Category: Gothic Fiction

The Fall of the House of Usher has strong literary elements that make it align with the more Gothic style writing that once came from romanticism. Gothic literature is a certain writing style that is mainly defined by its use of death, fear, horror, gloom and while using more romantic features like very high and strong emotional connections, individualism, and suspense (The Gothic Experience).

Gothic literature got its start in romanticism which is a literary are movement that focus on subjectivity and individuality. The Fall of the House of Usher definitely falls under the Gothic literature aspect with its use haunted houses, weird illnesses, split personality and its depressing landscape. Such elements make it very identifiable as something of Gothic literature. Part of what makes this story so unique is that one cannot be sure where exactly this is taking place. Whether that be in Roderick’s head or the narrator’s head is not certain. Which plays into the human mind similar to what dark romanticism had done with some parts of the House of Usher.

In the Fall of the House of Usher Poe uses some of the very basic elements of a Gothic literature like very dark gloomy weather and a desolate landscape. Much like how it is described by Gothic Experience which stated, “The Gothic creates feelings of gloom, mystery, and suspense and tends to the dramatic and the sensational, like incest, diabolism, and nameless terrors” (Gothic Experience). Much like dark romanticism Gothic literature according to Morgan Howard, “in general their works tend to be pessimistic, and deal particularly with death. Morality, the question of evil, and the human psyche all play a role in the canon of all three men- issues that both the Romantics and the Gothics explore”(Howard). What makes Poe’s Usher story really stand out as a Gothic literature is his use of imagery to help push the story forward. When the narrator in the Fall of the House of Usher calls the day dark, dull, and gloomy he is giving the readers the impression that it is dark and gloomy outside with nothing really going and the sun which isn’t shinning. When Poe describes the weather, he discusses how dense and how low the clouds were to give further description on the clouds being low to the ground and the sun not shinning.

Poe is considered the master of Gothic writing with many of works detailing characteristics like attractive female characters that end up dead or dying. In the Fall of the House of Usher the sister Roderick, Madeline who had supposedly died but came back from the dead after being buried alive and killed her brother Roderick. Another characteristic of Gothic literature that Poe tends to have a lot of in his writing especially in the Fall of the House of Usher is whether or not the narrator is sane. In the beginning of the story, the narrator remains very aware of his surroundings and describes the house that he is visiting.

As the story progresses that seems to spiral further and further down into this hole of insanity. This is called further into question when the narrator says “What was it–I paused to think–what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all-insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that…there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth”(Fall of the House of Usher).

This leads some to believe that the narrator was not in his right mind completely as the House of Usher story continues. Weird places and settings is another characteristic of Gothic literature that Poe Uses. The place the narrator is going to visit his friend Roderick he describes as depressing, dark, gloomy and overall just an unhappy place to be. Poe also talked about in his Gothic literature being buried, revenge, and murder all of which happened to Madeline during the story in which she was able buried alive, freed herself and got revenge on her brother Roderick by murdering him. Poe was a strong believer that only being in such extreme situations could the type of person you truly are actually be revealed to the world. Poe’s obsession with the mental state of individuals and the types of influences it has on his writings has caused some critics to believe that Madeline is not real and is a figment of the narrator’s and Roderick’s imagination which is purposely done to blur the lines between what is fake and what is actually going on.

Another strong Gothic element that the Fall of the House of Usher uses is the doppelganger which is meant to show the doubling literary elements or inanimate objects. When the narrator first sees the mansion, it is as a reflection in a little pool, which is next to the house. This little pool is meant to be a double of the house but it can also be shown to portray the relationship between Madeline and Roderick. This describes the tarn in the story; it is the reflection of the tarn. This is the main essence of Gothic literature which according to Morgan Howard “It presents “the darker side of awareness… guilt, fear and madness… the uncomfortable sense of being in a fantasy world which is about to reveal secrets of the human personality”” (Howard).

In Gothic literature, novels use a wide range of themes that center around gothic elements. Beginning in the early eighteenth century, these elements began a new genre that incorporated the ideas of the supernatural, horror, and dark events and sceneries. Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Ontranto is regarded as the beginning of Gothic literature. His novel set the standards future novels in this genre. Using the ideas of horror and terror, nature and the supernatural, and male/female roles and characteristics, Gothic literature was created.

The function of the Gothic genre was to give the readers a different type of emotion. Authors wanted the reader to feel a constant sense of anxiety and terror. The main function of Gothic literature was to reconstruct the ideas of the past. The authors used their writings for political statements of corruption mixed with the elements of fantasy. Using the ideas of political elements created the feelings of anxiety.

The first element that makes up the gothic novel is the horror and terror that are within the novels. Incorporating this element helped create fear within the readers. In both novels, Walpole and Radcliffe elements of horror and terror that create psychological suspense. These fears are created by the mystery of the supernatural and ghostly encounters.

The next element of Gothic literature was the atmosphere. This genre used these dark settings in a dramatic style that helped the plots of these novels create a sense of suspense and terror. The settings of these novels create an atmosphere of evil and terror by using dark and gloomy landscapes, collapsing and ruined old abbeys and buildings, such as castles. “The key characteristics of the novel is not its devices, but its atmosphere (Keech 135). By creating a mood with the atmosphere, the authors can create a better response from the readers. Many of the aesthetics that are involved in the Gothic literature are based on the visuals.

The Castle of Ontranto uses ominous settings, such as the dungeon in Manfred’s castle. The dungeons are full of twisted passageways that are dark and intricate.

Much of the Gothic settings are littered with ruined and crumbling castles and abbeys. Ann Radcliffe uses these dark settings as the hiding places of the supernatural and other forces that like to stay hidden from the outside world in The Italian. These settings are used to set the mood for the psychological dilemmas that the characters must face during the novel. During the novel, readers can get a sense of how dark and ominous the dungeons while Vivaldi is being led through the chambers, “his eyes glanced through its gloomy extent, imperfectly ascertaining it by the lamp, which hung from the centre of the roof” (Radcliffe 196). With the use of these settings of the dark passages and mysterious buildings, these elements help build the suspense and the terror within the novels.

While these elements of Gothic are used in both novels, they do differ because Walpole uses these components in his character’s everyday life, where the characters cannot run from the terror and supernatural. Radcliffe, on the other hand, has a safe spot for her characters, “the world outside, as the novels insist, is gothic, but there is still perfect safety in return to the older, cherishes verities of home and family” (Durant 530).

The last elements of these two novels are the roles that both men and women play. In both novels, the women do some common characteristics, but Radcliffe does take a different approach in the way that women are described. A common portrayal of women that most Gothic writers, or male writers, use are often that women are weak, selfless and virtuous. An example is in The Castle of Ontranto, “she would not only acquiesce with patience to divorce, but would obey, if it was his please”, (Walpole 36) Women in Walpole’s novel are often given little power over themselves, but must rely on men or their fate to control their own destiny. Men, on the other hand, are given much more power. They have the ability to challenge the authority and create a new path for their future.

While, Radcliffe does break away from the ideals of women’s role in Gothic literature, she does follow some of the same patterns. In The Italian, Ellena does play the damsel in distress. While being held in the abbey, Vivaldi creates a mission to save the women that he loves. He tends to risk his life to save Ellena from the villains for hand in marriage. The other time that Ellena is in distress and is seen as vulnerable and defenseless is when she has been captured by Schedoni and attempts to kill her until he discovers that she is actually his daughter. While Radcliffe follows some elements of the Gothic, she does create her female characters with power. Ellena is presented as more rational and does not let emotions take over her. Women in the Female Gothic tend to rely on reason, more than they do on passion. They challenge the roles that were set by the Gothic standards.

The Usher mansion is transformed into the lifeless counterpart of the inhabitants. It is a symbol and a valuable character that makes the transition between the realm of the dead and that of the living creatures; it symbolizes death and decomposition. Its walls are encapsulating and suffocating the Usher twins, bringing the fall both inwardly and outwardly. Poe transforms the archetype of the Jungian womb and maternal figure into a cold container that soon will destroy its ”objects”, like a furnace.

Madness contaminates Edgar Allan Poe’s narrative from within. When the narrator observes the House from afar, his countenance and his spirit become poisoned with ”an utter depression” and ”insufferable gloom”. Although his mind attempts to exercise resistance, he finds that he is unable to keep the menancing presence of the house away. The ”mansion of gloom”, with its ”vacant and eye-like windows”, becomes the fourth character of the gothic novella. It inspires fear and gloom only by its architectural form: ”an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart — an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.” (pg. 116) Thus, the real terror of Poe’s literary construction is not the bundle of terrible elements that reside in the descriptive passages, but the idea of a sickening House that can curdle the capacity of imagination of an individual. Once inside the house, the anonymous narrator suffers an elipsis of spirits, alike that of Roderick, and becomes a slave of the House, complying to the madness within his friend. The unhealthiness of the text is shown through various relations: the House and the twins, the narrator and Roderick, Roderick and Madeline, the narrator and the House. Roderick Usher himself confesses to his friend a feeling that his malady is the consequence of his dwelling in the ancestral mansion. The tale’s representation of disease draws a clear link between the physical part and the psychological — a relationship between mind and matter.

