The term Gothicism in its literary meaning derives not from the Goths, an ancient Germanic tribe, but from the sense of Gothic as medieval. This literary movement may be seen as a reaction against the rationalism of the Enlightenment and similar to the Romantic emphasis on emotion and sensation over reason and its depiction of exotic settings. Gothic literature shares some characteristics with the romance, a literary genre popular in the late medieval period that featured magic, battles between heroes and monsters, and an emphasis on chivalry.

Like the romance, Gothic literature emphasizes the supernatural and often features a medieval setting such as decaying medieval castles, abbeys, and dungeons. In addition, Gothic literature may be identified by the following themes and features:

• Focus on mystery
• Depiction of physical and mental abnormality, such as insanity and physical deformity
• Emphasis on terror
• Emphasis on ambiguity (for example, events may be imprecisely described to the reader)
• Emphasis on the subconscious mind and dreams
• Importance of hereditary family curses
• Lack of didacticism
• Lack of realism
• Emphasis on the sublime in descriptions of setting (that is, things that inspire fear and awe such as thunderstorms, mountains, huge castles)

Many Gothic works also pair a character with a doppelgänger, that is, a “double,” such as the protagonist and his monstrous alter ego in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). The British developed the form. Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764) is often cited as the first Gothic novel; other early examples include Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk (1796). Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) is perhaps the most famous example of the genre.

Two of the earliest American works of Gothic fiction are Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly (1799) and “Somnambulism: A Fragment” (1805), in which sleepwalking characters act out their subconscious impulses. Washington Irving also included Gothic features in his tales, most famously in “Rip Van Winkle” (1819), in which ghostly figures appear, and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1819), in which the protagonist believes he is pursued by a headless ghost. During the mid-nineteenth century, the best-known authors of the genre were Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, some of whose works are discussed below. All of these works feature either supernatural occurrences or insanity, two hallmarks of the genre.

Hawthorne’s novels The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851) both include several features of Gothic fiction. The latter novel is centered on the old Pyncheon mansion, and when Holgrave, a visitor to the mansion, first sees Clifford, an old inhabitant, he believes the man is a ghost. Like many Gothic novels, The House of the Seven Gables is concerned with a hereditary curse—in this case, a curse on the Pyncheon family and mansion. In The Scarlet Letter, an increasingly diabolical villain, Roger Chillingworth, becomes a doppelgänger to the pious yet hypocritical Reverend Dimmesdale. Chillingworth, like many Gothic villains, is physically deformed. The theme of witchcraft is embodied in Mistress Hibbins, a witch who often tempts Hester Prynne to join her in the forest.

Many of Poe’s short stories also exemplify Gothic fiction. For example, “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1838) emphasizes Roderick Usher’s insanity and his strange appearance. The Usher family also suffers from a hereditary curse that stems from several generations of incestuous marriage. The theme of premature burial, or the dead returning to life, emerges when Roderick’s sister Madeleine—whom we might see as Roderick’s doppelgänger—seems to die but bursts from her coffin and tomb near the end of the story. The setting of the story, the decaying Usher mansion, is typically Gothic in that it almost becomes a character, and it is inextricably tied to the Usher dynasty and its hereditary curse.

Though the Gothic works of Poe and Hawthorne are the most familiar examples of the genre in mid-nineteenth-century American literature, there are many others. George Lippard’s The Quaker City; or the Monks of Monk-Hall (1844) was perhaps the most popular Gothic novel by an American during this period. Lippard’s novel is noteworthy for adapting Gothic conventions to contemporary urban life as opposed to the distant past or exotic locations.

Another best-selling novel of the period, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), is primarily an antislavery novel, but it incorporates a subplot featuring a slave woman who is able to escape with a fellow slave by leading her cruel master to believe that his house is haunted. Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick (1851) also includes Gothic elements such as deformity (for example, the white whale and Captain Ahab’s amputated leg) and insanity (Ahab and Pip).

Topics for Discussion and Research

1. How does American Gothic literature compare to its European counterparts? How do American authors adopt and depart from the conventions of European Gothic literature? A good general resource on Gothic fiction is Jerrold Hogle’s The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction (2002), which includes chapters on German, British, Irish, and Scottish fiction. Those interested in focusing on the Gothic works of Poe should consult Benjamin Fisher’s essay “Poe and the Gothic Tradition” in The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe (2002).

2. Gothic literature is full of insanity, dreams, and strange behaviors motivated by subconscious desires and fears. Choose a Gothic fictional text by Poe, Hawthorne, or one of their American contemporaries and examine its relationship to theories of human psychology using David Punter’s essay “Narrative and Psychology in Gothic Fiction” in Gothic Fictions: Prohibition/Transgression (1989).

3. How are female characters portrayed in nineteenth-century American Gothic literature? Are they passive victims, supernatural beings, brave heroines, or something else? Edgar Allan Poe’s works are particularly interesting with regard to this topic. A good source regarding this topic is Joan Dayan’s article “Poe’s Women: A Feminist Poe?” (1993).

4. Many Gothic texts subliminally depict sexuality that is often seen as dangerous or abnormal. This theme is most prominent in works like Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Ligeia.” The first part of George Haggerty’s Queer Gothic (2006) is a helpful general introduction to the theme of sexuality in Gothic literature, and Peter Coviello’s essay “Poe in Love: Pedophilia, Morbidity, and the Logic of Slavery” (2003) focuses specifically on the sexual elements of Poe’s works.

5. How has nineteenth-century American Gothic fiction influenced the works of twentieth-century American authors such as Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner? How do the works of these later writers compare to their nineteenth-century predecessors? A good secondary source on O’Connor’s and Faulkner’s use of Gothic conventions is Margie Burns’s essay “A Good Rose Is Hard to Find: ‘Southern Gothic’ as Social Dislocation in Faulkner and O’Connor” (1988).

Resources

Kenneth W. Graham, ed., Gothic Fictions: Prohibition/Transgression (New York: AMS Press, 1989).
Includes fourteen essays about English Gothic fiction, a major influence on American Gothic literature.

George E. Haggerty, Queer Gothic (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006).
A study of the links between Gothic literature and sexuality.

Jerrold E. Hogle, The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
A collection of essays about Gothic literature in various national contexts, including an essay on American Gothic literature.

Robert K. Martin and Eric Savoy, eds., American Gothic: New Interventions in a National Narrative (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2009).
A collection of critical essays about American Gothic literature.

David Stevens, The Gothic Tradition (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
A useful overview of Gothic literature.

Categories: Horror Novels, Literature, Novel Analysis

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