Ninteenth Century horror.

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Ninteenth Century horror

Horror can be delivered through many different ways, be it through gothicism, the psychological aspect or the industrial view on horror.
Bram Stokers writing involves gothicism. He wrote many novels and short stories and amongst them was "The Squaw". I think that Stokers vivid and graphic descriptions of death add more aspects to his writing than just gothicism:
"but the stone fell right on the kittens head and shattered out its little brains."
People usually associate gothicism with creepy haunted houses or underground passages and secret stairways and that gothic writers focus more on describing the scene than the characters and death. These are true, but not necessarily to stoker. He sets the scene well and he also describes the manner in which the characters died with an exceptional likeness to life. Unlike the other authors that we have studied, Stokers characters have no clear psychological uncertainties. Elias P Hutcheson comes across as a very arrogant and racist character, and when he kills the cat´s kitten, the cat is set out for revenge fueled by the hatred of Hutcheson:
"…. Launched herself at him as though hate and fury could lend her wings."
I think that stoker drops subtle hints foreshadowing the fact that the cat is going to get revenge on Hutcheson:
"…. Her eyes looked like positive murder"
Stoker delivers an exceptional description of the Iron Virgin which makes his writing all that more creepy and imaginative:
"…. Placed in such a position that when the door should close the upper ones would pierce the eyes of the victim, and the lower ones his heart and lungs."
I don´t think that the reader would have any sympathy for Hutcheson when the Iron Virgin kills him and they will think that he has finally got his comeuppance:
"…. Had pierced so deep that they had locked in the bones of his skull…. And tore him out of his own prison"

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Edgar Allan Poe sends the horror genre in a new direction that is somewhat different to that of Stokers methods of writing horror. He does so by dealing more with the psychological viewpoint and what´s going on in the characters head rather than the surroundings. In Poe´s writing there is not so much focus on atmosphere but more on characterisation.
In "The tell-tale Heart" we are immediately introduced to a protagonist who has a very nervous and indeed mad state of mind. This is suggested to us as he tells the reader that he hears voices from out of this world:
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