Lady Madeline represents the reconciliation of Madness and Incestuous bonds. Even though she appears only three times throughout the text, the female instance is by far the most interesting character in all of Poe’s writings. She is used in the form of an aesthetic effect with which the writer traps the reader and renders him unable to look away. It’s nauseating. The passages in which Lady Madeline appears draw upon a distinct ethereal and vampiric atmosphere. Again, the double is one of the ”specific elements of Poe’s lyrical and narrative patterns” (anca peiu pg 44). Psychologically, the aspect of the Twins (the Gemini, the Dioscuri) is a very fascinating subject, especially when talking about male and female siblings. In freudian psychoanalysis, the Uncanny is usually mentioned when talking about the mental state of twins. Poe uses the Uncanny in several instances as a literary trope for the purpose of mystery and confusion. He plays with the six senses of the reader, making him feel a picture (the foreshadowing of the tomb painting that the narrator briefly describes when in the House) and to feel Roderick’s decomposing yells. We can also perceive an uncanny element in the maladies of the two siblings. There have been many academic analysis on the illness of Roderick and Madeline Usher, but their sypstoms allign mostly with a genetic disease — hence the incestuous undertone of the tale. Thus, the word ”porphyria” describes a group of genetical inherited diseases that affect the skin and the nervous system. In ”The Fall of the House of Usher” the symptoms of Roderick and Madeline are mostly neurotic, also showing physical signs on the skin, as seen from a description of the phantomatic Lady Madeline. The singular disease, then, is part of the grand mechanism of the destruction of history — of the line of the royal Ushers.

Concluding the first part of my critical essay, Edgar Allan Poe’s novella shifts Gothic terror through the usage of themes such as madness, history, incestuous love, disease and decay, allowing the effects of the composition to deepen their roots into the reader’s mind and creating a kind of horror that builds up through foreshadowing and inward struggles, not only dusty graveyards and bad omens of romantic literature.

To make a solid and better connection between the visual part of the reading and the text, a brief definition of the chosen artistic medium is necessary. Thus, linocut is a printmaking technique and a variant of woodcut, that involves the engraving of a piece of linoleum, or rubber, with sharp tools, such as ”U” or ”V” shaped gouges. The technique allows artists to make several prints of the same design, all the while having the original work as a ”stamp”. Printmaking has been around for a couple of decades actually, but the concept of engraving on a simpler surface than wood, mainly on linoleum or rubber, is fairly new. The printmaking is done in a singular colour, hence, when the print is ready, the paper would only have black and white (the colour of the paper). This combination tends to add a more dramatic, if not, gothic vibe to the artwork. As Edgar Allan Poe’s novella is branded with a Gothic and dramatic atmosphere, I found it perfect to use printmaking to illustrate my rendition of his themes and to show the colours he uses to emphasize psychological and physical decline. Apart from linocut, the final artwork will also contain minor areas of oil painting, that will add details to the visual interpretation and will enhance the meanings behind every little element.

As mentioned in the earlier part of this essay, the House of Usher plays a major role throughout the text. Its physical decomposition is seen by the anonymous narrator in the beginning of the narrative and also at the end, when the finalisation of the deconstruction occurs. I transformed the idea of the House into a black form that roughly resemblences the geometrical drawings on Victorian book covers. The Victorian inspiration for the movements of the forms in my print help provide a better atmosphere and a connection between the text and the artwork. This geometrical form is engraved with asymmetric parts. The upper part of the structure is more ”full” and linear. Opting for the fullness of the curved lines, that I decided to sketch for the female part of the design, the form of the ”bank”, on which the siblings rest, symbolizes both Madeline’s tomb and the House. The idea here is the transition between the siblings’ halves. On Madeline’s part, the structure oozes femininity and plenitude, reminiscent of the psychological counterpart of the character, the id, and Madeline’s dominant personality through the narrative. Whilst the upper part is barely deconstructed, the lower region of the print, where Roderick’s body resides, is broken into pieces, following a rythm of gradual descent. This breaking depiction arises from Poe’s exploitation of the decay element and of the compulsive madness. The gradual descent in the drawing represents the fall into lunacy and apparition of psychological tremors. The pieces that fall are both the physical fragments of the Usher mansion —the ”crumbling condition of the individual stones” (pg 118) — and the segments of Roderick’s disturbed mind. Together with the asymmetry, the segments emphasize the status of each character. Lady Madeline, the id, is the wild part and the dominant and physical half of the doublet, while Roderick is the ego, the maleable and frail other half. Also to be noted here is the interesting idea of the gender traits that are switched: maleness is infected with hypersensibilty and melancholy while femaleness acts as the dangerous and aggressive element in the novella.

Continuing to follow the visual part of this essay, we shall observe that there are branches full of leaves peeking out from the sides and top of the black structure; a couple of them resemble the fallen segments and some blood and respectively flames. The web of leaves is most consistent at the top of the print, being almost intertwined and forming a garland above Madeline’s head.

In Poe’s text, the narrator observes the natural elements, some kind of a picturesque dead nature near the Usher mansion: ”Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves” (pg118) These are organic metaphors, having inspiration in Gothic architecture, showing the state of decomposition. Fungi usually develop in moist, damp, suffocating and dark environments. By referencing the natural kingdom, E. A. Poe accentuates the archetypal setting of the Gothic. Poe foreshadows his belief in the fusion between organic and inorganic elements. Botanical elements are usually aspects of ethereal atmosphere, of bohemian architecture, but as in ”The Fall of the House of Usher”, my printed tangling leaves are signs of disease and desertation. The inhabitants of the House have been engulfed both physically and spiritually by the mansion. Because of the creeping fungi on the walls of the dwelling, aspects of humanity and sanity are erased altogether. The exterior mirrors the interior of the Usher twins. By choosing to portray the dead nature referenced in the text, I transformed the fungi and the ”decayed trees” into a universal symbol: crawling leaves. Thus, the web-like ”minute fungi”, illustrated in the text by Poe, is reminiscent of the web-work of the Gothic cathedral. Architecture and visual composition is a very important facet of the fantastic novella.

The reason behind the absence of leaves from the bottom half of the print — Roderick’s side — is supposed to represent the helplessness of the character itself. Madeline’s aura of creeping branches full of leaves serves as an element of wildness and corruption, intended to depict her aggressive behaviour as the id in the freudian trio. She’s the one that contaminates her brother at the end. Her ghastly appearance torments him and disturbs his mind; the climax consisting of Roderick being enclosed in her dead arms, just like the House is enclosed and suffocated by the dead nature — by the ”minute fungi”.

The skulls are also part of the organic aesthetic props. They epitomize the royal blood line of the Usher family. The twins are surrounded by the skulls of their family, a kind of memento mori that is always depicted in paintings. This is the twins’ destinity too, they are going to die, and together with their death, the Usher family will cease to exist. The present will become history. The leaves that branch out of the bony heads are indications that even the dead are contaminated.

The colour red is also an important symbol in Poe’s novella. He uses the vibrancy of the colour in culminating episodes. Madeline, after her escape from the tomb, is described as having blood smeared all over her white gown. There are also signs of struggle to get out of the tomb, which signals to the theme of the live burial: ”There was blood upon her white robes and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame.” (pg 136) In Mircea Elidea, live burial is considered to be an archetype and an important stage in the renovatio process. From a freudian perspective, Madeline’s vault and burial ceremony emulates Roderick’s intention of ignoring his repressed sexual desires. The return of Madeline at the end of the story is the return of the repressed. Hence, Madeline not only represents the repressed feelings of her brother, but she also represents an effect: The Uncanny. The colour red is introduced in the novella as a feature of the horror. Rather than soaking Madeline’s clothes with red blood, I only painted the blood from her fingers, showing her struggle of returning as a repressed desire of Roderick. Although the sister is never depicted as having anything fluid dripping from her hands, I added the idea that her fingers are supposed to look tense, twitched in peculiar forms, with blood steeping down onto Roderick’s side. To make a connection between the theme of decay and that of the freudian live burial, I painted the ends of the branches, that make up Madeline’s garland, into red, trying to illustrate a transition from organic leaves into organic fluid — little capillaries of blood seeping upwards and merging together to define the letter ”M”.

