Compare The Red Room, The Signalman and The Ostler.

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Introduction

A gothic story is a type of romantic fiction that existed in English Literature in the last third of the 18th century and the first two decades of the 19th century, the setting for which was usually a ruined gothic castle of Abbey. The gothic novel or gothic romance emphasised mystery and horror and was filled with ghost haunting rooms, underground passages, and secret stairways.

The stories I’m looking at are The Red Room, The Signalman and The Ostler.

The Red Room was written by Herbert George Wells in 1896. H.G.Wells was born in Bromley, Kent on September 21st 1866. Son of Joseph Wells, an unsuccessful shopkeeper and his wife Sarah Neal, a former domestic servant. He broke his hip as a result of a boyhood accident, which limited his sporting activities and so he became a great reader. He got a place as an assistant master at Midhurst Grammar School in 1883. He married his cousin Isabel in 1891 but two years later he left her for one of his students, Amy Catherine Robbins, whom he married in 1895.

1903 he joined the Fabian Society but resigned in 1908. Wells wasn’t afraid to question Victorian lifestyle and believed in greater sexual freedom for women. Wells relied on his books to make his views known. He lived through the Blitz of London but the despair engendered by the Second World War was too much and he died on August 13th 1946.    

The Signalman was written by Charles Dickens in 1866.Charles Dickens was born on February 7th 1812. Dickens weaved details gained from first-hand observations of social conditions into his novels. Dickens was no stranger to the poverty in London and other great cities in the first half of the 19th century. His father was the model of Mr Micawber in David Copperfield, whose total incapacity for financial management led him and his family to debtor’s prison. The technique was used by Dickens in his novels, and by sanitary reformers in their reports. Indeed, when Edwin Chadwick was writing his great reports on the condition of towns, he consulted the novelist on the best way of presenting his evidence. Dickens brother in law was a leading sanitary reformer, the author of a nauseating account of burial grounds, oozing with disgusting secretions. Before Dickens died on June 8th 1870, he read the report and dreamed of putrefaction – and the images recur in his novels, of blockages, decay, stickiness which makes the reader feel the texture of the city       

The Ostler was written by Wilkie Collins in 1855. Wilkie Collins was born in London on January 8th 1824. William Wilkie Collins, author of the first detective novels in English, son of a respected landscape painter, he was named after his painter godfather, David Wilkie. Educated in London, Collins studied to become a barrister, although it was never his intention to practice, and by 1848 he had turned to writing, a number of short works appearing in Charles Dickens’ periodicals, Household Words and later, All the Year Round. His first novel Iolina involving sorcery and sacrifice was rejected by publishers it was written as early as 1844 but was only discovered in 1999 were it was published for the first time. Collins exotic and gripping stories – often involving strong heroines, sinister locals, charlatans, and physical or psychological afflictions – became hugely popular with the reading public.

Unafraid to question Victorian social morals, Collins never married but maintained two families. He lived both with Caroline Graves, and with Martha Rudd. In later life, Collins became addicted to opium, and from 1870 to his death on September 23rd 1989, his novels became concerned with social issues, and are considered inferior to his earlier output.  

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Setting

The Signalman is set at a station beside a tunnel. It is written in first person, so the narrator is talking to the reader. The Signalman stays in a “manmade cutting which was extremely deep, and unusually precipitous.” “It was made through a clammy stone that became oozier and wetter as I went down.” Already the reader gets a very repellent, dank and wet, thermal and tactile images are thought of creating unpleasant impressions. “A rough zigzag descending path.” So it’s dangerous. Steep descent, leaving natural world far above. “It was as solitary and dismal a place I ...

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