type of Gothic something is. The multiple labels that have been applied to contemporary Gothic is also evident in Christian Gutleben and Marie-Luise Kohlke’s Neo-Victorian Gothic: Horror, Violence and Degeneration in the Re-Imagined Nineteenth Century. Gutleben and Kohlke draw comparisons between neo-Victorian fiction and Gothic fiction and they assert that “neo-Victorianism is by nature quintessentially Gothic” (4) as it resurrects “the ghosts of the past, searching out its dark secrets and shameful mysteries, insisting obsessively on the lurid details of Victorian life, reliving the period’s nightmares and traumas” (4). In other words, given the essentially Gothic nature of neo-Victorianism, they are suggesting that Victorian Gothic is perhaps a more adequate term for defining what neo-Victorianism actually does. This also suggests that any Gothic texts in question must also relate to the Victorians or neo-Victorianism.
In addition to this new type of Gothic, neo-Victorian Gothic, Gutleben and Kohlke also highlight what I briefly mentioned earlier regarding the numerous Gothic labels that have recently been coined. They refer to a number of categories of the Gothic: neo-Victorian Imperial Gothic, eco Gothic, steampunk Gothic, neo-Victorian urban Gothic, neo-Victorian postmodern Gothic, postcolonial Gothic, and so forth. At some point, adding all these descriptors onto the Gothic not only becomes confusing but, as Levy points out, it also detracts from what is actually Gothic in its purest form. This is also echoed by Botting, who points out that part of the problem with contemporary Gothic is its “hybrid mixtures of style, mode, zone and mood emerge too quickly” (Gothic 15) causing a problem with defining the Gothic genre. To further illustrate this point, Botting asks the rhetorical question, “when and where does a gothic genre stop and others, such as magical realism, dark romance, science fiction, fantasy, occult, horror, cyberpunk, splatterpunk, steampunk, neo-Victorian, body horror, slasher or weird fiction
begin?” (15), which is indeed a valid question given all the sub-labels of Gothic that we have seen so far.
Overall, I believe there is a need to define a category like neo-Gothic for two reasons. First, Kohlke and Gutleben’s term relies on the comparison with the Victorians and with Victorian Gothic in order to identify a text as neo-Victorian Gothic. This is somewhat limiting and also perhaps a bit misleading. A vast majority of Gothic critics have not drawn a distinction between the eighteenth-century Gothic and (late) nineteenth-century Gothic. While a number of them may mention in passing that there are differences, they still refer to both centuries almost interchangeably. For example, in a single book, Kilgour points out the rise and fall Gothic’s development “between 1760 and 1820” (3), but she also often refers to Otranto (1764) and Dracula (1897) in a single sentence thus drawing no discernable distinction between the originary Gothic work of the eighteenth century and that of the nineteenth century. This is not unique to just Kilgour; a number of critics have done this; even if they briefly acknowledge that there are differences they fail to keep these differences in mind when talking about
contemporary Gothic fiction. By the time of the late nineteenth century, what was considered Gothic had already undergone a change, and it is for this reason that taking nineteenth-century Gothic as a starting point while ignoring its eighteenth-century origins seems at best incomplete and at worst misleading. Neo-Gothic is not another sub-label for Gothic texts or another type of Gothic fiction. Rather, it is a category or an approach to look at specific Gothic texts that self-reflexively engage with their eighteenth-century counterparts; it is an adaptation or
Key Terms
Neo-Victorian studies provides a useful framework to help guide the way I analyse neo-Gothic. In recent years, neo-Victorian studies has gained attention in academia. Key scholars in this field are Mark Llewellyn and Ann Heilmann, and they define neo-Victorianism as texts that “must in some respect be self-consciously engaged with the act of (re)interpretation,
(re)discovery and (re)vision concerning the Victorians” (neo-Victorianism 4); it is a process of “writ[ing] back to something in the nineteenth century [. . .] in a manner that often aims to re-fresh and revitalise the importance of that earlier text to the here and now” (‘What is neo-Victorian Studies?’ 170-1). Neo-neo-Victorianism suggests that the concept of ‘neo’ “offers an interesting angle on the metafictional mode [that] is essential to the genre” (neo-Victorianism 5). The term neo is very intertwined with this idea of a metafictional mode and is often about the “metahistoric and metacultural ramifications of [. . .] historical engagement” (6). For Llewellyn and Heilmann this means that “not all narratives published between 1837 and 1901 are
Victorian” (6). This is a useful distinction that will also be made with neo-Gothic texts; not all texts that engage with Gothic features or conventions will be neo-Gothic.
