Gothic Novel

You will almost certainly have a few questions on the Gothic novel on your exam. Some knowledge of the books below will prepare you for almost any question you are likely to see.

'Gothic' came to be applied to the literary genre precisely because the genre dealt with such emotional extremes and dark themes, and because it found its most natural settings in the buildings of this style: Castles, Mansions and Monasteries, often remote, crumbling and ruined. It was a fascination with this architecture and its related art, poetry (see Graveyard Poets) and even landscape gardening that inspired the first wave of gothic novelists: Horace Walpole, whose seminal The Castle of Otranto is often regarded as the first true gothic novel, was obsessed with fake medieval gothic architecture and built his own house Strawberry Hill in that form, sparking off a fashion for gothic revival.

A term to associate with the Gothic novel is gothic explique, which is the logical explanation at the end of the book of an event that at first seems supernatural. This becomes a major component of detective fiction (think Scooby Doo).

Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto

Walpole's landmark work, published in December 1764, purports to be a translation (as the 1765 title page has it) "from the original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto," and the events related in it are supposed to have occurred in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. When the story opens, the villainous Manfred, prince of Otranto, in order to get an heir to his estate, has arranged a marriage between his only son, Conrad, and the beautiful Isabella. But on the night before the wedding, Conrad is mysteriously killed (he is crushed by a giant helmet). Lest he should be left without male descendants, Manfred determines to divorce his present wife, Hippolita, who is past childbearing, and marry Isabella himself.

Walpole writes as if by formula. The standard Gothic devices and motifs are all in place: moonlight, a speaking portrait, the slamming of doors, castle vaults, an underground passage, blasts of wind, rusty hinges, the curdling of blood, and above all, in practically every sentence, strong feelings of terror ("Words cannot paint the horror of the princess's situation . . ."). But Walpole was the inventor of the formula, and his influence — on Beckford, Radcliffe, and Lewis in this topic and then, along with them, on subsequent English fiction (and on literature and films more generally) — is incalculable.

Anne Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian

In Radcliffe's books, the hero is usually a gentleman of noble birth, likely as not in some sort of disgrace; the heroine, an orphan-heiress, high-strung and sensitive, and highly susceptible to music and poetry and to nature in its most romantic moods. A prominent role is given to the tyrant-villain. He is a man of fierce and morose passions obsessed by the love of power and riches. The villain can usually be counted on to confine the heroine in the haunted wing of a castle because she refuses to marry someone she hates. Whatever the details, Mrs. Radcliffe generally manages the plot and action so that the chief impression is a sense of the young heroine's incessant danger. On oft-repeated midnight prowls about the gloomy passageways of a rambling, ruined castle, the heroine in a quiver of excitement (largely self-induced) experiences a series of hair-raising adventures and narrow escapes. Her emotional tension is kept to the pitch by a succession of strange sights and sounds . . . and by an assorted array of sliding panels, trap doors, faded hangings, veiled portraits, bloodstained garments, and even dark and desperate characters.

Names to associate with Radcliffe:

The Italian: Vincentio di Vivaldi, Ellena Rosalba, the mysterious monk Schedoni
The Mysteries of Udolpho: Montoni, Emily

M. G. Lewis’s The Monk

The Gothic novel is traditionally divided into two main branches, “terror” and ”horror”, and it is in the latter that The Monk is to be placed. It is one of the most extreme examples of horror Gothic, dealing as it does with such shocking topics as rape, matricide, and incest. In The Monk we see Gothic being taken to its limits – both in terms of subject matter and public acceptability. The storm of controversy the novel created on its publication in 1796 indicates that Lewis had gone well beyond the more sedate story-lines of his avowed inspiration, Anne Radcliffe, the major representative of terror Gothic. Where Radcliffe always provides a natural explanation for ostensibly supernatural phenomena, Lewis revels in the use of the supernatural as a plot device.

The Monk concerns itself with the career of the Capuchin monk Ambrosio, an apparent orphan who has been brought up under the care of his monastic order to become a charismatic preacher, idolised by the population of Madrid. At the start of the narrative Ambrosio is a model of piety, but he proves to be a very brittle character who only too easily succumbs to the temptations of the devil. The devil's chosen instrument is the young monk Rosario, soon revealed to be a female in disguise (and then later a demon). As Matilda she seduces Ambrosio and becomes his accomplice in the career of sin that he proceeds to embark upon. Even before the seduction Ambrosio reveals himself to be motivated less by piety than pride and vanity, and in the first instance of the narrative's obsession with perverted sexuality, expresses erotic longings towards a painting of the Virgin Mary (which turns out to be a likeness of Matilda).

Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey is a parody of the Gothic novel, and for that reason ETS loves to use it.  The story centers around the character of Cahterine Morland, who is an avid devotee of the genre. Invited to spend some time at the Abbey home of the Tilney family, Catherine hopes for and fears all the cliches of the Gothic novel, only to appear foolish before her hosts.

Names to associate with Northanger Abbey: Cahterine Morland, the Allens, Henry Tilney, and John Thorpe.
Catherine Morland is also a fan of Anne Radclife's The Mysteries of Udolpho, and Austen novel uses Radcliffe's for parodic effect.