Lady Madeline is a character constructed in parallel with the environment; never existing, almost like she’s just a part of Roderick and the House. The narrator glances upon her visage merely as she is passing through the room. He doesn’t describe her at all, but only as being identical with her sibling. Readers can solely interpret her as something cloaked in white and a blood-smeared figure of nightmares. In Poe’s narrative, Lady Madeline has become surreal. She’s an idea. Consequently, we don’t really know how Madeline looks like. I took the liberty to represent her in my print as a young, beautiful ”nimphete”, with long locks of curly hair and two dotted cheeks as signs of her blush: ”a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death.” (pg 129) The eyes are engraved as shut, only the lines can be distinguished. Though the figure of Lady Madeline is dressed in white robes in the text, I portrayed the two siblings in nude. The print shows Madeline’s perky breasts, evidence of ”maturity of youth”, and her tiny waist line. The bodies of the twins are intertwined and glued together. I wanted to replicate the theme of Incestuous bonds, the dual hallucination and the connection between the id and the ego, the psychological half and the physical one. They are nude because they are in the freudian womb of repression, the vault from Poe’s novella; they are shown in their pure state.

The attachment of the siblings was done from the bosom down and the dissecting here is important: twins always mirror each other, be it in personality or physiognomy, which is why I wanted to portray the bodies as contrasting each other — alike a mirror. The spectral little forms done in the area of the ”knot” between the two are evocations of the undulating effects of mirror reflections of light. In my print, Lady Madeline is the most important character, Roderick seems more like a Jungian Shadow, a consequence of his sister’s existence. His body movements are those of a tormented individual — his arms are up, above and upon his face, in a defensive attitude. The posture in which I wanted him was that of a cowardly character. This is a depiction of Roderick at the end of ”The Fall of the House of Usher”, where he is so devoured by madness and fear that he couldn’t stand to look at the figure of his sister. Again, the apparition of his repressed feelings and desires. On the other hand, the third and last appearance of Lady Madeline, displays her ferocity and her aggressiveness. She is the whole mechanism of the story; she puts into motion everything.

Thus, while my visual interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe’s novella, ”The Fall of the House of Usher” draws closely on the text, it does have new layers of meaning. In Poe’s narrative, the House is the ultimate archetype and the ultimate character. It is a projection of the writer’s feelings, of his melancholy. ”FEAR!” represents the nucleus, the drive of the story, as well as of its characters. Transferring the text’s themes and connotations into a visual work adds more to the layers of the story and shows the abundance of interpreatations of the same themes. The modern aspect of linocut technique also enriches the experience of the reading.

It has been known that Edgar Allan Poe has entered the American literary canon for his merits of being a short story writer and the first to come upon the detective genre. But he’s also the first American writer that has quite the elegiac romance tones and Coleridgean self-development elements to his writings. Through titles such as ”William Wilson”, ”The Tell-Tale Heart”, ”The Black Cat”, ”The Fall of the House of Usher” and ”The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, E. A. Poe continued to illuminate his theories of Victorian and romantic visuals, intertwined with gothic elements of doom, decay and death. His literary experiments are ponderings on the transition between life and death, two abstract notions that appear as substantial themes in his works.

The tales of this particular American writer are set upon the paper with great meticulous attention to what the alchemists used to call, ”the six senses”. Poe’s interesting style of aestheticism is an amalgamation of neo-classic, pre-romantic and romantic elements, that, fused together, transform the concept of reality into a mysterious, elevated and irrational force. His characters are dead men walking, lunatics, disease infested vessels of psychological disturbances and he toys with all of them in extensive descriptive passages through which the reader is compelled to ”see”, ”feel” and ”smell”, from the narrator’s perspective, the haunting illusions and delusions that usually transcend and embellish his text.

”The Fall of the House of Usher” was first published in 1839 and is considered to be Poe’s best gothic-fantastic novella whose interesting view upon history subtly emerges from within the three characters’ destinies. With its widely popular gothic atmosphere and delirious horror hues, ”The Fall of the House of Usher” is set within the walls of the archetypal house, a container, as Durand might observe, of horrible illusions, ghastly images and ominous happenings. The three human characters, Roderick and Madeline Usher, together with the anonymous narrator, are the menage á trois of freudian psychoanalysis, embodying the ego, id and superego. The highly unsettling work deals with several important themes and symbols: decay or decomposition, history as a rotten material and a literary device, incestuous vampiric love, madness and psychosis, fear, and imagination. Managing to revitalize the Gothic genre of literature (now called ”southern Gothic”), Poe’s hypersensitivity birthed an interesting change to the genre of horror: turning the external horror into the macabre within — ”the terror of the soul”, by using tropes such as foreshadowing, anadiplosis, enargia, personification (or pathetic fallacy), alliteration and synesthesia.

Following an anonymous narrator, the novella opens with the already set disintegration of the House and its inhabitants, the Usher twins. The opening paragraph transposes the reader in the realm of misty frightening surroundings, imbued with a dusty palette of greys and dull offwhites: ”During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within the view of the melancholy House of Usher.” (cititat prima pagina carte) Roderick Usher has invited his friend, the anonymous character-narrator, to come see him, hoping that this friendly reunion will apease his internal whirlwind of sufferings. After we get introduced to Roderick Usher and his psychological decline, the narrator ”showers” us with detailed information upon the history of the Usher family.

The style of writing found in Gothic literature was used by many writers in the early 1800 and 1900s and can still be found in writing today. Within Crimson Peak by Guillermo del Toro and “Death in the Woods” by Sherwood Anderson, the theme of Isolation can be identified. Within Crimson Peak by Guillermo del Toro, “Allal” by Paul Bowles, and “Death in the Woods” by Sherwood Anderson, the theme of Isolation is found. Isolation affects both the character and plot aspects of the story and film by the authors. The effect of isolation differs from each piece; however, all can be tied together to obtain an important similarity.

Crimson Peak, directed by Guillermo del Toro, is labeled as a Drama/Fantasy movie released in 2015. The plot is slowly built upon a suspenseful and dramatic tone. The protagonist, Edith, is gradually put in a state of isolation where she becomes entirely vulnerable. What is isolation? “Loneliness is a situation experienced by the individual as one where there is an unpleasant or inadmissible lack of (quantity of) certain relationships. This includes situations, in which the number of existing relationships is smaller than is considered desirable or admissible, as well as situations where the intimacy one wishes for has not been realized” (Weiss 485-486). Isolation can become quite detrimental by the extent of it experienced. In Crimson Peak, Edith does not socialize with many individuals in her hometown of Buffalo, New York. Instead she keeps her social interactions exclusively to her family and business inquisitions. The isolation was a catalyst for many other events within the plot of the film. It created internal complications within Edith and physical ones that affected other characters in the story.

Sherwood Anderson establishes a theme of isolation in “Death in the Woods” through Mrs. Grimes’s, the protagonist, lifelong abuse and a home far from town. Isolation is a major theme throughout the story, comparable to the film. Mrs. Grimes is mentally isolated from the start of her childhood years, persisting throughout her time as an adult. As a child, she only had her master, a German farmer, who was sexually abusing and threatening her. “Such bound children were often enough cruelly treated. They were children who had no parents, slaves really” (Anderson 165). The isolation continues on in a physical way, as she lives with her husband and son far away from town. “…she lived with her husband and son in a small unpainted house on the bank of a small creek four miles away from town” (Anderson 164). If the German farmer wasn’t bad enough, Mrs. Grimes has to deal with her now husband, Jake Grimes. Jake decides it is a good idea to have a home far from town, while continually leaving Mrs. Grimes alone for days to weeks at a time. This drastically affects Mrs. Grimes mentally as she speaks about it generally. Unfortunately, this similar treatment does not end with the German farmer and Jake Grimes. The miserable behavior is picked up by the townspeople as well. “She knew no one. No one ever talked to her in town” (Anderson 167). The closest thing she has to a real connection are the starving animals at the small house. This is similar to the movie where Edith is brought comfort from a dog that was found on the property. Isolation is something that should not be partaken in the vast amounts as Mrs. Grimes has. It leads to sadness, despair, and many other detrimental factors. Mrs. Grimes gets used to all the alone time. She finds herself hopeless, and believes that there is no point in trying to have the same emotions as in a normal human being.

Isolation is quite variable in the way that it can be applied. It is a theme less talked about, however widely used by writers of vastly different styles. The two stories and film above are an example of that. The effect of isolation in “Death in the Woods” and Crimson Peak, was not a favorable one for the protagonist. What really makes isolation so interesting is the unknown factor to how the outcome will play out. Writers such as Sherwood Anderson create a powerful and moving story that is enhanced with isolation. The characters are able to develop throughout the plot while evoking certain feelings within the readers. One can achieve tones of sadness, happiness, affectionate, cautious, and more. Isolation is a theme in many variations of literature that has been used since the 1800s, to current times today. It is an effective theme that can bring out many emotions and information for a reader to feel and learn from.

In “The Feather Pillow” there are elements that make the genre of the story Gothic Literature and Magical Realism, but the question is if it is Gothic or Magical Realism and if it’s Gothic would it be Traditional or Modern? The story has elements of the unknown, dark bleak settings, and the supernatural. Thus, the genre that “The Feather Pillow” is composed of is Traditional Gothic.

