Supernatural/Gothic Literary Motifs
A motif is a repeated theme, image, or literary device. Look for these common supernatural/Gothic motifs in the works we will read.
The Double or Doppelganger (German for "double-goer"): defined by Federick S. Frank as "a second self or alternate identity, sometimes, but not always, a physical twin. The Doppelganger in demonic form can be a reciprocal or lower bestial self or a Mr. Hyde. Gothic doppelgangers often haunt and threaten the rational psyche of the victim to whom they become attached" (435).
The double motif involves a comparison or contrast between two characters or sets of characters within a work to represent opposing forces in human nature. For example, Dr. Jekyll and his evil double Mr. Hyde are contrasted to represent the battle between the rational, intellectual self (Jekyll) and the irrational, bestial self (Hyde). The double motif suggests that humans are burdened with a dual nature, a soul forever divided.
Double characters are often paired in common relationships, such as twins, siblings, husband/wife, parent/child, hero/villain, creator/creature, etc.
Forbidden Knowledge or Power/ Faust Motif: forbidden knowledge/power is often the Gothic protagonist’s goal. The Gothic "hero" questions the universe’s ambiguous nature and tries to comprehend and control those supernatural powers that mortals cannot understand. He tries to overcome human limitations and make himself into a "god." This ambition usually leads to the hero’s "fall" or destruction; however, Gothic tales of ambition sometimes paradoxically evoke our admiration because they picture individuals with the courage to defy fate and cosmic forces in an attempt to transcend the mundane to the eternal and sublime.
Monster/Satanic Hero/Fallen Man: the courageous search for forbidden knowledge or power always leads the hero to a fall, a corruption, or destruction, such as Satan’s or Adam’s fall. Consequently, the hero in Gothic literature is often a "villain." The hero is isolated from others by his fall and either becomes a monster or confronts a monster who is his double. He becomes a "Satanic hero" if, like Satan, he has courageously defied the rules of God’s universe and has tried to transform himself into a god. Note: the mad scientist, who tries to transcend human limitations through science, is a type of Satanic hero that is popular in Gothic literature (examples include Dr. Jekyll and Frankenstein).
Demons/Devils/Witches/Spirits/Angels: often symbolize conflicting forces within the human soul. The hero may be tempted by evil spirits or redeemed by good spirits that symbolize the hero’s own potential for evil or good.
Magic Talismans/Cursed or Blessed Objects/Holy Relics: magic talismans may represent supernatural forces or forces within the hero’s personality (e.g., King Arthur’s magic sword Excalibur symbolizes the King’s power and goodness; it’s a symbol of order and civilization). Cursed and blessed objects can also act symbols of human duality.
Dreams/Visions: terrible truths are often revealed to characters through dreams or visions. The hidden knowledge of the universe and of human nature emerges through dreams because, when the person sleeps, reason sleeps, and the supernatural, unreasonable world can break through. Dreams in Gothic literature express the dark, unconscious depths of the psyche that are repressed by reason—truths that are too terrible to be comprehended by the conscious mind.
Signs/Omens: reveal the intervention of cosmic forces and often represent psychological or spiritual conflict (e.g., flashes of lightning and violent storms might parallel some turmoil within a character’s mind).
Graveyards/Churches/Ruins: such settings suggest human confrontation with infinite forces (death, spirits, time, etc.).
Haunted Castle/House: the hero’s castle or home can reflect the hero’s psychological character. Hidden chambers, subterranean vaults, twisting corridors, and secret passages can symbolize the hidden depths of the mind, unknown aspects of the psyche that are beyond rational control.
Multiple Narrative/Spiral Narrative Method: the story is frequently told through a series of secret manuscripts or multiple tales, each revealing a deeper secret, so the narrative gradually spirals inward toward the hidden truth. The narrator is often a first-person narrator compelled to tell the story to a fascinated or captive listener (representing the captivating power of forbidden knowledge). By revealing to us their own souls’ secrets, these narrators reveal the secrets of humankind’s soul.
