Setting and environment

Setting and environment

1. London

   • The Picture of Dorian Gray
     • He remembered wandering through dimly-lit streets, past gaunt black-shadowed archways and evil-looking houses
       • pg 86
       • creates a double setting to reflect Dorian's double life
       • Dorian only discovers this darker side of London after his first deliberate act of cruelty, shows that Sibyl’s death is significant as the moment he decides to live a life of debauchery and sin
       • personification of buildings
         • perhaps highlighting Dorian's paranoia
     • the sky hollowed itself into a perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with nodding lilies rumbled slowly down the polished empty street.
       • pg 86

2. Homes of the antagonists

   • Dracula
     • 'the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the moonlit sky.
       • pg 20
       • alliteration of 'broken battlements' places emphasis on it, the polysyllabic adjective and noun combined with the hard 'b' sound creates a broken, staccato tone to the phrase
       • adjective 'moonlit' has connotations of night, creepy and dark
         • stock gothic feature of night as the lack of light provides an opportunity for lack of certainty about what has been seen, allows a character to doubt what they saw thus making it more believable
         • stock feature of the moon, connotations of werewolves and the witching hour. Also, the moon in Latin translates to lunar which developed into 'lunacy' due to the belief that the moon had power over water and as the brain is the 'moistest organ' it is also effected
       • monosyllabic adjectives 'tall' and 'black' have negative connotations and are also used to describe Dracula himself
         • described as a classic gothic and medieval castle, typical stock feature of gothic horror novels
           • established by the Castle of Otranto, where setting it in the medieval period added authenticity to it, so much so that the author pretended it was a true story
     • '... must have been of fabulous value when they were made, for they are centuries old, though in excellent order. I saw something like them in Hampton Court, ... But still in none of the rooms is there a mirror
     • 'The house is very large and of all periods back, I should say, to mediaeval times, for one part is of stone immensely thick, with only a few windows high up and heavily barred with iron. It looks like part of a keep, and is close to an old chapel or church.'
     • 'The Castle Dracula now stood out against the red sky, and every stone of it's broken battlements was articulated against the light of the setting sun.'
       • alliteration of 'b' sound, creates a beating tone,
         • polysyllabic adjective and noun combined with the hard 'b' sound creates a broken, staccato tone to the phrase
   • The Picture of Dorian Gray
     • thin blue petals of flame they seemed, rimmed with white fire
       • pg 87
     • The bright dawn flooded the room, and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky corners, where they lay shuddering.
       • pg 87
       • verb 'shuddering' creates personification, has connotations of fear and death

3. Homes of secondary characters

4. Nature

   • Dracula
     • 'the shadows of the evening began to creep round us. ... and the growing twilight seemed to merge into one dark mistiness the gloom of the trees, ... seemed in the darkness to be closing down upon us,
       • pg 14
   • The Picture of Dorian Gray