Furthermore, in Llewellyn and Heilmann’s definition of a neo-Victorian text, there is a strong emphasis on the text being “self-consciously engaged” (4) with its Victorian past. This is an integral point to be considered when looking at neo-Gothic. A number of critics have already noted that there is an element of “narrative self-consciousness” (Beville 15) in contemporary Gothic texts, that they “locate themselves self-consciously within a recognisable Gothic
tradition” (Literature of Terror Punter 181), or that contemporary Gothic “possesses a new self-consciousness about its own nature” (Spooner 23). This idea of contemporary Gothic as being self-conscious or self-aware also applies to neo-Gothic. However, this self-awareness is not just related to how the Gothic reflects or responds to current social anxieties, but it is also an awareness of the way in which it engages with its eighteenth-century counterpart. This is especially relevant because much of the research that has already been done on contemporary
Gothic does not really make much effort to draw a distinction between Gothic origins in the eighteenth century and Gothic in the nineteenth century.
As my research involves a comparative element, comparing and contrasting eighteenth-century texts and contemporary texts, the adaptation and appropriation of terms or tropes borrowed from the Gothic is important. The neo-Gothic does not involve a straightforward copying of tropes, rather, something new is being done as elements or tropes are being adapted for a contemporary audience (hence neo). This thesis is interested in what these developments are and what the adaptations tell us. In A Theory of Adaptation, Linda Hutcheon argues that it is important to take into account the context of a work when it has been adapted or
appropriated. As context can have a massive effect on the meaning and value of a story, it is important to keep in mind that the meaning of a text can change during the process of
adaptation across history and also across culture. Hutcheon states that changing the context not only changes “what is (re)accentuated but more importantly how a story can be (re)interpreted can alter radically” (Hutcheon 142). Hutcheon also highlights some possible ethical issues of “rereading the past” (152) through adaptation and appropriation across culture and history. However, the aim of my thesis is to establish neo-Gothic as a term through the comparison of texts; while there is indeed an ethical aspect to consider regarding adaptation and
appropriation, this is something that should be discussed and explored after neo-Gothic is established as a term.
The Gothic is still very much on the rise in contemporary Western culture, as
demonstrated by the increasing academic attention contemporary Gothic texts have received. As mentioned, in its original context, the Gothic dealt with social anxieties of the time and allowed for an outlet to explore transgressive themes and behaviour. I would argue that the neo-Gothic functions in a similar way in contemporary culture and will thus be a useful tool in exploring why the Gothic is so popular today by looking at how certain features have been adapted or appropriated for today’s audience, and what these adaptations can tell us. Therefore, by
attempted to outline the boundaries of neo-Gothic in relation to literature, I am attempting to provide an analytical framework or category that will help answer this question. Furthermore, as contemporary fascination with the Gothic extends beyond the literary realm, this research may also provide a starting point or framework with which to explore why the Gothic has also become so popular in other forms of artistic creativity and disciplines.
Chapter One will focus on form and text, discussing the fragmentary nature of classic Gothic texts as well as a number of formal techniques used. Chapter Two will analyse
monstrosity in the Gothic, paying particular attention to eyes and monstrosity, corruption and monstrosity, and hybridity and identity. This chapter will also look at the ways in which these three categories have been adapted in contemporary Gothic novels and for what purpose. The third and final chapter will analyse the importance and use of space and place in both classic and contemporary Gothic.