Madness/Madmen/Characters Who Question Their Own Sanity: suggest humanity’s encounter with the fantastic side of existence that defies human reason. Because mad characters are in touch with a deeper reality beyond rational comprehension, they often speak the truths that normal characters wish to deny. Madmen face universal or psychic forces that rational men fear to acknowledge.
Blood: a prominent symbol in Gothic works often intimating the paradox of the human condition; blood can represent both life and death, or both guilt (e.g., murder) and innocence (e.g., redemptive blood).
Other Motifs: murder, innocence victimized by evil, reversal of values, the Wanderer, the Outcast, mistaken or secret identities, dichotomies (attraction/repulsion, life/death, innocence/evil, nobility/corruption, etc.).
Works Cited
Frank, Frederick S. The First Gothics: A Critical Guide to the English Gothic Novel.
New York: Garland Publishing, 1987.
Robert Hume, "Gothic Versus Romantic: A Revaluation of the Gothic Novel," PMLA 84 (1969): pp. 282-290.
Terror dependent on suspense or dread is the modus operandi of the novels of Walpole and Radcliffe. The Castle of Otranto holds the reader's attention through dread of a series of terrible possibilities-Theodore's execution, the (essentially) incestuous marriage of Manfred and Isabella, the casting-off of Hippolita, and so on. Mrs. Radcliffe's use of dramatic suspension is similar but more sophisticated. She raises vague but unsettling possibilities and leaves them dangling for hundreds of pages. Sometimes the effect is artificial, as in the case of the black-veiled "picture" at Udolpho, but in raising and sustaining the disquieting possibility of an affair between St. Aubert and the Marchioness de Villeroi, for in stance, she succeeds splendidly. Mrs. Radcliffe's easy manipulation of drawn-out suspense holds the reader's attention through long books with slight plots.
The method of Lewis, Beckford, Mary Shelley, and Maturin is considerably different. Instead of holding the reader's attention through suspense or dread they attack him frontally with events that shock or disturb him. Rather than elaborating possibilities which never materialize, they heap a succession of horrors upon the reader. Lewis set out, quite deliberately, to overgo Mrs. Radcliffe. The Monk (1796), like Vathek (1786), Frankenstein, and Melmoth the Wanderer, gains much of its effect from murder, torture, and rape. The difference from terror-Gothic is considerable; Mrs. Radcliffe merely threatens these things, and Walpole uses violent death only at the beginning and end of his book. The reader is prepared for neither of these deaths, which serve only to catch the attention and to produce a climax, respectively.
Obviously a considerable shift has occurred. Is its purpose merely ever greater shock? Or has the Gothic novelists' aesthetic theory changed? Terror-Gothic works on the supposition that a reader who is repelled will close his mind (if not the book) to the sublime feelings which may be realized by the mixture of pleasure and pain induced by fear. Horror-Gothic assumes that if events have psychological consistency, even within repulsive situations, the reader will find himself involved beyond recall.
This change is probably related to a general shift in conceptions of good and evil.... Walpole and Mrs. Radcliffe maintain the proprieties of a strict distinction between good and evil, though in Manfred and Montoni they created villain- heroes whose force of character gives them a certain fearsome attractiveness, even within this moral context. But with the villain-heroes of horror-Gothic we enter the realm of the morally ambiguous. Ambrosio, Victor Frankenstein, and Melmoth are men of extraordinary capacity whom circumstance turns increasingly to evil purposes. They are not merely monsters, and only a bigoted reading makes them out as such.
To put the change from terror-Gothic to horror-Gothic in its simplest terms, the suspense of external circumstance is de- emphasized in favor of increasing psychological concern with moral ambiguity. The horror-Gothic writers postulated the relevance of such psychology to every reader; they wrote for a reader who could say with Goethe that he had never heard of a crime which he could not imagine himself committing. The terror novel prepared the way for a fiction which though more overtly horrible is at the same time more serious and more profound. It is with Frankenstein and Melmoth the Wanderer that the Gothic novel comes fully into its own.