The Gothic: A History
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate! - Dante
Just over two hundred years ago, literature was developing at a fantastic rate. Books and magazines had become economically viable for mass-production; a gamut of influences was creating 'reading for leisure'. One of the most popular forms among the public who were reading these books were tales of the macabre. Their sources were many -- collections of folk tales and medieval romances, translations of Eastern legends such as The Arabian Nights, and experiments by contemporary authors such as Ann Radcliffe and Horace Walpole began to create something distinct and new. Even... "novel", because the medium for this type of fiction just had not existed before. This something is still with us, and we even use the name the first critics used to identify it -- gothic.
The structure of the gothic tale is simple. Nothing wrong with the formula -- just ask Doctor Jekyll. A character -- whose sensibilities will be sympathetically familiar and contemporary, no matter the actual setting -- is removed by circumstance from the familiar and 'normal' to another, darker realm. The castle; huge, decaying and surrounded by barriers that make escape near impossible, is the classic. An old house or a dark dungeon may replace it, but it is always unmistakable. Then let the terrors commence. This is another world, and it seeks to bring the protagonist under its sway. Supernatural manifestations, manifestations of the villain's usually quite natural designs, though in Dracula of course the two are one. Let the protagonist become intrigued, or desperate enough to voluntarily travel deeper into the castle's mysteries. Then comes the crux, the awful truth and then the escape, through fortuitous discovery or salvation from a romantic interest. Unless, of course, you are reading The Monk, in which case the villain recaptures the protagonist, rapes, murders her, and is captured by the Inquisition. On the other hand, if it is Lovecraft, everyone goes mad or dies.
What has just been mentioned may be a contentious statement. Saying that the works of Howard Philips Lovecraft, a century and a half after the original gothic boom, are still gothic. It is sometimes difficult to draw the lines between gothic and other kinds of literature, but it should be the spirit and style of a book, as well as the atmosphere it gives the reader that defines it, not merely when it came into being.
The first forming steps towards gothic literature were taken in the mid to late 1700s. Gothic architecture and art had been developing for years, giving some sharp criticisms and unflattering portrayals of the church and authority in general in the process. Through these art forms, people were learning to think more independently and become freer in their expressions.
The first true "Gothic" novel was Harold Walpole's novel The Castle Of Otranto (1764). Coincidentally, it was published the same year that James Watt perfected the steam engine, providing the groundwork for the industrial revolution. This novel sets forth all the characteristic features of the gothic we see in all the years to come. A ruined castle, an endangered lady, an evil villain a hero, and treachery all mark this book and continue in one form or another through its lineage to modern day horror and will continue to remain a fixture for a long time to come. ...
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The first true "Gothic" novel was Harold Walpole's novel The Castle Of Otranto (1764). Coincidentally, it was published the same year that James Watt perfected the steam engine, providing the groundwork for the industrial revolution. This novel sets forth all the characteristic features of the gothic we see in all the years to come. A ruined castle, an endangered lady, an evil villain a hero, and treachery all mark this book and continue in one form or another through its lineage to modern day horror and will continue to remain a fixture for a long time to come. Otranto was a landmark piece of literature, and was actually subtitled "- A Gothic Tale," making it an interesting case of a new genre naming itself. There were many gothic books during the time of the genre's youth, including the somewhat mediocre Vathek, by William Beckford (1786), Anne Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), Matthew Lewis' The Monk (1794), as well as many other novels and satires within the scope of gothic literature.
There are many features that make a gothic novel what it is. Many people in gothic literature are duplicitous, showing one face to the world and indulging their Jungian shadow in privacy or with others who are dominated by shadow and darkness. The time period in which much gothic literature developed was a time in which criticism of the church was continuing to grow and people were beginning to think separately from the theological and dogmatic ways they had followed. This influenced the gothic in many ways, from the direct mention of the Inquisition in both The Monk and in The Italian to the way that monasteries and abbeys are treated in this genre. The church is one of the integral parts of the gothic tale, because while the church itself and the ideals of religion represent good, the people who form and enact the rules set down are human and vulnerable to temptation and sin just as anyone else.
The Mysteries of Udolpho is another of the most important works of gothic fiction. The character archetypes lay the work down for another of the finest examples of the gothic, The Monk by M.G. Lewis. The heroine, Emily St Aubert carries the readers with her into the depths of the castle controlled by the evil Lord Montoni. Aside from the domination of Emily by Montoni psychologically, there are also sexual themes that are another integral part of the gothic.
"The gateway before her, leading into the courts, was of gigantic size, and was defended by two round towers, crowned by overhanging turrets, embattled, where, instead of banners, now waved long grass and wild plants, that had taken root among the mouldering stones, and which seemed to sigh, as the breeze rolled pas, over the desolation around them. The towers were united by a curtain, pierced and embattled also, below which appeared the pointed arch of an huge portcullis, surmounting the gates: from these, the walls of the ramparts extended to other towers, overlooking the precipice, whose shattered outline, appearing on a gleam, that lingered in the west, told of the ravages of war. Beyond these all was lost in the obscurity of evening." (The Mysteries of Udolpho, 230-1)
The sexual imagery here with the 'long grass', as well as the 'pierced and embattled' curtain between them invites a comparison to Emily's virginity and purity. This can be seen again, when Montoni arrives with Emily in tow inside his carriage after this description, his presence is a signal for the "great gates" to open and admit all to the inner sanctum of what is "his" castle. In Lewis' The Monk, this descent into the den of evil is described similarly when the evil monk Ambrosio is headed to meet his captive and unconscious victim, Antonia. The Monk's 'Emily' is an innocent and sensitive young man named Lorenzo, his Montoni the brilliant and forceful Matilda. There was no real evidence in the novel that Matilda was anything other than she appeared; a human woman possessed of passion, a will that at all times surpasses that of Ambrosio -- even when he is acting the villain in turn to his own victims -- and occult knowledge. To say she is literally a demon sent to seduce Ambrosio from his path to sainthood makes it much easier to write off the gothic as a man dominates -- woman loves it fantasy, but there are many ambiguous ways to look at the situation. When Lewis set out to write this book, he wanted to expand and develop how Radcliffe looked at the characters in Udolpho. Using the somewhat standard gothic structure, Lewis uses sex consistently and well to balance characters and see how one holds power over another.