Chapter 1: Form and Text Introduction
The formal techniques of Gothic texts are prominent features that not only affect content, but also reader response. Formal techniques not only evoke that eerie and unsettling Gothic atmosphere, but they also help create a sense of suspense and curiosity in readers. Curiosity itself is also a key feature in the Gothic. As I will show, transgressive or presumptuous curiosity is one of the major sins that dooms Gothic protagonists, and it is through a number of narrative techniques that readers too become swept up by their desire to uncover secrets. Many of
Melmoth’s victims meet their demise because of their insatiable curiosity: one victim’s obsessive compulsion to find old Melmoth results in him being locked up in an asylum; young Melmoth is directly told by his ancestor that it is “his desperate inquisitiveness, which, might, at a former period, have made you my victim” (Maturin 536). Additionally, Udolpho also demonstrates transgressive curiosity as Emily disobeys her father and “involuntarily [looks] on the writing of some loose sheets, which lay open [. . .] transgressing her father’s strict injunction” (Radcliffe 103). Transgressive curiosity is too much for characters to resist. Thus, by engaging our curiosity through a number of formal techniques, which will be discussed, the texts draw us into a similar position; readers eagerly turn the pages of the novel in an attempt to satisfy our own curiosity and consequently align themselves with the characters’ central sin. As we are told in Melmoth the Wanderer, terror, a core feature of the Gothic, “has the irresistible power of converting its audience into its victims” (Maturin 257).
In the past critics have commented on the sensational nature of Gothic, sometimes criticising its fragmentary style as being confusing or simply poorly written. As a result,
scholarship “frequently neglect[s] the formal qualities prominent in early examples of the Gothic mode” (Jung 303). Yet, significantly, fragmentary structure and non-linear narrative are devices that overlap with the contemporary Gothic novels studied here. In today’s postmodern culture, it is not unusual to point out that the fragmentary nature of contemporary Gothic texts is a
deliberate artistic choice imbued with meaning. Acknowledging the deliberate choice of contemporary Gothic novels allows us to look back on the earlier Gothic and also suggest that the fragmentary structure and non-linear narratives were deliberate stylistic choices that inherently reflect the content or the nature of the Gothic. An analysis of Gothic novels, old and new, will make clear that narrative devices and form in Gothic texts have a direct correlation with its content.
A number of scholars have pointed to “the discontinuity of the narratives of Gothic writing” (Fincher 70) which creates a “textual monstrosity [where] coherence is sacrificed to gaps, interruptions and the deferral of information” (70). Yet, instead of the discontinuity being the result of bad writing that causes confusion, the form is itself emphasising the transgressive nature of the Gothic; the Gothic is not only transgressive in its content, but also in its form. This discontinuity, as Fincher points out, is itself a monstrosity; the Gothic narrative, like
Frankenstein’s monster, is an assemblage of parts. Part of this fragmentation includes the use of embedded narratives in which readers are taken from story to story. Perhaps the best known example of this is Melmoth the Wanderer, in which the novel’s “structure is exceedingly involuted and seemingly erratic” (Fowler 521), while the “language of a long series of narrators is irritatingly consistent” (521) rather than distinguishable and distinct.
Wanderer opens with an omniscient narrator, who soon becomes silent when the protagonist, young Melmoth, discovers Stanton’s manuscript account of the infamous figure known as Melmoth the Wanderer. Just as readers are pulled into this embedded narrative, a new narrator washes up on the beach near Melmoth’s home: a Spaniard named Monçada. It transpires that Monçada has also encountered the subject of Stanton’s manuscript, Melmoth, and so at this point the narrative switches to follow Monçada’s testimony. Within his account the narrative includes the Tale of the Indians (Maturin 272) and contained within that are two more narratives - the Tale of Guzman’s Family (399) and The Lovers’ Tale (444) - before the reader is abruptly pulled back to Monçada’s testimony. The narrative structure is indeed a
convoluted one, and it is easy to lose track of which narrator is which. Yet, I would argue that this apparently fragmentary structure contributes directly to the effect of the novel.