In the story, there are some elements that are composed of traditional gothic. A timid and angelic girl named Alicia marries a man called Jordan that is caring, but doesn’t show it, which makes him seem cold. They’re marriage seems that there is few love between them. The setting where Alicia and Jordan live is described as cold and tedious. They live in a big and empty house where there’s nothing but silence as Alicia spends her entire day waiting for her husband to come home from work. “The whiteness of the silent patio—friezes, columns, and marble statues—produced the wintry impression of an enchanted palace. Inside the glacial brilliance of stucco, the completely bare walls, affirmed the sensation of unpleasant coldness. As one crossed from one room to another, the echo of his steps reverberated throughout the house, as if long abandonment had sensitized its resonance”(Quiroga). The vivid description tells us that no joy comes from the house, which emphasizes that there is very little love between Alicia and Jordan in their marriage because the description talks about “the whiteness of silent”, there’s silence between Alicia and Jordan. Therefore, there is a lack of communication between the couple.

Furthermore, Alicia and Jordan were tortured in similar, but also different ways. Jordan was tortured by an emotional state, while Alicia was tortured by physical pain. As stated before, the couple did not seem to have much love between them because of the lack of conversation. “Her entire honeymoon gave her hot and cold shivers…She loved him very much, nonetheless, although sometimes she gave a light shudder when, as they returned home through the streets together at night…He, for his part, loved her profoundly but never let it be seen”(Quiroga). Alicia loves Jordan, but she is not comfortable with him and Jordan does not show the love and affection he wants to give Alicia so he stays silent. In addition, Alicia was coming down with a sickness, but no one knew why she was sick. The doctor that was checking on her did not know what was wrong. Alicia was getting worse day by day, which was torture for her in a physical state. Jordan, on the other hand, was worried about his wife. “With tireless persistence he paced ceaselessly from one end of the room to the other. The carpet swallowed his steps. At times he entered the bedroom and continued his silent pacing back and forth alongside the bed, stopping for an instant at each end to regard his wife”(Quiroga). Jordan did not bring comfort to Alicia and kept quite, but was concerned for his wife as he was pacing around the house, and feared that she was going to die, which brought him emotional pain.

As the story comes to an end, it has some supernatural elements. Alicia got even sicker as the days went by and she died from a parasite that was later found in her pillow by her husband. “In the bottom of the pillowcase, among the feathers, slowly moving its hairy legs, was a monstrous animal, a living, viscous ball. It was so swollen one could scarcely make out its mouth” (Quiroga). The creature that was found in Alicia’s pillow case shows signs of a ferocious, blood sucking, monster, for instance, a vampire. The description of the tiny ball like creature indicates vampirism. “Alicia had taken to her bed, this abomination had stealthily applied its mouth—its proboscis one might better say—to the girl’s temples, sucking her blood…but as soon as the girl could no longer move, the suction became vertiginous. In five days, in five nights, the monster had drained Alicia’s life away” (Quiroga). The obvious definition of a vampire is a monster who takes all the blood of a victim until their death. The awful, blood sucking , parasite sucks the blood of its victim, which in this case it’s Alicia. The parasite took the blood, life, and joy away from Alicia as she came to her slow, bitter death.

“The Feather Pillow” is composed of many elements of Gothic Literature. It has a very eery and cold setting in which was the “home” of Alicia and Jordan where the horrible and weird situation happened. The death of Alicia was a pretty dramatic ending where they found a creature in her pillow, which surprised the reader because it was so unexpected. The parasite was also an a supernatural element involving vampirism. As a result, the genre of “The Feather Pillow” is Traditional Gothic.

In this essay, I will analyse Bram Stoker’s Gothic taking as a reference point his novel Dracula. The main purpose of these pages is to present the aspects conform to conventions of Gothic fiction and the ones that vary from this genre.

Gothic fiction is considered a literature and film genre that mainly combines death, fiction and horror, and occasionally romance. Gothic narratives always describe journeys, flight and pursuit tales or stories of escape (Duncker, 2004). 1790s writers, considered the first wave of Gothic novelists, had recurrent modes of writing: their narratives made the familiar sound strange and difficult material was approached without contemporary political and sexual restrictions. The topography and iconography of the Gothic is distinguished by castles, monasteries, fortifications, convents, locked houses and prisons. These places are always depicted old, dangerous, mysterious,… Gothic fiction is concerned with mental narratives, in other words, the representation of logic dreams. Transgressions and taboos are not an obstacle for a Gothic writer, this means that authors can take risks with their material. The Gothic releases indirect desire, and readers become spectators of the forbidden spectacle.

The Uncanny constitutes one of the main aspects of Gothic fiction. This concept was first developed by Sigmund Freud, and he defines it as “in reality nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression” (Freud, 1955, cited in Botting & Townshend, 2004: 2) This notion includes events that repeat, reverse, double and return normal judgements and applies not only to ghosts that cross the firm line between life and death, but also to passages between times and places, inside and outside and minds and worlds. The Uncanny is central to discussions of Victorian Gothic. It is about crossing and transgressing boundaries and it also deals with a refuse to remain in place, which triggers discourse. The Uncanny keeps criticism alive because it shows an obscurity and darkness that only the truth of critical discourse can brighten. I believe that Stoker has expelled some disturbing elements from society and has also reaffirmed the boundaries between certain categories in Dracula: life and death, civilization and degeneracy and human and nonhuman. Count Dracula has violated or made ambiguous such boundaries.

Gothic has always been a way of viewing the past, as David Punter asserts. The texts belonging to Victorian Gothic are especially useful for the history of the period. They expose the return of suppressed historical doubts and fears. In Stoker’s case, there was not an explicit intention of illustrating the social concerns of the period, still he does so. In his novel Dracula, Jonathan is the perfect representation of an industrialized society; he is an ordinary guy, professional, not exceptional, not superstitious and not imaginative.

Themes like religion, sex, the Un-dead, the unhuman creatures, the deconstruction of “Angel in the House” notion and the evil are common and essential topics of Gothic fiction. According to Glennis Byron, Gothic is closely related to anxieties produced by many scientific discourses, such as evolutionism, mental psychology and sexology,… All these discourses were already questioning and dismantling conventional ideas of the human. In Stoker, as in many Gothic writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, these anxieties are both managed and aggravated. There is a characteristic creature that became familiar during late Victorian Gothic that is entirely applicable to Count Dracula. It is a creature that drains the vitality of others or whose supernatural beauty or goodness is linked to a hidden ugliness.

In general, the nature of Gothic fiction is composed of a doubleness represented by the power of the evil against which the protagonist battles. I believe this is roughly the case with Count Dracula and Jonathan, taking into account that, later on, Jonathan will not be on his own but with other characters to defeat the evil. Besides, Stoker depicts the going out to Transylvania as basically a going in to the dark continent itself and a real contact with something alien. By transmitting this idea, Stoker enters into the true Victorian Gothic, just as in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Nevertheless, in the latter case the destiny is the colonized Congo.

Traditionally, the Gothic has been understood as the register of repressed desires, thus revealing “which should have reminded hidden”. In my opinion, this fact illustrates how latent topics or taboos of that period could emerge and have a voice. These repressed desires could only be revealed in few occasions, notably in literature through specific genres like Gothic, music and theatre.

“The sleep of reason produces monsters” is an etching by Francisco Goya that resumes perfectly the Gothic. Going back to Romanticism, we notice that it moves away from enlightenment and puts reason to sleep. In the case of Gothic stories, they appeal to the emotional part of us and they usually do not work if we analyse them rationally. This is not the case with Dracula, since this novel works even analysing it rationally.

Dracula is considered a multiform novel. It cannot be categorised as epistolary in view of the newspaper accounts that it contains. There is not one single governing perspective as multiple narrators appear throughout the novel. All of them express the truth. This multiplicity of narrators is labelled as “polyphony”. Polyphony reflects that there is no single truth and that did not happen in the nineteenth century, it was not common then, but Stoker had yet introduced it. In addition, this multiple narrative form expresses, in a subliminal way, instability. The more terrifying the moment is, the more frequent polyphony is.

To conclude, the aspects in which Stoker varies from Gothic fiction conventions are few compared to the ones that he conforms to. I found advantageous the fact of learning more about the thought of the age by means of Gothic fiction. Finally, I would remark the unique versatility of Dracula, considering the success even subdued to a rational approach.