It is interesting to note that as much as the clergy are supposed to have no interest in sex, the monks and nuns in The Monk are positively obsessed. Hiding below the esteemed exterior of the monastery and they abbey are dungeons, graveyards, catacombs and secret tunnels leading to many places within the city. When one person who joined the order of these nuns thinking her beloved had died meets him years later, she tries to leave with him and is caught and punished. She had become pregnant with his child and was able to hide it for several months, but no longer. When this pregnancy is discovered she is treated as though she had committed a crime far worse than murder, and in the eyes of the Mother Superior, she has. Her punishment is to be locked in a dungeon far below ground in an unused jail and cemetery. She is systematically starved, parched, deprived of light and tortured, and when her baby is born, it dies a short while later because she is unable to care for it in her enfeebled condition. The horrors that are inflicted on this poor woman are worsened by the fact that it is her own convent that is perpetrating them.
Hypocrisy is another vein running deep into the heart of the gothic style. The nuns who preach chastity, piety and adherence to God's laws are themselves participating in the destruction of at least one human life and are directly responsible for the death of her child. Ambrosio, the villain and the main character of The Monk, is supposedly the most pious man in the entire city at the start of the novel. He is blatantly hypocritical, telling his devoted followers and listeners in his well-spoken stentorian voice that they should follow God's laws and be pious and not prideful and all that lot, while at the same time his pride in himself is practically unrivalled.
"He was no sooner alone, than He gave free loose to the indulgence
of his vanity. When He remembered the Enthusiasm which his
discourse had excited, his heart swelled with rapture, and his
imagination presented him with splendid visions of
aggrandizement. He looked round him with exultation, and Pride
told him loudly that He was superior to the rest of his
fellow-Creatures.
'Who,' thought He; 'who but myself has passed the ordeal of
Youth, yet sees no single stain upon his conscience? Who else
has subdued the violence of strong passions and an impetuous
temperament, and submitted even from the dawn of life to
voluntary retirement? I seek for such a Man in vain. I see no
one but myself possessed of such resolution. Religion cannot
boast Ambrosio's equal! How powerful an effect did my discourse
produce upon its Auditors! How they crowded round me! How they
loaded me with benedictions, and pronounced me the sole
uncorrupted Pillar of the Church! What then now is left for me
to do? Nothing, but to watch as carefully over the conduct of my
Brothers as I have hitherto watched over my own. Yet hold! May
I not be tempted from those paths which till now I have pursued
without one moment's wandering? Am I not a Man, whose nature is
frail, and prone to error? I must now abandon the solitude of my
retreat; The fairest and noblest Dames of Madrid continually
present themselves at the Abbey, and will use no other Confessor.
He continues to describe his admiration for the painting he has of the Madonna, but he speaks only of the physical features presented in the painting, not the idea of the Virgin Mary. This is one of the first signs that Ambrosio has merely repressed his sexual desires because he had no outlet for them, not that he is simply immune to them, as he would like to believe.
I must accustom my eyes to Objects of temptation, and expose
myself to the seduction of luxury and desire. Should I meet in
that world which I am constrained to enter some lovely Female,
lovely . . . as you, Madonna. . . .!'
As He said this, He fixed his eyes upon a picture of the Virgin,
which was suspended opposite to him: This for two years had been
the Object of his increasing wonder and adoration. He paused,
and gazed upon it with delight."
As the tale of the monk Ambrosio progresses, he is corrupted by the guiding hand of Matilda, a young and beautiful woman that first gains entry to the convent by posing as a male monk, a student to Ambrosio. When she reveals herself to Ambrosio as a woman it is a scene that is laden with sexual tension, at first almost with homosexual overtones, before she is revealed. This is another important note because homosexuality is another thing that would have been prohibited and punished by the church in the times of this novel. Matilda at first seems submissive and acts as Ambrosio's lover, but when his interest in her wanes and he sets his eyes upon another, she begins to change and become more dominant. As she uses her female and then daemonic and magical powers to help Ambrosio along his path to damnation, she becomes increasingly powerful, eventually ordering Ambrosio about like a servant boy while he meekly shuffles about doing as she commands. His purity and piety, once admired by all, are used as tools by him and by Matilda to hold back the realization and belief of what they are doing from the masses. This is paralleled in other novels such as Beckford's Vathek, where the evil Prince, again under the guiding influence of a powerful female, takes advantage of his standing in society to commit atrocities. As with the Mother Superior of the convent, Ambrosio is hiding behind a façade, which eventually falls apart with the Mother Superior's death soon followed by his own.
In every gothic novel, evil is a force all its own. There is no blurry moral line about what is evil and what is not, it always appears unadulterated and pure black, sometimes personified, sometimes not, but always strong and corrupting. Satan is often referred to or involved, as the obvious counterpoint to the church and God, although he sometimes already has all the help he needs from the duplicitous clergy.