Interestingly, Kathleen Fowler briefly touches on this when she refers to Melmoth the Wanderer as being “intentionally de-formed” (522) when you look at it “from the perspective of a religious work” (522). She compares the narrative to that of the Biblical story of Job, arguing that this religious framework and purpose accounts for the “apparent flaws” (522) of the text. While I agree that Wanderer’s narrative structure is an intentional choice that results in extra layers of meaning, I would argue that this goes further than a simple comparison between two texts of the kind Fowler makes. Instead, such narrative structures are deliberate features of classic Gothic as it can be seen in a number of the originary texts.
This fragmentation of classic Gothic texts also has an effect on the reader. As the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto sets up the Gothic tropes of the labyrinth and subterranean passages in which our heroines wander, lost or fleeing some patriarchal villain. One of Otranto’s heroines, Isabella, does just this as she attempts to make her escape from Manfred through “subterraneous regions” (Walpole 26). The passages are referred to as a “long labyrinth of darkness” (26) in which every noise “struck [Isabella] with terror” (26) and the feeling of being lost leaves her “in an agony of despair” (27). The effect of the subterranean labyrinth leaves Isabella uncertain of how to escape and creates a sense of confusion. The use of the labyrinth is also found in Ann Radcliffe’s novels, especially The Mysteries of Udolpho, in which the heroine, Emily, finds herself navigating her way through the dark underground passages of Udolpho. Like Otranto, Udolpho is filled with “passages and galleries”(Radcliffe 232) whose “intricacies and desolation” (232) cause Emily to get lost which ultimately has the effect of “frighten[ing]” (232) her and her servant. This effect of uncertainty and feeling lost is also evoked in the reader through fragmentation and the embedded narratives.
In Wanderer subterranean passages are featured both literally but also figuratively as readers are taken into the maze of the narrative structure. Readers have the expectation of
hopefully finding our way out of this narrative labyrinth, but instead they appear to descend deeper and deeper into the tales without really being given a clear resolution of the embedded narratives. The novel concludes with one simple sentence: “Monçada here concluded the tale” (Maturin 534). After over five hundred pages of detail and convoluted, unfinished narratives, we are told that the overarching tale is completed. Examples of these unfinished embedded
narratives are provided when Monçada “announces his intention of disclosing to him [young Melmoth] the fates of the other victims, whose skeletons were preserved in the vault of the Jew Adonija in Madrid” (534), as well as promising to explain his own story and “the circumstances of his residence in the house of the Jew, his escape from it, and the reasons of his subsequent arrival in Ireland” (534). Yet these embedded narratives, the tales of the victims, and the conclusion of Monçada’s tale, are never delivered. Instead they are left incomplete due to the arrival of Melmoth the Wanderer himself, “the subject of his [Monçada’s] narrative” (535). In the final few pages of the novel, the resolution relates the Wanderer’s fate and his possible death at the bottom of a precipice (542). The ending therefore leaves readers with stories and promises of explanation left incomplete and untold.
Therefore, form and narrative technique are crucial elements of the Gothic as they not only help evoke Gothic atmosphere, but they also have a direct effect on readers. This chapter will look at how these techniques are employed in classic Gothic novels and how these forms are used and perhaps adapted in contemporary Gothic novels. This chapter will also discuss a number of narrative techniques of the Gothic, including narratives within narratives, the rational explanation of supernatural events, and the use of endings to restore balance.
