The Gothic Tradition in Literature
Late 17th / early 18th c Enlightenment (Neoclassicism)
· proportion and balance
· rationality and reason
· subordinating whole to parts
Late 18th / early 19th c Romanticism
· grandeur and insignificance
· emotion and passion
· holistic beauty
Novel becomes established literary form
· rising literacy
· rising middle class
· early modern democracy
· capitalist economic system
18th and early 19th c Gothic fiction
· novelists began to look to older, oral and Romantic traditions (eg., the Arthurian legends) as literary sources
· EMPIRE! (and “the Other”)
· reaction against (but profoundly related to) ideas of Enlightenment literary conventions
· fascination with the horrible, the repellent, the grotesque and the supernatural
· seen by some critics as a sub-genre of Romanticism, others as genre in its own right
Gothic as an artistic term
· emphasis on emotion
· gothic art and architecture intended to have a magical or preternatural effect on the viewer
· evokes awe, terror, insignificance,vulnerability
· sense of being at the mercy of a higher power—a particularly medieval world view
Gothic settings
· old, unfamiliar, mysterious and menacing buildings (mansions, cathedrals),"Dark Ages" associations, spiral staircases, soaring ceiling
· dangerous natural settings such as forests, mountains, polar regions, deserts, volcanoes
· remove the reader from the ordinary, everyday world of the normal and the familiar
Gothic mood
· chronic sense of apprehension and the premonition of impending/unidentified disaster
· fallen humanity, living in fear, alienation, haunted by images of mythic expulsion
· awareness of unavoidable wretchedness
Gothic heroes and heroines
· alone, stumbling alone, foreign countries
· face appalling complexities decision/action
· obliged to find their own solutions or fall
· estranged from family ties
· orphans/foundlings, family origins mysterious
Gothic action
· tends to take place at night, or at least in a claustrophobic, sunless environment
· haunted castles, mansions
· ascent (up a mountain/high staircase)
· descent (into a dungeon, cave, underground chambers, vaults or labyrinth)
· falling off a precipice
· secret passage or hidden door
· pursued maiden, threat of rape/abduction
· physical decay, blood and gore; torture
· skulls, cemeteries, ghosts/images of death
· revenge; family curse; the Doppelganger (evil twin or double), dis-ease, plague
· demonic possession, masking, shape-shifting black magic, “hysteria,” madness, dual human natures, “monster inside”/parasite, no control
· breaks taboos of birth, sex, death: death in childbirth, male protagonist “gives birth” infanticide, incest, marriage=death, vampirism, cannibalism, etc., young die/old live, resurrection, mutilation of body
Gothic psychology
· understood to serve a fundamental human need—Virginia Woolf called "the strange human need for feeling afraid"
· need to retain links to the past: folk tales, superstitions, and oral traditions
· storytelling creates a communal, emotional experience, authentic impulse (ironic b/c story represents), uniquely human expression
Frankenstein as gothic novel
· Allusions to John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), epic rendition of “Genesis” – creature will read Milton
· "Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay / To mould me man? Did I solicit thee / From darkness to promote me?--," Paradise Lost book 10, epigraph of Frankenstein
· Creature + Adam, "united by no link to any other being in existence", Satan, outcast & wretched
· Victor, god/creator, Adam, once innocent child, Satan, rebellious over-reacher & vengeful fiend
· Edenic world lost through Frankenstein's single-minded thirst for knowledge
· Victor, Promethean figure, striving against human limitations to bring light & benefit to humankind
· Glories in ability to create a facsimile of the human self. fall results not from creative enterprise, from failure & inability to love creation
· Individual desire v familial & social responsibility, Romantics: individualistic/self obsessed creativity v self denial, social harmony
· Nightmarish murders, demon-like creature, terror of unknown, destruction of idyllic life in nature by dark, ambiguous force
· Frankenstein = novel in the gothic tradition, situates good & evil as psychological battle w/in human nature
· Creator & creature initially "benevolent" feelings & intentions, become obsessed w/ destruction & revenge
· Manipulates conventions, stock gothic villains replace w/ morally ambiguous characters reflect depth & complexity of human psyche
Weird stuff nerds notice:
· Frankenstein associated w/ creature rather than creator, doppelgangers? Identities confused deliberately?
· Divided self, monstrous, destructive force w/in “civilized” humans, opposites not reconciled, destroy each other
· Link events, dates, & names novel & those in Mary's life; begins 11 December 17--, ends 12 September 17—?
· Walton’s to sister Margaret Walton Saville (initials are those of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
· Time period similar in duration to Mary Shelley's third pregnancy, during which she wrote Frankenstein
· Day & date Walton first sees creature, Monday, 31 July, coincides in 1797, year Mary was born
· Novel ends 12 September 1797, two days > Wollstonecraft's death – consequence of Mary’s birth?
The Concept of the Other
The Other singled out as different
· impossibly good or incomprehensibly evil
· a person's definition of the Other part of what defines the self relative to other people, ideas, and cultures
Implications of the Other for the colonial mindset
· can help us understand the processes by which societies and groups exclude Others in order to subordinate them
· demonstrates western societies’ practice and POV to gain and maintain power over occupied people and lands
Otherness and personal and cultural identity
· people construct roles for themselves in relation to an Other as part of a fluid process of action-reaction
· both Othering and being Othered!
· the unconscious, silence, madness, the other of language (references and “the unsaid”)
Problems
· tendency towards relativism if the Other leads to a notion that ignores any commonality of truth (normative)
· unethical uses to reinforce social, cultural, economic, political divisions
Hegel
· “Master-Slave Dialectic”
Sartre
· “Being for Other”
Lacan
· “The Mirror”
Lévinas
· “The Infinite Other”