It has been a while since I posted, but a promise is a promise and our last project topic is to talk about Gothic elements in writing! There’s a few big ones to go through, so let’s talk about them one at a time.
Romance
Castle of Otranto, Frankenstein, and Northanger Abbey (which is like the ultimate satire of gothic romance) are good examples of this. Primarily Gothic romance were mysteries, often involving the supernatural and heavily tinged with horror, and they were usually set against dark backgrounds of medieval ruins and haunted castles.
Oooooh spoopy.
Most of these romances were super tragic, often involving an innocent woman and a very dangerous man. Bonus points if the dude is involved with and/ or is an actual monster or killer. The woman is either frail and faints all the time or super aggressive like the dude and plays hard to get. There was rarely an in between. One of or both of them almost always dying by the end. The love will probably be taboo or forbidden in some Romeo and Juliet type fashion, probably with the girl being kidnapped somehow and have no other purpose than being the love interest. These types of romances were very milk toast and simple for the most part and only really aided by the added violence from the setting. The real tragedy from many of these gothic romances is that the two don’t see the glaring warning signs from a mile away and figure out that this person they want to date is probably hazardous to their well being. Red flags all over the place sadly ignored. Of course these types of elements in romance in general aren’t new, they definitely hit a big surge of popularity in the gothic romance era. The main drive of this concept was turn medieval romances into something that was more modern (at the time) and more realistic by adding harsh realities to the mix. This aided really big authors like Ann Radcliffe, who started to popularize the stronger type female leads when facing adversity. A concept she phrased as “female power through pretended and staged weakness”.
Horror
This is one of the biggest parts of the Gothic genre. Spooky horror! This era was trying really hard to lean away from romanticism and wanting to reflect on more harsh realities. Edgar Allen Poe was the go to when it came to these kinds of concepts and reflected them very well in his writing. Especially for people who yearned for more deeper meanings in writing and simply wanted more to absorb then just flowery fantasy tales for escapism. They wanted things that actually made them think about the subject matter on a deeper level. And this was very nicely expressed through horror. Frightening imagery, gruesome murder and LOTS of death. Seeing the less desirable sides of things that people didn’t typically talk about was very fresh at the time, and the ones who enjoyed it saw parallels to everyday life. This was when gothic romance writing had started to die out and was revived out of this more sinister take on the medium.
This was also a time when there was a big emphasis on emotional aesthetic. Really tying together a story with the emotions the authors really wanted you to feel. It wasn’t as much about the story as much, but make the author really understand how the writer felt about the represented topics being addressed. Which is no easy task mind you. The use of supernatural elements and creatures were more used as metaphors instead of their usual type of representation. There was always a sense of there being more to the work that what you could plainly see. Lots of up to interpretation endings and loose ends left unexplained for the audience to stipulate on after the fact. The idea of “wonder” and “terror” were big elements to do this. You’d be left to wonder about somethings that would usually be explained in other kinds of works. Or something would be described but in such open ended way that everyone who reads it will have a completely different vision of what it looks like. And how terrifying your imagination is based on what you came up with. I mean, if you hear someone screaming on the other side of a door and can’t see them, what you imagine is happening to them is likely way more gruesome than what’s really taking place. That’s just how the mind works. And these types of stories and ideas work with that part of our minds very well. If the Renaissance was the era that embraced knowledge, then the gothic writing times was the era that made people embrace their inner demons and deepest fears. (Between you and me, I think these were officially the world first real emo movement.)
Victorian
As usual, this is a big part of gothic. Since this was the era where many of the gothic classics came to be. Now if you’ve read the Victorian post that I made here, then you’ll know that things weren’t very flowery and nice. So the influence for these types of things were definitely present. Surprisingly, gothic was a very political genre. During the time, the genre was used to comment metaphorically on politics and treatment of women as well as demonizing monstrous acts that were allowed back then and frowned on today. This was also what caused a lot of backlash and criticism for the genre itself for the kinds of things it covered. Things like psychology was very vastly ignored by the medical institute and often ignored. Anyone with any type of mental problem would often just be labeled as crazy and set to the ward to immediately be lobotomized. But this was often because these types of things were simply not gone into with detail.
After this era ed, we were treated to the idea of pulp! No I’m not talking about that stuff in the bottom of your glass when you realize mom bought the wrong orange juice again. I’m taking about the WEIRD stuff. This is where people like H.P. Lovecraft emerged and started bringing their creations into the world. And it also started the big trend of phycological horror. Like stories about serial killers and the like. The idea of meta boiled into something far more expressive. Far more out there. Way weirder than people were used to. I personally think this scared people because it made others realize just how dark and strange of places the human mind can enter into. How deep the psychological path goes and just how crazy our ideas can get if we dig enough. The human mind is really hard to understand after all. I think that’s why gothic can be interpreted so differently by so many people. Some will find the meta completely relatable while other will think it’s totally weird and not be sure if their reading a refined piece of literature or someone’s crazy fever dream. Gothic was truly ahead of its time when it first sprang up, so that’s understandable. But all in all, looking into the gothic works of old really shows what was going on in the heads of people back then in a way that some books just couldn’t narratively do at a deep enough level. And to be honest, I find it comforting when I find really weird ways and metaphors to describe my inner thoughts, and find someone from the past felt a similar way. Kind of makes you realize that the times have changed. But the people are still kind of the same.
And this concludes the last post of the Building Blocks of writing project #6! Sorry it took so long to complete. School has made my update schedule pretty spread out. But soon things will be back on track, so stay tuned for the next installment! See you later fellow explorers!
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