Bibliography

1. Stoker, Bram. Dracula. London: Penguin Classics, 2003.
2. Arata, Stephen. “The fin de siècle”. In Kate Flint, Writing Victoria’s England. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 145-147.
3. Botting, Fred and Townshend, Dale. “Introduction”. In Fred Botting and Dale Townshend (eds.), Nineteenth-Century Gothic: At Home with the Vampire. London: Routledge, 2004. 1-11.
4. Bruhm, Steven. “On Stephen King’s phallus; or, the postmodern Gothic”. In Fred Botting and Dale Townshend (eds.), Twentieth-Century Gothic: Our Monsters, Our Pets. London: Routledge, 2004.170-190.
5. Duncker, Patricia. “Queer Gothic: Angela Carter and the lost narratives of sexual subversion”. In Fred Botting and Dale Townshend (eds.), Twentieth-Century Gothic: Our Monsters, Our Pets. London: Routledge, 2004. 330-344.
6. Punter, David. “Heart lands: contemporary Scottish Gothic”. In Fred Botting and Dale Townshend (eds.), Twentieth-Century Gothic: Our Monsters, Our Pets. London: Routledge, 2004. 291-311.
7. Spencer, Kathleen L. “Purity and danger: Dracula, the Urban Gothic, and the late Victorian degeneracy crisis”. In Fred Botting and Dale Townshend (eds.), Nineteenth-Century Gothic: At Home with the Vampire. London: Routledge, 2004. 304-330.
8. Wilt, Judith. “The imperial mouth: Imperialism, the Gothic and Science fiction”. In Fred Botting and Dale Townshend (eds.), Twentieth-Century Gothic: Our Monsters, Our Pets. London: Routledge, 2004. 134-146.
9. Byron, Glennis. “Bram Stoker’s Gothic and the Resources of Science”. Critical Survey, 19.2, 2007: 48-62.

Another theme that is used in the Fall of the House of Usher is the fact that madness is a major factor in the story of the Ushers. Many of Poe’s stories deal with the mental struggle-taking place inside someone and how that is affecting the others. In the Fall of the house of Usher the narrator states “In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence—an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy—an excessive nervous agitation”( The Fall of the House of Usher). The narrator is able to notice that something is not right with Roderick, which is especially important, as the narrator has already admitted to not knowing Roderick all that well to begin with. He makes constant comparisons to Roderick’s behavior to that of being drunk and being on drugs.

The narrator is not able to get a direct answer out of Roderick due to how broken and incomplete his sentences are and is trying to piece them together to actually figure out what is going on. It can be implied that the instability that is driving Roderick further and further into madness is not just simply coming for fear but trying to conquer these fears and constantly failing to do so. This is more of a throwback to dark romanticism where a constant theme of that is a character that is trying to become better and make improvements but ultimately failing to succeed in the end. The narrator even describes Roderick as “alternately vivacious and sullen” alluding to the fact that he may be bipolar.

The Fall of the House of Usher continues to detail Roderick’s and Madeline’s descent into madness with the strange part being that he is aware of what is going on around him and the control he is losing over himself. As the story continues, the reader is able to tell before the narrator can put it together that Roderick has gone off the deep end when he decides that he needs to bury his sister who is still alive in the basement. When the narrator finally catches on and believes that Roderick committing such a horrible and random act is ridiculous but the narrator has been inside the mansion for so long that he has become victim to the hysteria starting to take place in the Usher home. Towards the end of the story the narrator has come to conclusion that Roderick is mad stating “there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes—an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor” (The Fall of The House of Usher).

This is further proven in the narrator eyes when Roderick is telling him that his sister has come back from the grave and his calling the narrator mad for not seeing it saying “’Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!’—here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul—’Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!’” (The Fall of the House of Usher). This makes the reader think about what is going on and look for signs to see if the narrator is actually the one who is crazy instead.

In literature, horror fiction aims to stir fear within readers. Horror itself has many sub-genres, the style of gothic being one of the more common ones. Gothic literature effortlessly blends horror with aspects of romance. Although, the romance in gothic literature hinges on sensibility with a far more dreadful path. Anne Rice successfully indicated horror and the gothic style within her novel. In her novel Interview with the Vampire, Rice exhibits anti-hero behaviors and qualities within her protagonist, follows the scheme of romanticism within its respective sub-genre, and demonstrates the use of supernatural beings within her text.

A unique characteristic to the horror genre, more specifically gothic, is the idea of anti-heroism in their protagonists. In gothic literature, protagonists are often lacking in generic hero attributes, they come off as villainous or as having twisted morals, but they ultimately heroes. Lisa says, “The Gothic protagonist is often portrayed as flawed, lonesome, isolated, or outcast figure who has overcome obstacles in order to rejoin society.”(Owlcation). This is significant because it shines a new light on the role of the protagonist. Anti-heroism displays that not all heroes can be moral compasses or act courageous. Protagonists are not clean-cut they have flaws just like any other character. This allows the reader to explore the arc and character development of the protagonist more in depth. Furthermore, the novel Interview with the Vampire illustrates the quality of anti-heroism when the protagonist, Louis Du Lac, grapples with his ideologies of good and evil. Throughout the novel Louis struggled with the nature of being a vampire, resulting in his own existential crisis: “People who cease to believe in God or goodness although still believe in the devil… Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult” (Rice, 67). Louis narrates his struggle with accepting the fact of trying to be good, while still inherently being evil. This is significant because he acknowledges that one cannot exist without the other, he knows that he must overcome the obstacle of his own vampire nature. Louis understands it will be difficult to become good because he still sees himself has evil. Therefore, the characteristic of anti-heroism displays the protagonist as villainous during their respective arcs, but still maintains the title of hero within their novel.

Within the Gothic genre authors often follow the theme of romanticism inside their style of text. Gothic fiction utilizes the style of romanticism in terms of romanticizing the past. According to Lisa, “A gothic novel is something of an inverted romance, as it tends to see things from the steamy side… In line with its setting, gothic lit often romanticized and revisits the past.”(Owlcation). This is significant because by romanticizing the past it makes the romance (relationship) appear far more desirable and glorious, rather than at first glance. This allows the reader to infer and understand the characters and their emotions in better depth, no matter how complex or generic. Moreover, Anne Rice’s novel demonstrates romanticism when Armand reminisces about the relationship between him and his maker in a conversation with Louis. Armand expresses his profound love for the vampire that turned him: “‘Love?’ I asked. ‘There was love between you and the vampire who made you?’… ‘yes,’ Armand said. ‘a love so strong he couldn’t allow me to grow old and die’” (Rice, 425-426). This is significant because Armand explain how his maker and he were deeply in love, he does this through romanticizing their past. Armand explicitly says to Louis that in the past he and his maker were so infatuated with each other that the only rational decision his maker could come up with was turning him into a vampire. In essence, gothic fiction it often illustrates the style of romanticism through idealizing the past between characters. Finally, the horror/gothic genre continuously demonstrates the use of supernatural entities within its text. In horror and gothic fiction, supernatural characters are used as driving forces for the story as humans are faced with the unknown. Supernatural characters are very important to the horror genre: “A supernatural horror is work of fiction that relies heavily on the supernatural or paranormal elements to drive the story, featuring things like ghosts, monsters, demons, aliens, witchcraft, zombies, and so on. The main source of terror in supernatural horrors is the human reaction to being faced with the unknown” (Literary Terms). This is significant because supernatural entities give more of a terrifying drive to the story, this increases shock value in readers. The purpose of having these human characters faced with the unknown is to create a sense of fear. In addition, Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire follows a vampire recounting his 200 years of life, starting with him as a human and leading all the way up until present day, this is the driving force of the story. Louis reminisces on his experience turning into a vampire: “I saw as a vampire… it was as if I had only just been able to see colors and shapes for the first time.” (Rice, 21). Louis sees for the first time after being turned into a vampire and is hypnotized by the feeling. This is significant because this sparks the start of Louis’ journey, where he will never be the same person again. Louis becoming a vampire starts the driving force of the story, which follows his life. Therefore, horror/gothic literature utilizes supernatural entities within its texts.

Anne Rice, author of the novel Interview with the Vampire successfully demonstrates anti-heroism within her protagonist, exhibited the theme of romanticism in its respective sub-genre, and utilizes supernatural characters within her texts. Anti-hero protagonists have villainous traits but are still ultimately heroes, this is significant because throughout the novel Louis struggles with good and evil. Gothic fiction utilizes romanticism through romanticizing the past, this is relevant because Armand revealed and romanticizes his past relationship with his maker. In horror and gothic fiction, supernatural characters are used as driving forces for the storyline, this is factual because Louis’ vampirism is the driving point for the novel. In short, horror novels are meant to get your heart racing and blood pumping, but when they succeed in that goal, there is truly nothing more terrifying.

Physical Setting

Conrad was deeply fascinated by the circumstances that established men’s perseverance and were fascinated by physical realism. This curiosity propelled him into realities that he presented in romantic charm and ‘ adventurous exaltation’ in the novella. The very opening line of the novella, “The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway.” sets the eeriness, gloominess, and desolation, perhaps the most significant elements of gothic literature. The portrayal of imperialistic domination presents the natural supremacy of the British over an indigenous group of people from Africa. However, on a deeper study, we can observe the moral failings of the Belgian Empire which can be understood as fundamental anti-imperialism. This juxtaposing presentation of settings is important to understand that the novella is a Gothic tale and thus prepares the readers to subconsciously experience Gothic elements. Needless to mention here that the role of the setting in gothic literature is symbolic which leads to the creation of a tumultuous and unnatural storyline.