Narratives within the Novels
A recurring feature in classic Gothic texts is the manuscript, or more broadly the use of written narratives within a text. The illegible manuscript is often used to convey secret or mysterious events which pique the curiosity of the reader, create suspense, and propel the plot forward. The illegible manuscript is evident in a number of classic Gothic texts, including The Castle of
Otranto (which presents itself as a historical document or manuscript), Melmoth the Wanderer, and many of Radcliffe’s novels such as The Romance of the Forest and the Mysteries of
Udolpho.
In Wanderer, readers are warned early on that part of the reason for its fragmentary and incomplete narrative is the perishability of the documents of which it is comprised. One of the initial narrators points out that “the manuscript [young Melmoth finds] was discoloured, obliterated, and mutilated beyond any that had ever before exercised the patience of a reader. Michaelis himself, scrutinizing into the pretended autograph of St Mark at Venice, never had a harder time of it” (Maturin 28). Not only does this quotation make clear that “the relics of art are for ever decaying” (30), it also suggests that the narrator is already anticipating for the reader the frustration that will accompany such a disjointed and “preposterously convoluted” (“Introduction” Baldick x) narrative. Almost immediately after being warned of the frustrations to come, gaps and illegibility begin to surface in the text. The very next page introduces the first of many gaps: “Here the manuscript was illegible for a few lines) [. . .] (A long hiatus followed here, and the next passage that was legible, though it proved to be a continuation of the narrative, was but a fragment)” (Maturin 31). The illegible manuscript is a Gothic trope that continues to surface throughout Maturin’s novel, not just in the manuscript itself but also in the “unintelligible” (122), “defaced” (122) and “illegible” (175) letters Monçada receives from his brother, Juan. These gaps not only frustrate the reader, but they engage our curiosity as we continue reading in the hopes of filling in the gaps.
The narratives transmitted within Gothic texts are not simply there to pad out the plot, they also serve to drive it forward. In Wanderer written narratives bear testimony or witness to Melmoth the Wanderer. During Monçada’s tale we are introduced to the Jew, Adonija, who has been tasked with recording the history of Melmoth the Wanderer. Adonijah tells Monçada that he made a vow: “I took in my hand the pen of a scribe, and vowed by a vow, that this lamp should not expire, nor this seat be forsaken, nor this vault untenanted, until that the record is written in a book” (Maturin 270). Adonijah now wishes to to pass on this burden of recording the old Melmoth’s life to Monçada, who is initially not too pleased at the prospect. He reflects: “to bear about that horrible secret inurned in my heart, was not that enough? But to be
compelled to scatter its ashes abroad, and to rake into the dust of others for the same purpose of unhallowed exposure, revolted me beyond feeling and utterance” (270). Yet, against his
revulsion Monçada is compelled to accept the task of recording and bearing witness as
“involuntarily [he] fixed [his] eye on the manuscript [he] was to copy, and never withdrew till [he] finished its extraordinary contents” (272). In this way the responsibility of bearing witness is transferred to Monçada. In fact, when Monçada first washes up on the shore and meets young Melmoth, he exclaims “God! Why did the Jonah survive, and the mariners perish?” (71). Here Monçada draws a between the Biblical prophet who had to warn Nineveh of its impending destruction, and himself who has to warn others of Melmoth the Wanderer and the destruction that he is capable of inflicting. In this way, the written narratives within the text serve to transmit the account of Melmoth the Wanderer and bear witness to his existence.
