Compare and contrast the presentation and development of the gothic genre, over the past hundred or so years.

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Compare and contrast the presentation and development of the gothic genre, over the past hundred or so years

“If he be Mr Hyde … I shall be Mr Seek.” It is on this idea of searching or being obsessed with unknown or supernatural that Stevenson’s novel Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde concentrates. Obsession with knowledge, or the unknown, is illustrated quite vividly in both nineteenth and twentieth century gothic literature. Another piece of gothic literature from the nineteenth century, Frankenstein, shows an obsession again on which the novel is centred, this is “to examine the causes of life.” In the twentieth century story, The Company of Wolves, the obsession is totally opposite. It shows the passionate way in which the supernatural strives to carry out its desires, “Carnivore incarnate, only immaculate flesh appeases him.” This just goes to show how the time in which a gothic story is written affects the story itself. The main points which build up the gothic genre, such as the setting, the atmosphere, religious and sexual imagery, obsessions, victims, the supernatural, death, decay, doubling and the classic fight between good and evil, are portrayed differently according to when and where the story or novel was written. Yet even novels written a hundred years apart can have similarities. It is on these two observations that I commence my essay.

The setting of the novels is the first point I’d like to think about. The first of the nineteenth century novels, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, is set in, “a sinister block of building,” which is the abode of one of the main characters. It is a blemish upon the street that “shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood.” In the novel Frankenstein, the creation of Frankenstein’s monster takes place in, “ a solitary chamber … at the top of the house … separated from all other apartments.” The Company of Wolves however is set in, “the woods by night.” Whereas the nineteenth century gothic literature is set in urban settings this is set in, “a region of mountain and forest,” this is due to the socio-historic settings, which will be explained, in the next paragraph. And yet there is still a sense of isolation, a sense of being secluded from the rest of the world. This has been conveyed in both an urban and country setting. The nineteenth century seclusion was one of mind and spirit, whereas the twentieth century isolation is more a physical matter to do with barriers of nature.

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 My second topic is the socio-historic setting of the novels. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Frankenstein, and Tales of Mystery and Imagination were all written at a time when the British Empire was booming, and when the respectable middle-class white Christian male was the role model for society. Yet the truth was that this respectable man secretly visited prostitutes, drunk heavily and took various narcotics. In many gothic novel of this period the notion of this white supremacy is questioned. This idea of Stevenson’s that, “man is not truly one, but truly two,” is quite revolutionary, and Shelley’s idea that ...

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