As Marlow set forward on his journey to Africa, we can observe his disturbing mindset that was infused by the stereotypical mindset that Europeans had for Africans, he says, “And this also,’ said Marlow suddenly, ‘has been one of the dark places of the earth.”. This also reiterates how Marlow started his journey not with zeal to discover something new about Africa but something dark and sullen. Since the plot evolves from an actual voyage, the enormous and somber tropical bewilderment along the miles of the long river Congo, the small trading clearings, and native people are used to describe the setting for this novel. What is important to notice is that this setting is not just any background, rather it is a dynamically stimulating natural force that employs its very own influence on the unfolding gothic elements to understand human drama created artistically by the author.

“In and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into the mud, whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves, that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair.” Again here, we can observe how the setting sets in the negative tone of morbidity while writing about life and death during the journey. Conrad has popularly been known as a modern writer and therefore his work essentially characterizes his thought towards paradox and ambiguity. His thinking and writing are largely conversant by contradiction and vagueness which should not be interpreted as ‘ideological fierce-sitting’. Instead, it should be seen as ‘an uncompromising commitment to the actual complexities of human experience.”

The description of the Nellie river in Africa as compared to the Thame river creates vivid Gothic imagery. The brightness of the Thames describes the optimistic outlook of the Europeans however, the Nellie river has been shown as a gateway to darkness as this was the only way to connect to Africa. The Gothicism lies in the fact that although the physical description of the river is dark and sullen however it does entice the British to invade this darkness in the deep desire to conquer Africa.

An example of a Gothic setting is the Central Station in the Congo. It was meant to be a symbolic representation of imperial power. “It was on a back water surrounded by scrub and forest, with a pretty border of smelly mud on one side, and on the three others enclosed by a crazy fence of rushes.” The station is tiny and diminutive which is compared to the raw force of the forest. The settings in the plot highlight the stiffness and awkwardness between the agenda of imperialist British and the natural authority of the land that the imperials are trying to conquer.

In a Gothic setting, it is not necessary to have gothic arches or crypts to manipulate the readers to have the desired impact. Instead, such settings exemplify humanity’s efforts to sustain the illusion of regulating savage forces extrinsic to them and impose a sense of futility on the reader. Marlow and the British company are over-ambitious and consider Africa to provide them an opportunity to progress and conquer it by thinking that they can withstand the wild force of the jungle. Thus, the setting of Heart of Darkness has conditioned the readers to experience the rigidity of Gothicism that Marlow awaits as his impending doom.

Symbols expressing Gothicism

Joseph Conrad strongly professed the fact that every great piece of literature is essentially symbolic. In this story, he has used the symbol of the African continent to present the superficiality of the British people and the ghastly truth of colonialism on both, white and black people. Needless to mention that whenever there is a discussion of post-colonialism, the exotic and darkness of Africa are always there. Since this is a seminal novel of colonialism, the stereotype of Africa is constructed using savage, horrid, and uncivilized people of Africa as gothic elements. Thus, we can define symbolism as, “an object, a person, a situation, an action, or some other element that has a literal meaning in the story but that suggests or represents other meaning.” In this story, the symbols are used to portray Gothicism by reacting against the materialistic and rationalist domination of Western European culture against Africa.

The foremost Gothic symbol is the character of Kurtz. He is a representative of European values which are brutal and agonizing towards others. He is synonymous with the greed and commercial mentality of the British people. His eloquent persuasive and demeanor physique greatly influence the Africans but more than his primitive barbaric facet was visible when he controlled the blacks and whites equally. He manages to create an overwhelming atmosphere of threat and brooding terror which scared the local blacks.

Symbolism can be defined as ‘The symbolic use of objects and actions. A literary’ symbol’ is something that means more than what suggests on the surface. It may be an object, a person, a situation, an action, or some other element that has a literal meaning in the story but that suggests or represents other meaning as well.” It can also signify ideas and abilities by to enunciate a plot by giving figurative meanings that are different from the literal sense. In the 19th century, the contradictory theories in science and culture lead to the loss of unity for purpose and direction in European society. Rationality was overtaking and questioning the faith of the people. A new exemplary view of man and human civilization thought of as materialistic determinism is observed in the case of Marlow who questions the ethicality of Kurtz and criticized the materialistic society. Conrad’s belief is that great work is symbolic.

The very title, “Heart of Darkness “ is symbolic of Gothicism as it is a journey to hell while Marlow’s mind is adventurous in nature and aspires to see and discover an unseen part of the world. The name Kurtz a resemblance to the archetypal “evil genius” and a highly gifted individual whose charisma and eloquence leads him to great heights in the dark continent. His character portrays the depravity of human nature and the ability to conquer and control the human heart. However, “The horror! The horror!” said by him towards the climax indicates him to be the dark side of mankind. Kurtz’s illegitimate relationship with a black woman is also a symbol of illusion created to intensify the morbid atmosphere. The representation of ‘Darkness’ has a multitude of interpretations- it presents reality, human nature, and corruption in unsurmountable conditions. When used by Marlow, it represents how the dark continent of Congo affects British people both morally and ethically. It also propounds on the tyrannical intent and symbolizes the greed and commercial bent of mind of the British. It also brings out the hunger of white people for power and possession. Marlow’s description of his African crew members is also full of dark descriptions, “big powerful men, with not much capacity to weigh the consequences,” which pin down Marlow’s hideous perception of Africans to be irrational, savage, uncivilized, and prehistoric man.

Kurtz symbolizes the darker side of mankind. The smuggling of ivory by Kurtz turns out to be the darkest evidence of Gothicism which changes him into a barbaric and tyrannical person. His company with the Africans makes him ruthless and aggressively greedy. A painting in Kurtz’s room, ‘I rose. Then noticed a small sketch of oils, on a panel, representing a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. The background was somber- almost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was sinister.’ This depicts why there is a specific role for the women in the story as it might have been an idealistic addition to lessen the Gothicism in the story. It also talks about the fantasy role they play and might have brought light to the story as it is depicted in the painting. The blind-fold presents the ‘blindness’ of the Europeans as they have a superficial understanding of the Africans while the torch shows the way in which Europeans are trying to intervene in the rustic and simple life to bring better and new opportunities for the Africans with a more hideous intention of ruling them. Thus, we may say that this painting is also an extensive symbol of dark

The literary term Gothic incorporates a number of sub-genres under it. Gothic Film forms one of the significant genres. Heidi Kaye in Gothic Film writes “ Gothic, as a genre born in darkness, has a natural affinity with the cinema’1. A film as a visual medium serves as a great spectacle for the audience to depict an atmosphere of suspense and mystery and tantalize the audience. However, Gothic films also include various sub-genres. Terror fiction largely speaks of thrillers as one of the major components of it. The intensity of terror fiction varies in different aspects such as crime, intimidation, villainy, suspense, and mystery. Psychological thrillers do contain within it certain Gothic modes. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho is considered one of the major psychothrillers in American cinema. Films Hitchcock depicts the terror of everyday life and the visual representation includes Gothic imagery. Psycho is a film based on a novel of the same name by Robert Bloch.