Like Wanderer, written narratives are used to transmit or bear witness to secrets in The Mysteries of Udolpho. In Udolpho, the manuscript turns out to be “unutterable”, not because of its illegibility or age, but because it is meant to be destroyed. On his deathbed, Emily’s father, St Aubert, tells her:
described, you will find a packet of written papers. Attend to me now, for the promise you have given particularly relates to what I shall direct. These papers you must burn– and, solemnly I command you, without examining them. (Radcliffe 78)
Emily has every intention of keeping her “solemn promise” (103) to her father, but when she attempts to fulfill it she, like Monçada, cannot help but look at the papers:
Her eyes involuntarily settled on the writing of some loose sheets, which lay open; and she was unconscious, that she was transgressing her father’s strict injunction, till a sentence of dreadful import awakened her attention and her memory together. She hastily put the papers from her; but the words, which had roused equally her curiosity and terror, she could not dismiss from the thoughts. So powerfully had they affected her, that she even could not resolve to destroy the papers immediately and the more she dwelt on the circumstance, the more it inflamed her imagination. Urged by the most forcible, and apparently the most necessary, curiosity to enquire further, concerning the terrible and mysterious subject, to which she had seen the illusion, she began to lament her promise to destroy the papers. For a moment, she even doubted, whether it could justly be obeyed, in contradiction to such reasons as there appeared to be for further information. But the delusion was momentary. (103)
While Emily almost succumbs to the Gothic sin of transgressive curiosity, she ultimately manages to resist the temptation, looks away, and burns the papers. Even though she fulfilled her promise by destroying the papers, the hinted secret that was momentarily transmitted to Emily, and the reader, serves to be a driving force of suspense in the novel. The secret St Aubert wished to keep hidden has been involuntarily passed on, and whereas the fire destroyed the documents, it does not destroy the memory of them. Instead, the weight of the “terrible and
mysterious subject” continues to weigh on Emily’s mind and engages the reader’s curiosity throughout the novel.
Related to the illegible manuscript as a medium to transmit narratives and information is the narrator as a narrative device. The gaps that occur within these manuscripts cause us to question the reliability of the narrator and the text as a whole. In Wanderer we not only have an illegible manuscript that is littered with gaps and omissions, but multiple “questionable”
(Fowler 529) narrators, “the reliability of [whose] testimony is even more dubious” (529) because of the lack of information we are provided. How much of the narrative that is told to us in Wanderer is actually true, and how reliable are these multiple fragmented accounts? An exemplary passage to consider when looking at the reliability of the different narrators is at the end of the novel, when Melmoth the Wanderer himself appears to young Melmoth and
Monçada. Upon appearing, old Melmoth declares:
Mortals – you are here to talk of my destiny, and of the events which it has involved. That destiny is accomplished, I believe, and with it terminate those events that have stimulated your wild and wretched curiosity. I am here to tell you of both!–I–I–of whom you speak, am here!–Who can tell so well of Melmoth the Wanderer as himself, now that he is about to resign that existence which has been the object of terror and wonder to the world? (Maturin 536)
Here old Melmoth states his intention to tell his story and to finally satisfy young Melmoth’s curiosity, as well as the readers’. Yet this is an empty promise. Instead he states that “the secret of [his] destiny rests with [himself]” (537). He then continues to talk about the embedded
narratives within the text and the stories that have been spread about him, yet he also hedges his statements about these narratives, suggesting that they may not be entirely accurate. When announcing that his “wanderings are over” (537) he also tells us that the stories that have “been
told or believed of [him are] now of light avail to [him]” (537, emphasis my own). This suggests that the tales we have heard from the numerous narrators were exaggerated or even made up, and that while he was alive the tales about him that inspired terror in the listeners were in fact a means to avail him in his goal of finding someone to swap places with him and his fate.
However, now that his time is coming to an end these tales (true or false) are no longer of any use to him. Furthermore, he continues to qualify all statements regarding his reputation:
If all that fear has invented, and credulity believed of me to be true, to what does it amount? That if my crimes have exceeded those of mortality, so will my punishment [. . .] If I have put forth my hand, and eaten of the fruit of the interdicted tree, am I not driven from the presence of God [. . .]? It has been reported of me, that I obtained from the enemy of souls a range of existence beyond the period allotted to mortality [. . .] It has been said that [. . .] If this be true. (537-8, emphasis my own)
The emphasised phrases add a sense of uncertainty to the entire collection of narratives that readers have just heard, especially when read together with the previous statement that suggests the stories are just a tool to help Melmoth achieve his goal. Thus the final pages of the novel undermine the past five hundred pages of narration and throw into doubt the reliability of the many narrators it contains.
