Vokey: A Gothic Analysis

In Gothic fiction we find different kinds of women, which embody the views of society towards women in the late nineteenth-century in England and Ireland. Thus we find strong, innocent and pure women like in Stoker’s Dracula, but also dangerous and powerful ones as we can see in Le Fanu’s “Carmilla”. However, we also could talk about some novels in which the role of women has disappeared completely, as we can appreciate in Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Austen consciously burlesqued other novels intertextuality, such as Ann Radcliffe’s influential Gothic novel, The mysteries of Udolpho (1794). Austen used techniques such as comedic and satirical irony, to break the mould of the expectations of the novel genre. Austen could simply have written in the same gothic sensationalist style, or perhaps a sentimental novel, but she chose not to. Instead, she parodies and undercuts them, with subtle causticness, and ridicule.

The combination of the two previously mentioned aspects of Northanger Abbey shows that Northanger Abbey is a prime example of a parody of the traditional gothic novel. It uses traditional gothic conventions to suit its plot and make up the events in the story. The death of Mrs. Tilney, which has been mentioned earlier, is a very good example of using gothic conventions to suit the storyline of Northanger Abbey as a parody of the gothic novel. A gothic convention, a realtionship with a fatal ending, is used to govern the plot into the right direction, which is the moment that Catherine realises her gothic fantasies are not reality and should not be treated as such. In Northanger Abbey the parody of gothic conventions is created in the form of an anticliax.

The literature pieces help explore the subject of female sexuality, as time progress the amount of female sexuality increases. Women can desire, they can have aspirations, even though shown as vampires the text still suggests that they are women.   The gothic writing of Victorian era such as Dracula, Carmilla, and Christabel help

Light and Dark in Frankenstein Throughout Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the reader is torn between the forces of good and evil, as well as which characters represent which force. Perhaps the most masterful element of this novel is conveying how an individual can not be judged as wholly good or evil, and how having elements of both traits greatly forms the human experience. By using the motifs of light and dark to represent the positives and negatives of humanity, Mary Shelley is able to effectively convey character traits, depict transitions of good and evil within characters, and employ haunting symbolism and imagery into the novel and transform it into a literary masterpiece. The use of light and dark as imagery in the novel could not be

This affected his composition and actually, the English Gothic novel began with his 'Gothic story '; 'The Castle of Otranto '. Fundamentally, a Gothic novel is said to incorporate sorcery, riddle, heavenly, uncanny and tension. The interpretation of a Gothic novel contrasts from reader to reader. A Gothic work is to have a unquestionable mixing of remote setting, destroyed strongholds, dilapidated houses, mazes, cells, dull halls, cellar, moonlight, candles, winding stairs, fierce interests, inbreeding, odd fixation, and condemnations. This sort makes sentiments of agony, riddle, dread, tension since their point is to investigate humankind 's dull side and question humanity about what is great and underhandedness, address what part the powerful shows, and experience dread or fear.

It was fear that establishes the concepts of religion and faith. Angela carter suggests that “the singular moral function of the gothic is that of provoking unease”4 this unease is imputed to the gothic’s representation of the horror and terror, whether in physical form like pain, imprisonment and violent attacks, or in psychological torture like the fear of the unknown. Moreover, Sigmund Freud asserts in his essay “ The uncanny ” that the gothic novels are full of such uncanny, mysterious events which arouse the feeling of fear and astonishment. The uncanny is related to what is frightening, it coincide to affirm what thrills fear in general.5 Elizabeth MacAndrew, the famous Gothic fiction critic, defines this English genre, Gothic fiction, as a “literature of nightmare”: Among its conventions are found dream landscapes and figures of the subconscious imagination.

In the award winning article, “Passages in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein: Towards a Feminist Figure of Humanity?” Cynthia Pon addresses masculinity and feminism in terms of conventions, ideals, and practices (Pon, 33). She focused on whether Mary Shelly's work as a writer opened the way to a feminist figure of humanity like Donna Haraway argued. The article has a pre-notion that the audience has read Frankenstein and Haraway's article. Pon has a slight bias, due to her passion as a feminist writer.

James incorporates female gothic” conventions by his abstract explanation of the supernatural occurrences throughout the storyline. Punter and Byron definition of a female gothic plot is, “the

Throughout the course of the discussion, the thesis has not denied Jane Eyre’s challenging illustration of femininity. However, this novel comes to separate the female identity from sexuality which is thoroughly suppressed in the novel with the excuse of rejecting a deviant sexuality. Rebecca brings together the two concept and highlights the fact deviance is a masculine based concept. Founding the discussion on the elements employed by the female Gothic subgenre, setting, plots, and characters, this study has shown the feminine aspect that du Maurier’s work adds to provide an analysis the focus of which is the feminine sexuality and identity.

Document 8 is sourced directly from Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. She discusses the conception of her novel and says, “… for supremely frightful would be the the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.” By creating “life”, a mockery is made of a higher being, which is an occurrence that did not happen often at this time. Although her novel is a satire of the Enlightenment, which romanticism was a response to, the surface of the novel tells of the creation of a monster. Shelley, in an attempt to inform as well as entertain, wrote Frankenstein, displaying the period’s amount of imagination.