The film immediately poses a sense of mystery and suspense to its audience. The setting of the film is intensely Gothic in nature. Hitchcock’s brilliant use of cinematic techniques and use of music heightens the Gothic atmosphere of the film furthermore. However, the central protagonist of the film Norman Bates proves to be the most fascinating character of all. The whole plot of the movie revolves around him. Norman Bates has an air of mystery attached to him from the beginning of the movie and his strange disposition and behavior disrupt normalcy. The concept of a Gothic Hero- Villain can be explored through this character. The concept of Villain- Hero is associated with “ a satanic figure who personified dark unconscious drives toward cruelty and revenge”2. Norman comes across as just an everyday man being an owner of a motel called Bates Motel. The Gothic undertones of the film become clearly striking with the isolated position of the motel itself. The character of Norman Bates finds its fullest representation through the character of Marion Crane who becomes central to the film’s plot structure. Norman’s mother’s disapproval of bringing a woman to the motel is heard from the background in the film. The mysterious atmosphere of the film is enhanced by such techniques. Also, Marion is startled by the peculiarity of Norman’s office parlor where she is nonplussed by the birds Norman has stuffed in pursuit of his hobby, taxidermy. The Gothic setting of the film enhances the unfamiliar personality of the protagonist of the film. One of the primary characteristics of a Villain- Hero is his aloofness and his secretive disposition. The secluded location of the motel and the immediate surroundings of the motel makes Norman a character who is different from others. Marion’s initial conversation with Norman instills an aura of suspicion in her. Her suspicion becomes more evident when she inquires Norman about his social life and he replies “ a boy’s best friend is his mother”. The darkness of his character is accentuated by such a response and Marion also encounters a sense of uncanniness in him. Sigmund Freud in his 1919 essay Das Unheimliche explained the concept of uncanny as “ strangeness in the ordinary”.3 The movie takes unexpected turns from this point and the protagonist is shown in a completely different light. Norman discloses to Marion the cause of his mother’s illness and how she is entrapped in her own web. However, he never wishes to abandon her and his strange obsession with his mother provides a glimpse into his complex psyche. Marion’s world is the contemporary American everyday life whereas Norman’s world is its nocturnal reverse. The concept of Possession can be explored here as Norman’s psychological makeup is completely engulfed by his mother. In the Encyclopedia of Gothic Literature the concept of possession is defined as “Possession by evil spirits results in mental and emotional stress, bizarre personality traits, ecstatic trances and aberrant behavior”4. Norman’s conduct toward Marion is extremely surreptitious and arouses the Gothic tension of the film. One characteristic feature of a Gothic Villain is his secret about birth or upbringing. Although Marion shares a brief conversation with Norman, she starts to ponder the very unusual relationship of Norman with his mother. Norman becomes a victim of” Domestic Gothic” where everyday matters of life are magnified to unimaginable proportions.5 The simple, basic shelter for people somewhat becomes a sight of terror and the presence of a character like Norman with his unusual traits creates an atmosphere of intense terror. Norman thus resembles a great extent the Gothic Villain as Marion, as well as the audience, are not completely aware of his background and his very reserved nature arises various questions. He is one central character of the film who is not entirely revealed till the very end of the film narrative and he remains enclosed in his own internal world which is an unfamiliar one.

The villainous nature of the hero of the film is exposed in one of the most iconic scenes in the history of cinema. The whole design of the office parlor of Norman exhibits the typical Gothic setting and the secret peephole of the wall symbolizes Norman’s complex psyche and his secretive nature as he provides only a brief description of himself which arouses enough curiosity. Norman’s act of looking through the peephole of the undressing Marion can be termed voyeurism or Scopophilia. Scopophilia is the act of looking at someone to derive sexual pleasure. Norman as the hero of the film violates the moral side of his character as he engages himself in an immoral act and through this, his villainous self emerges. The Shower Scene of Psycho is Hitchcock’s greatest cinematic achievement and this scene proves to be the turning point of the film. Marion is killed mercilessly during her shower by Norman’s mother, a shadowy figure who stealthily steps into the bathroom of the dead’s hotel room. Norman becoming aware of his mother’s act immediately disposes of the corpse of Marion. He was so possessed by his mother that he chose to ignore the criminal act committed by his mother instead he wanted to protect his mother from any kind of external evil. Norman’s individuality is repressed by his domineering mother. The abode of Norman’s mother, the three-storied isolated building, the Gothic castle becomes a place of family secrets and transgressive desires. The presence of Norman and the absent figure of his mother intensifies the mysterious nature of his character that makes him appealing to the audience. Marion also initially gets attracted to the charming personality of the proprietor of the motel in spite of his dark, secretive side. In The Byronic Hero Types and Prototypes, the Gothic Villain is described as “In appearance, the Gothic Villain is always striking and frequently handsome. Of about middle age or somewhat younger, he has a tall, manly, stalwart physique with dark hair and brows frequently set off by a pale and ascetic complexion”.6 Hitchcock’s selection of the hero was appropriate as Anthony Perkins the actor who played the role of Norman Bates resemble the physical attributes of a Gothic Villain.

The suspense and mystery of the character of Norman as well as the film continue as an investigation procedure is conducted by Marion’s sister Lila in search of her suddenly disappeared sister. She appoints a private investigator named Arbogast for this purpose. Arbogast’s initial encounter also throws a mysterious light upon the character of Norman. He again behaves in an unusual manner and completely remains tight-lipped about Marion’s stay in his motel. He refuses to share any kind of information about Marion with the investigator. Once again the mysterious, dark, gloomy side of Norman’s characteristic trait comes to the forefront. However, soon his lie is detected by Arbogast and Norman admits that Marion was present in his motel. Things again take an unexpected turn when Arbogast wishes to interrogate Norman’s mother, the very coveted possession of Norman. The mother-son relationship has a strangeness attached to it and it speaks of the incestuous love of a son for his mother. Incest love is one of the major characteristics of a Gothic Villain- Hero. Arbogast’s death arouses and enhances the mysterious atmosphere as on his way to meet the mystical figure of the mother, he is stabbed to death by a woman. This woman is nonetheless the mother of Norman Bates. His corpse is also secretly discarded. The character of Norman becomes more and more suspicious as he is participating in these immoral criminal acts by keeping them a secret. The secretive aspect of Norman’s character is once again highlighted through his mysterious deeds. Arbogast’s sudden disappearance baffles Lila and she steps forward to find her sister. At this point in the film, the truth about Norman’s mother is revealed. Lila in her desperate search for her sister grows impatient and engages in an inquiry with the local Deputy Sheriff All Chambers. The Sheriff describes Norman as a fellow who lives like a hermit. Once again, the association of Norman with a hermit establishes his strong connection with Gothic Villain – Hero who is known for his isolation and aloofness from society. The deputy then reveals that Norman’s mother died ten years ago and is buried in Greenlawn Cemetery. Mrs. Bates murdered her own lover upon finding the ugly truth about him and after that, she herself committed suicide. This hidden information heightens the Gothic undertone of the film. Also, the fact that Norman kept a secret about the truth about his mother again focuses on his villainous nature. Lila also encounters a highly mysterious Norman and the latter’s seemingly unusual behavior creates terror in her as well. All the while in the film Norman’s mother is presented only through her screams and in Norman’s conversation with other characters. Her physical absence raises curiosity of Lila and she steps into that Gothic castle to enquire about her deceased sister. Lila has a thrilling experience inside the castle and the description of Mrs. Bate’s immaculate bedroom and a bed that bears the imprint of her body creates a sensation around the surroundings of the house.

Norman’s eccentric behavior is highlighted once again when he decides to alter the location of her mother from the second floor of the house. Even with the old lady’s vehement protest, he carries his mother to the dark place of the basement fruit cellar. The audience gets completely disoriented and equally imbalanced because just after the Sheriff’s comment about the death of Mrs. Bates, Norman engages in a heated argument and carries the frail figure of the old lady to the fruit cellar. Lila’s decision to step into the darkness of the seller symbolically represents going deeper into the hidden psyche of Norman’s mindscape. She finally meets the silent, lifeless figure of Mrs. Bates. The climactic scene of the film reaches its zenith when Lila as well as the audience finally gets an opportunity the very mysterious figure of Mrs. Bates. But with Hitchcock’s famous twists on his films, an extremely unusual thing occurs. Hitchcock’s techniques voyeuristically implicate the audience with the universal, dark evil forces and secrets present in the film. Lila discovers Norman’s perverted and terrible secret and she penetrated into his deadly world where she has found his mother, Mrs. Bates – a stuffed, dried up, shrunken, and withered mummy’s skeleton with empty eye sockets and a wide toothy grin. Lila is completely taken aback by this unexpected shock and as she suffers from a traumatic experience a grey-haired woman or the Mother steps forward to strike her to death. In this final dramatic scene of the film, Norman is metamorphosized and revealed as his mother when his drag disguises are stripped away and ripped off. The Norman self completely dies and his Mother self is brought to life. Gothic focuses on the innate relationship between family and home as an unfamiliar space for repressed desires and Norman’s revelation of identity and his self highlights the deep, dark, complex psyche of his character.

Norman had an incestuous possessive and jealous love for his mother and it is Norman himself who poisoned both her and her lover. This is the secret guilt of Norman Bates that perturbs his own psyche and he violates the social norm by committing an Oedipal murder thus he can be associated with the Gothic Villain- Hero. Unable to bear the intolerable guilt of matricide and to obliterate it from his consciousness and conscience Norman developed a split personality. In “Ghost Story” Julia Briggs writes. “ The source of terror may intrude into the familiar in the form of the past and the dead or the untamed world of nature or from the human mind, as dreams do ( Banquo’s “ cursed thoughts which nature gives way to in repose”), or it may come from the rational world itself in the form of a scientific aberration; it may even come from such characteristically human ambitions and activities as war, oppression and persecution, which the twentieth century made peculiarly it’s own.”7 In the case of Norman his dead mother possessed his psyche and became the Other half of his self and thus Norman becomes an enigmatic character who depicts an air of terror and suspense through his personality. Matricide, one of the most sinister acts committed by a son becomes unbearable to Norman and so as to erase his guilt he stole her corpse and formed an imaginary mother in his own mind. He used his taxidermist skills to preserve and stuff her corpse and keep her alive. Norman has a greater degree of psychological and emotional complexity that makes him not a traditional hero but rather a Villain – Hero.