The unreliable narrator is also a strategy in Matthew Lewis’s The Monk. At the beginning of the novel we are introduced to a young novice, Rosario, who later turns out to be a beautiful young woman, Matilda, disguised as a novice in order to be close to Ambrosio. Yet Matilda’s character presents a contradiction; the explanation surrounding her purpose and design for entering the monastery differs depending on who accounts for it. At the end of the novel, after Ambrosio has escaped prison by making a deal with Satan, Satan begins to tell Ambrosio the “truth” about the extent of his transgressions. He reveals that the woman he raped, Antonia, is
in fact his sister, and that the woman he killed, Elvira, is in fact his mother. Yet Satan also reveals the nature of Matilda, Ambrosio’s first lover:
I have long marked you for my prey: I watched the movements of your heart; I saw that you were virtuous from vanity, not principle, and I seized the fit moment of seduction. I observed your blind idolatry of the Madona’s picture. I bad a subordinate but crafty spirit assume a similar form, and you eagerly yielded to the blandishments of Matilda [. . .]. It was I who threw Matilda in your way. (Lewis 337)
From this monologue it appears that Satan had designs on Ambrosio from the very beginning, suggesting that the entire sequence of events leading up to this moment were orchestrated by him. This not only raises questions regarding fate and free will, but it also tells us that Matilda is no mere mortal; she is in fact a demon whose sole purpose was to seduce Ambrosio and lead him down a path to his perdition. Yet this explanation provided by Satan contradicts earlier events in the novel, as well as Matilda’s own account.
Early on in the novel Ambrosio first sees Matilda’s uncovered face: “what was his amazement at beholding the exact resemblance of his admired Madona? The exact exquisite proportion of features, the same profusion of golden hair, the same rosy lips, heavenly eyes, and majesty of countenance adorned Matilda!” (Lewis 63). Once realising she is discovered, Matilda attempts to rationally explain the similarity:
Accident has made you Master of a secret, which I never would have revealed but on the Bed of death. Yes, Ambrosio; In Matilda de Villanegas you see the original of your beloved Madona. Soon after I conceived my unfortunate passion, I formed the project of conveying to you my Picture [. . .] to be drawn by Martin Galuppi [. . .]. The resemblance was striking: I sent it to the Capuchin-Abbey as if for sale [. . .]. You purchased it. (64)
Matilda’s explanation undermines any sense of the supernatural, and refutes Satan’s claim that Matilda is in fact a demon spirit. She presents herself as a mortal woman, “as tempted rather than tempter” (Grudin 137). Additionally, at one point when “Matilda believed that He [Ambrosio] was sleeping” (Lewis 62), she bared her heart and soul:
Now then I may gaze upon him without offence! I may mix my breath with his; I may doat upon his features, and He cannot suspect me of impurity and deceit! – he fears my seducing him to the violation of his vows! Oh! The Unjust! Were it my wish to excite desire, should I conceal my features from him so carefully [. . .]. The time will come, when you will be convinced that my passion is pure and disinterested. (62)
This authentic confession, to only herself, also suggests that she is not who Satan said she is. One could perhaps say that she is merely performing, but this is also implausible as it is the narrator who told us Matilda’s innermost thoughts and her assumption that Ambrosio is asleep. It could be suggested that her involvement in witchcraft undermines this reading, yet as Grudin suggests, she could still be a mortal woman who is tempted into witchcraft: the two do not have to be contradictory.
