WHAT IS "GOTHIC"? (PART 1)

The most enduring of all genre fiction is what is known today as the gothic novel. We've heard of the early classics such "The Castle of Otranto" (1764/1765) and "The Mysteries of Udolpho" (1794), as well as later gothic romances by authors such as Charlotte Brontë,  Daphne du Maurier, Phyllis A. Whitney, Joan Aiken and even Anne Rice. The "Dark Shadows" paperback books by Marilyn Ross (aka William Edward Daniel Ross) are considered gothic novels. Besides the authors of the classic era, other men such as Patrick McGrath and Michael McDowell, who wrote in the southern gothic sub-genre, have also contributed to the tradition.

Edgar Allan Poe can be generally considered the father of the gothic horror story (as well as the detective story), but many authors have before and since dipped their quill pens in the black ink of that dark sub-genre.

But what is it exactly that constitutes a gothic novel? This weekend we'll delve into that which is a kind of mystery in itself with several essays on the matter, from the historical predecessors to the modern-day gothic romance.

THE FEAR AND FASCINATION OF GOTHIC FICTION

'[W]hat makes a story “gothic”, and why are we still fascinated by it hundreds of years after its inception?'

By Joe Hart | September 9, 2025 | CrimeReads.com

There was this book my mom brought home when I was maybe eleven or twelve. No idea where she got it. A rummage sale or bargain bin at a thrift store? Doesn’t matter. It was a little book, that’s the first thing I noticed. Smaller almost by half than a typical paperback. The title was Edgar Allan Poe: Tales of Mystery and Terror. The cover was illustrated as was the interior as I soon found out, but that cover—

Wowsa.

Picture a stone mansion, stately but decaying, tall windows, a soaring chimney, ornate ironwork decorating its rooflines. But amidst all this your attention is drawn to a massive fracture running from peak to foundation. A blood red sun is setting behind the building and it’s seeping through that split in the house like a mortal wound.

The image was so striking I can still see it some thirty years later.

What my young eyes feasted on inside was formative in a way I didn’t understand at the time. I devoured The Tell-Tale Heart and The Fall of House Usher (which I believe was the inspiration for the cover), along with The Gold Bug, and “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MONTRESOR!”—The Cask of Amontillado. The book dripped with gothic imagery, disturbing themes, and a creeping sense of dread which never really left me.

Historically the genre has been around since the late 18th century. Common elements run the gambit from psychological illness to crumbling architecture to the supernatural and encompass names we all know like Shelley, Wilde, Poe, Jackson, and King.

But what makes a story “gothic”, and why are we still fascinated by it hundreds of years after its inception?

Firstly, I’d argue it has a lot to do with it being one of the oldest forms of horror outside of folklore and religion. The expression and examination of what makes us afraid can be found in the isolation of the rotting house upon the hill—the one that’s supposedly haunted. Or in the distrust of the strange old man who lives alone at the edge of the village and seems to know much, much more than he should. Or in our very own vengeful hearts as our familial enemy is sealed into a dungeon alcove alive, brick by inevitable brick.  The gothic provides a playground for authors to explore all structure and facet of what fear is made of—the power the past has over the present and future, what might exist just outside the bounds of our senses, and what terrors we might be capable of given the right or wrong circumstances.

Personally, I can’t help but think there’s a socioeconomic factor contributing to the genre as well, either purposeful or on the subconscious level. So many times, the focus of gothic fiction involves a wealthy house or family falling to ruin while harboring a horrible secret within their legacy. Enter a desperate character who the wealthy then use as a means to their ends. For me this definitely reads as social commentary regarding exploitation of labor and the examination of class systems. The distrust of the upper class and their inherent corruption tends to permeate many of the works, which like any good fiction highlights disparities within society.