In his diseased imagination, he fantasized that he was his mother and that his mother was jealous as he was of her. Whenever he was attracted to a young woman, Norman would completely become his mother and be pathologically mad. The very beginning of the film portrays the domineering presence of his mother in his life which was nothing but a part of his own self. Norman and his imagined “mother” argued over his cheap erotic dinner invitation for Marion. The film’s voyeur theme is reinforced by the idea of Norman’s mother peeking into her son’s life. Norman himself developed a strong hatred for women which was caused by his own mother’s betrayal and his misogynistic traits were executed through his mother’s side. In the chapter “Gothic Villain” Peter Thorslev writes “ It should be noted, moreover, that they are misogynists all. They take great delight in persecuting women…”8 Norman here can be compared to the character of Montoni from The Mysteries of Udolpho who tormented his own wife to death. Norman’s mother’s side escalated to full reality whenever he had proximity to other women and would stab the females he was attracted to and commit horribly violent crimes. It was only after the murders that he would awaken to his senses and be horrified by his mother’s criminal acts. The nefarious deeds that Norman committed were not committed by himself in reality rather it was done by his imagined mother. The Norman self was entirely unaware of the hideous sins committed repeatedly by himself actually in reality. The Other self – the Mother part of himself possessed him to such an extent that it made him commit the gruesome murders without his own realization. His Mother- self contributed to the creation of this villainous Norman who can be called a Gothic Hero- Villain. Norman lost his own sanity when he killed his own mother and could never get rid of that guilt. The intolerable guilt of the horrific act possessed his psyche and he developed a split personality in himself. He dwelt in a realm of two personas simultaneously and all his misdeeds were the outcome of his Mother self and not his own.

In this context, Norman’s character can be analyzed through the character of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Kurtz in the novel is essentially an ideal man who exhibited great strength and abilities and greatness of character. However, Kurtz’s civilized inner self is completely possessed by the regressive movements of corruption. Kurtz viewed the natives of the Congo far more than just as mere instruments to be used for the purpose of work. Kurtz used their humanity to advance his own self. In this process, Kurtz’s corrupt persona became more and more to be his own true self, and eventually, he lost his own identity. Norman Bates too allowed his dominant Mother personality to occupy his own self to such an extent that he departed from his own self. Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter wrote – “ No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true”.9 Mr. Kurtz demonstrated an internal battle of good and evil within himself and from an essentially good man he transforms into a threat to the natives who witnessed the demonic side of his character. He thus becomes a unique combination of dread and fascination, that establishes him as the Gothic Hero- Villain. Norman wore a façade in society and presented his customers with an imagined story of him and his mother. People who visited him only came across a personality of good and moral disposition who loved and protected his mother. But unknowingly he let his mother persona commit the unacceptable criminal acts and thus he violated the social norms. Although he came across as a responsible son of an old mother to Marion, his atrocious nature was soon revealed which was nothing but an outcome of his Other self. His unusual hobby of taxidermy, and his style of living like a hermit – all these elements arouse curiosity and add to his charming yet secretive character. But from his general appearance he seemed to possess an air of mystery and suspense in him and he also thus becomes a distinct combination of dread and fascination, the very unique characteristic feature of a Gothic Villain- Hero. In Norman, too the aspects of good and evil get twisted and transformed and the audience only witnesses the disjointed part of his psyche. Norman thus demonstrates an uncanny presence as he is neither himself completely nor his mother entirely. Norman would act out the “mother” side of his split personality donning her clothes to keep his illusion of her being alive. Following the disclosure of Norman’s crime, his weakened self-identity had been so completely absorbed and possessed by the “mother” side of his split personality that his male Norman side no longer existed. The moment these two personalities intermingled, he became his dominant mother’s final victim, just as Kurtz also became a victim of his anarchic powers. Since the ‘other’ overpowers Norman he emerges as an uncanny presence as his familiarity seems unfamiliar and peculiar.

In the Encyclopedia of Gothic Literature the term Villain is defined as “ A third sub-type, the satanic hero, is the hero-villain who intrigues and ameliorates villainy by a twisted equivocation of vice “10. The question of moral ambivalence is very much prevalent in the character of Norman Bates. In his very first encounter with Marion, it was evident that he was being a polite and respectful man toward a woman. He offered her food and even after a heated argumentation with his mother, he had an elaborate dinner and conversation with Marion. He had all the qualities of a true gentleman and likewise, he conducted himself. However, the moment he started getting attracted to her, his ‘mother’ self began to interfere with his own self. In his conversation with Marion, he established to her the strong love and bonding he shared with his mother. But he was never all Norman but he was often his ‘mother’. His pathological jealousy towards his mother resulted in his assumption that his mother was also jealous of him. Therefore, if he felt strong admiration for any other woman, his ‘mother’ side completely turned hostile and violent and influenced him to commit the heinous crimes. It was not Norman, but his jealous ‘mother killed Marion. After the murder, Norman seemed to be awakened from a deep sleep, and being a dutiful son to his affectionate mother, he covered up all the traces of the crime as he was convinced that his mother had committed the act. Therefore, in the character of Norman, a constant battle between virtue and vice is present. On the one hand, he is a responsible son and on the other, he is committing all the sins being completely unaware of it. Norman was so guilty after actually killing his mother, that he could not ever get out of his guilt as he realized the graveness and the severity of his harrowing and monstrous acts.

Gothic films can be analyzed in terms of psychological interpretation. Norman has been considered one of the most iconic characters of American cinema. He was not a conventional hero, but his villainy was also not his own. All the dreadful acts were not directly done by him but rather by his imagined other- the jealous ‘mother’. In the chapter Psychoanalytical Approaches from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho_ A Casebook, the dual personality of Norman is represented through a psychological perspective- “ Norman is unable to leave the Imaginary, the world of his mother. Norman is always half, half mother, half Norman, a bisexual who has left both the Real and the Symbolic realm behind, folded in on himself, and become psychotic”. 11 Norman did everything to keep the illusion of his mother being alive. But when danger or desire threatened that illusion he adorned himself in the dress of his mother. He not only acquired a physical appearance resembling his mother, but he moved like his mother, sat by the window like her, and also spoke in her voice. In his trial of becoming his mother, he became his mother completely. His mind housed two personalities that had a continuous battle, a conflict. Eventually, in Norman’s case, the battle gets over as his dominant ‘mother self ‘wins it. This is the fascinating yet appalling personality of Norman, who violates the social codes by killing his own mother as well as other women, but in reality, it is his other half who influences him to commit these ghastly deeds. He developed multiple personality disorders and assumed the personality of his mother to repress the awareness of her death and to escape the guilt of murdering her. The other self of Norman can be again compared to the theme of a doppelganger which forms one of the major aspects of the Gothic. “ A mirroring or duality of a character’s persona, the concept of the doppelganger refers to the twin, shadow double, demon double and split personality, all common characterization in world folklore”.12 Hitchcock effectively used this technique of doppelganger to portray one of the most notables villains of all time. Through this doppelganger motif, Norman’s possessed psyche by his mother is presented to the audience which creates a sense of mystery and suspense about the persona of Norman himself. Norman’s villainy is only exercised by his mother’s side who in reality is a simple man possessing immense love and protection for his mother. However, his love for his mother has been recognized as an incestuous one, and thus he perfectly falls under the category of a Villain- Hero. The duality of the human mind is best portrayed in the Gothic novel Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde where the author focused his attention on crime, villainy, and moral ambiguity. The two characters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde seemed to be conflicting inner psyche of every human being. Dr. Jekyll is the curious scientist and Mr. Hyde is his foil and double. The name of Mr. Hyde is extremely interesting as it suggests the act of hiding, who hides the monstrous deeds. Jekyll undertook his scientific experiments in an attempt to purify his good side from the evil side of his nature and vice-versa, but eventually, he separates only the bad side alone and he lost his former self. In Norman’s story too, it was his attempt to reduce the burden of matricide, and in this process, he lost himself and his own identity and became absolutely engulfed by his mother’s personality. Just as Hyde dominates the persona of Jekyll, the mother part also dominated Norman. At the end of the film, the audience witness that only the mother remains, and the persona of Norman completely ceases to exist, similar to that of Dr. Jekyll. The dominance of Norman’s mother was initially dormant in nature, however, it became an external force that dictated their whole life of Norman. The final scene of the film exposes how Norman was lost in his own web of imagination. As he sits inside the prison cell, he is offered a blanket by the policeman and his huddled-up position into the blanket resembles his isolation from society and from the world, and his caught up, complex psyche by his mother. Norman’s world not only physically consisted of his mother after his father passed away, but his psychological makeup was also constructed by his mother. Even in the very last minutes of the film, the audience witnesses that the voice of the ‘Mother’ speaks in Norman’s head and condemns her son for his crimes. His mother never admits her horrifying acts and considers herself harmless. The mother side wishes to protect the image of her son and negates to brand her son as a killer.