It is also worth mentioning that Satan’s account of Matilda becomes questionable when we think about one of his titles, the “Father of Lies”. However Gurndin suggests that in this context Satan is telling the truth, and that the timing of his revelations serve as “an instrument of torture, a prelude to his [Ambrosio’s] physical torments before death and to the eternitiy of woe that awaits him” (141). In this way he explains that even though Satan is the “Father of Lies”, he uses truth as “a potent weapon” (141). However, the situation is not as straightforward even as this. As readers we do not know which of the two is reliable. Matilda lies about who she is, deceives monks, becomes heavily involved in witchcraft, and ultimately admits to making a
pact with the devil to save her from a death sentence, whereas Satan is, by nature, unreliable. These two different narrative possibilities can each be convincingly argued for. Yet the question of who is telling the truth or who is lying is besides the point. Instead, we should focus on what this uncertainty and ambiguity surrounding truth does for readers. Like Melmoth the Wanderer, the validity of the narrative is called into question at the close of the novel. However, I would argue that such contradictions and ambiguities are, as in Melmoth the Wanderer, a deliberate narrative choice in which the chaotic narrative structure reflects the content of the Gothic novel. If the fragmentation in The Wanderer serves to figuratively parallel the subterranean passage trope established in Otranto, then The Monk is also using form to reflect its content. For example, critics have pointed to the story of the bleeding nun and Raymon and Agnes’s plotline as having no “causal connection to the rest of the work” (Grudin 137), and is therefore
“extraneous” (137) and “unintegrated” (142). However, these multiple plotlines, inconsistent storylines, and unreliable narrators all reflect the Gothic mode as the novel reveals itself to be a textual amalgam. In this way the emphasis becomes less on understanding and accounting for narrative inconsistencies and more about the meaning - if any - that the structure conveys.
The use of written narratives within the text, and its relation to unreliable narrators, is also evident in a number of contemporary Gothic novels. Like the diary-based accounts featured in Romance of the Forest and Melmoth the Wanderer, Affinity by Sarah Waters manipulates the manuscript or diary. The entire narrative is made up of diary entries, but Waters subverts the convention of the diary form as a source of unmediated truth to play with the reader’s
expectations, thus presenting a more ambiguous ending. This subversion of the form also causes readers to question the reliability of the narrator. As a form, the diary creates expectations of an authentic and sincere account as it is meant to reflect the inner thoughts of the person who writes it; it is a form that “aims to generate an aura of authenticity and self-reflexive honesty” (Brindle 68).
Affinity’s overall narrative follows the lives of two principal heroines who cross paths at Millbank prison. Margaret Prior starts a new role as lady visitor (Waters 10) at Millbank, where she meets Selina Dawes, “a spirit-medium” (43) or “trance medium” (31) who is confined in prison for “Fraud and Assault” (27). Throughout the novel, the narrative jumps between the present day writings of Margaret and the past writings, from a few years prior, of Selina Dawes. Because of the narrative form, we as readers are apparently granted entry into both Margaret’s and Selina’s private thoughts through their diaries. While readers may be sceptical about Selina’s abilities to contact the dead, the convention of the diary form lends us to believe her claims. For example, when Selina first connects with her “guide” (191) or her “own control, that every medium waits for” (191), she narrates the event in her diary as if it actually happened and not as a performance meant to deceive people. She writes:
Then it was not at all as I had thought it would be, there was a man there, I must write his great arms, his black whiskers, his red lips. I looked at him & I trembled, & I said in a whisper, “O God, are you real?” He heard my shaking voice & then his brow went smooth as water, & he smiled and nodded. Mrs Brink called “What is it Miss Dawes, who is there?” I said, “I don’t know what I should say” & he bent & put his mouth very close to my ear, saying “Say it is your master.” (Waters 193)
Once her spirit guide, Peter, leaves, Selina seems physically exhausted from channelling the spirit. She tells us, “I shook so hard I could hardly walk” (194). This first person narrative gives every indication that the ordeal Selina just went through is real, that she felt she was really experiencing the channelling of her spirit guide, right down to the surprise she experienced when first meeting her spirit guide and the subsequent exhaustion her body felt. Yet at the end of the novel it is revealed that Peter Quick is actually her servant, Ruth Vigers, dressed up. Therefore Selina’s diary entries deceive and mislead the reader.