And let’s not forget the indulgence of spectacle—gothic lit as well as film brims with it by way of immense buildings, untold wealth, or larger than life characters.  There’s a scene in Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak, a modern gothic masterpiece in my opinion, when Tom Hiddleston and Mia Wasikowska’s characters arrive at Allerdale Hall (Hiddleston’s ancestral mansion). When they step inside, the grandeur of the space is only slightly overshadowed by the decay it’s befallen—the roof, several stories overhead, has rotted away and leaves and snow drift elegantly through the hole, cluttering the grand entrance. This image carries plenty of weight by highlighting not only the former splendor of the hall but also foreshadows the decay within the character’s morality as well. Spectacle is also enchanting in its own right. Even though a character may know there is danger within the lavish setting and eccentric people they meet, they are intoxicated by them as well.

But for me, the most prominent feature that comes to mind when thinking of gothic lit is the unknown. Mystery is the allure that draws the wary character toward the crumbling mansion just as it draws us in as well. Within the mystery lies possibility, both good and very, very bad. For Mira Caine, the main character in my novel Wyndclyffe, the offer of a better life for her and her intellectually disabled younger brother is what brings her to the isolated Wyndclyffe estate situated on an island in the St. Lawrence River. But the mystery of the tragedies that have taken place there is what drives the story. What is the strange circle of stones out in the woods and what is it used for? What do the unsettling entries in the ancient journal Mira stumbles onto mean? Why do the mansion and its grounds feel eerily familiar to her? And what is the unspeakable secret at the heart of Wyndclyffe? Mystery triggers our need to know and keeps us running full-tilt into the dark even when we know we should slow down, and good gothic literature tends to have all the hallmarks of the unknown which keeps the pages turning.

I think to answer the question; the genre’s fascination lies in its multifaceted nature. Gothic fiction is horrific. It is beautiful. It evokes awe and revulsion alike. For centuries it’s been steeped in isolation, fading grandeur, social commentary, desperation, terrifying secrets, mental illness, ghosts, echoes of the past, as well as mystery—all of it coursing through the genre like an eerie red sunset shining through the fracture of a decaying mansion.

***

Joe Hart was born and raised in northern Minnesota. Having dedicated himself to writing horror and thriller fiction since the age of nine, he is now the author of eleven novels that include The River Is Dark, Lineage, and The Last Girl. When not writing, he enjoys reading, exercising, exploring the great outdoors, and watching movies with his family.

http://www.joehartbooks.com

Unsettling Dark Pleasures: A short history of Gothic fiction

by David Stuart Davies

Part One: The Sparks Burst into Life

The Gothic novel, which became the vogue in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, contains a rich mixture of tragedy and romance, tinged with horror enacted in or around some form of a medieval or ‘Gothick’ architecture – a ruined castle, a deserted abbey and similar crumbling edifices. The novels feature murky tales of revenge, torture, ancient villainies punished and young sensitive love rewarded usually by supernatural or supposed supernatural means. These tales took the reader into the land of dark dreams and racy scenarios presenting possibilities that the standard novel failed to capture, providing delicious and tantalising forbidden delights. The Gothic novel was not about real life. Its rich, sensual hallucinatory qualities gave the reader an illicit thrill which still remains as potent and rewarding today.

The creators of these tales wanted to reshape the standard notion of literature from the smooth classical structure of the formal novel into a darker, older and more artificial style and as such Gothic literature is intimately associated with the revival of interest in Gothic architecture during the same era. Similar to the gothic revivalists’ rejection of the clarity and rationalism of buildings in the neoclassical style – all smooth clinical lines and regulated forms –  the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fear, dark unpredictability, awe inherent in the recherché and a quest for atmosphere. The ruins of gothic buildings gave rise to multiple linked emotions by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations.  It was a fascination with this form of architecture that inspired the first wave of gothic novelists.

However, like the majority of so-called movements, whether in art or literature, there was no conscious decision by a group of writers to form themselves into a collective with a clear manifesto or to create fiction in a particular style. The genre was defined retrospectively and it developed through a kind of artistic osmosis.

The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole (1717 – 97) is often regarded as the first true Gothic romance. Walpole was obsessed with medieval Gothic architecture and built his own house in that fashion. Externally his property at Strawberry Hill in Richmond near London seemed to be a blend of two predominant styles: a style based on castles with turrets and battlements, and a style based on Gothic cathedrals with arched windows and stained glass. It was Walpole’s intention to create ‘a little Gothic castle.’

