Gothic conventions

Gothic conventions

1. crumbling castles, labyrinths, low lighting, catacombs, graveyards

2. light and shadow: reflecting the characters of the protagonists, innocence v's darkness and corruption

   • ambiguity: between good and evil, natural and supernatural
   • Polarities: virginal young female protagonist v's the corrupt, inhumane male villain. Light and dark not only oppose but compliment eachother: there is something about the dark, sexually promiscuous male that hints at duality-an escape to the dark side
     • sexual difference: power/experience of the male, virginal curiosity of the female.

3. Transgression

   • breaking boundaries: sexual, social
   • Contextually: reaction against intellectual atmosphere of the Enlightenment
     • WOMEN: gave them a place to explore rebellion
       • feminist interpretations: women becoming sexually libertaed, freeing themselves from the shackles of society.
         • female/ gay male authors- against the grain of the patriachal novel
         • women= explorers, disobedient
         • female protagonist and unsexed male
       • safely, without society being turned on its head- the thrill, but returning to normality, ultimately unthreatening.
   • perversion, sexual desire, obsession, voyeurism, sexual violence

4. Claustrophobia and entrapment

   • constraint:threat and isolation, physical or psychological

5. gothic novels set during moments of transition: from girlhood to womanhood, enlightenment period, autumn to winter etc

6. opposition but also mysterious affinity between present and the archaic past

   • Freud: The UNCANNY: " That class of the frightening which leads back to the old and unfamiliar"
   • ex. Ghosts: disrupt the present with the past

7. a world of doubt: beyond human reason and power

8. Edmund Burke: The sublime

   • Beyond the beautiful- no order, harmony or proportion- the mighty, terrible and the awesome. Excess and awe.

9. 'a pleasing melancholy'

10. Structural: elaborate narrative structure; many narrators, found texts and stories within stories

11. vicarious pleasures, illicit thrills

12. typical symbolism

    • colours, usually red v's white to insinuate loss of virginity/purity
    • mirrors: identity, sense of self, vanity, worldliness, sensuality, isolation, a door to an alternate reality.
    • light and dark: polarities
    • passageways, locked doors, keys: sexual discover, perhaps forbidden