In Otranto, Walpole’s declared aim was to combine elements of the medieval romance, which he deemed too fanciful, and the modern novel, which he considered to be too confined to strict realism. The basic plot created other elements which became gothic staples, including a threatening mystery and an ancestral curse, as well as countless trappings such as hidden passages and oft-fainting heroines. Sir Walter Scott called it the ‘happy combination of supernatural agency with human interest.’

William Beckford’s (1759 – 1786) Vathek (1786), a strange concoction subtitled ‘An Arabian Tale’, tapped into the dark weirdness of Otranto and included sorcery, the sacrifice of children, a man who sells his soul to the devil, subterranean ruins and eternal damnation.

The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Ann Radcliffe (1764 – 1823) is a powerful tale with the key elements of the Gothic: a heroine in peril, a sinister count and a creepy castle.

The Monk by Matthew Lewis (1771 – 1818), published two years after Udolpho, continued to develop the dark themes of the emerging gothic oeuvre but the novel was condemned as being lewd with elements of the pornographic and the satanic. Even today, the depiction of the gradual corruption of a monk, the rape of a virgin by a representative of religion, who later discovers he has committed incest, matricide and made a bargain with the Devil, can seem rather sordid. However, this darkness was embraced by the growing audience for the gothic.

The Monk influenced Ann Radcliffe in her last novel, The Italian (1797). In this book, the hapless protagonists are ensnared in a web of deceit by a malignant monk called Schedoni and eventually dragged before the tribunals of the Inquisition in Rome, leading one contemporary to remark that if Radcliffe wished to transcend the horror of these scenes, she would have to visit hell itself.

With the arrival of the 19th century, the gothic genre was well established. Even the fledgling author Jane Austen tried her hand at penning such a dark romance with Northanger Abbey (published in 1817 but written 1798/99).

Further contributions to the Gothic genre were provided in the work of the Romantic poets. Prominent examples include Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel as well as  ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ (1819) and ‘Isabella, or the Pot of Basil’ (1820) which feature mysteriously fey ladies. In the latter poem, the names of the characters, the dream visions and the macabre physical details are influenced by the novels of Ann Radcliffe. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s first published work was the Gothic novel Zastrozzi (1810), about an outlaw obsessed with revenge against his father and half-brother. Shelley published a second Gothic novel in 1811, St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian, about an alchemist who seeks to impart the secret of immortality.

The poetry, romantic adventures, and character of Lord Byron – characterised by his spurned lover Lady Caroline Lamb as ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ – were another inspiration for the Gothic, providing the archetype of the Byronic hero. Byron features, under the pseudonym of ‘Lord Ruthven, in Lady Caroline’s own Gothic novel: Glenarvon (1816). Byron was also the host of the celebrated ghost-story competition involving himself, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, and John William Polidori at the Villa Diodati on the banks of Lake Geneva in the summer of 1816. This occasion was productive for both Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819), both influenced by the Gothic tradition. The Vampyre has been accounted by cultural critic Christopher Frayling as one of the most influential works of fiction ever written and spawned a craze for vampire fiction.

Part Two: The Victorian Era & Beyond

During the Victorian era, the Gothic influence was at its most pervasive. In many ways, it was now entering its most creative phase in the sense that it grew more fanciful and horrific.  One of the great interpreters of the genre was Edgar Allan Poe (1809 -1849) who took the basic elements of the form and fashioned them in his own style. Poe focused less on the traditional ingredients of gothic stories and more on the psychology of his characters, who often descended into madness. There were still old decaying houses and barren landscapes, but it was the tortured souls who inhabited these environments that interested Poe. He believed that terror was a legitimate literary subject. His story The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) explores these ‘terrors of the soul’ while revisiting classic Gothic tropes of aristocratic decay, death, and madness. The legendary villainy of the Spanish Inquisition which was explored in The Pit and the Pendulum (1842) was based on a true account of a survivor. The influence of Ann Radcliffe can be detected in Poe’s ‘The Oval Portrait’ (1842), which also includes an honorary mention of her name in the text of the story.

The influence of Byronic Romanticism evident in Poe is also apparent in the work of the Brontë sisters. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) transports the Gothic to the bleak and alien Yorkshire Moors and features ghostly apparitions and a dark, cruel Byronic hero in the person of the demonic Heathcliff. The Brontës’ fiction is seen by some feminist critics as a prime example of Female Gothic, exploring woman’s entrapment within the domestic space along with the subjection to patriarchal authority and the desperate and dangerous attempts to escape from such restrictions. Emily’s Cathy and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre are both examples of female protagonists in such a role.

The gloomy villain, forbidding mansion, and persecuted heroine of Sheridan Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas (1864) shows the direct influence of both Walpole’s Otranto and Radcliffe’s Udolpho. Although it is not a supernatural tale it cleverly engages the trappings of such to weave a cunning narrative which features an early example of the locked room mystery. Le Fanu’s short story collection In a Glass Darkly (1872) includes the influential vampire tale Carmilla, which provided fresh blood for that particular strand of the Gothic and influenced Bram Stoker’s vampire tale Dracula (1897) which in turn was the progenitor of a rich sub-genre of vampiric fiction.  Stoker set up the rules, as it were, for the vampire genre which have been followed and sometimes dramatically broken by many writers since.

Stoker’s novel was also part of a new chapter in the Gothic story which placed emphasis on the supernatural and the unexplained.  Classic works in this late Victorian period included Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), George du Maurier’s Trilby (1894), Richard Marsh’s The Beetle: A Mystery (1897),  The Turn of the Screw (1898), and the stories of Arthur Machen. In America, at the end of the 19th century, two notable writers in the Gothic tradition emerged. These were, were Ambrose Bierce and Robert W. Chambers. Bierce’s short stories were in the horrific and pessimistic tradition of Poe, while Chambers trod the same decadent path as Wilde and Machen, to the extent of his inclusion of a character named ‘Wilde’ in his most famous and influential novel The King in Yellow (1895).

In the Twentieth Century, new writers came along altering the Gothic form somewhat in order to focus more on horror and the supernatural. Vengeful ghosts, vampires, werewolves and their unholy associates were the new Gothic stars. Important English twentieth-century writers in this Gothic tradition include Algernon Blackwood, William Hope Hodgson, M. R. James, and Marjorie Bowen.

The cinema also involved itself in the genre creating such silent movie classics as Nosferatu (the first cinematic version of Dracula), The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, The Cat and the Canary and other silent film fright fests in the 1920s.

In the 1930s Universal Studios carried on the tradition with superb Gothic talking picture versions of Dracula and Frankenstein (and their sequels), embellishing the originals with spooky visuals and added plot twists.  Dracula’s castle and the tower where Frankenstein experiments on creating life are wonderful pictorial realisations of the original spirit of the Gothic. Universal also brought some original material to the screen such as Edgar G. Ulmers’ The Black Cat (1934) which, with the use of shadows and implied horror, achieves a magnificent sense of Gothic menace in an ultra-modern setting.

Similarly in the 1950s & 60s, Hammer Studios in Britain brought colour to old texts in their various versions of the Gothic classics, Dracula, and Frankenstein as well as other offerings such as The Phantom of the Opera, The Gorgon and The Reptile.

Meanwhile, in the post-war period, Gothic literature took a back seat in favour of those stories which not so much chilled the blood as turned the stomach. In the 1970s visceral thrills and gore were in fashion and novels such as William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, James Herbert’s The Rats and Stephen King’s Carrie became best sellers. The explicit descriptions of horror in these novels created an appetite for more of the same. Then in the 1980s, Susan Hill wrote a ghost story, The Woman in Black, which in a sense was a Gothic pastiche but it worked brilliantly. The novel was a great success and was turned into a play and later a movie, proving that there is still an audience for such dark thrills. Slowly other writers tried their hand at the dark and subtle. Now, the subtle Gothic chiller, such as those created by such authors as Jonathan Aycliffe, Neil Gaiman, John Harwood and Sarah Pinborough, sit on the bookshelf alongside the more gory, unrestrained works of modern horror fiction.

[SOURCE: Wordsworth-editions.com]