Society, Culture, and the Gothic | Introduction
INTRODUCTION
The Gothic tradition originated in response to a period of rapid and far-reaching societal, cultural, and theological change in eighteenth-century Europe. Works written in this tradition are inherently linked to the social context in which they were created, and a great deal of critical commentary focuses on the representation of societal and cultural fear in the face of the dissolution of tradition, gender roles, oppression, and race in Gothic literature. As scholars have illustrated, people in nineteenth-century Europe and America believed strongly in physiognomy, the theory that physical appearance and "blood" determined and reflected a person's character. The representation of villains and monsters in Gothic literature demonstrates this adherence to physiognomy, as these characters possess physical traits associated with evil—dark eyes, heavy eyebrows, and dark complexions. The racist implications of this belief in the biological determination of character are apparent, and have been examined by several scholars.
In his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), Edmund Burke challenges the ways in which other philosophers and aestheticians use the terms "sublime" and "beautiful," contending that the words are often employed inaccurately and exclusively. He sets out to distinguish the two terms and define them in light of the basis of their psychological origins. The discussion covers three aspects: individual passions, the essences that inspire emotion in an individual, and the rules of nature that govern the first two aspects. This approach is unique in relation to other aesthetic theories because it allows for psychological and physiological justifications for the aesthetic experience. In the first part of the essay, Burke explores and defines the sublime. He considers the origins of the sublime in the feeling of delight, which he maintains is based on the removal of pain or danger. It is a visceral response to the basic need for self-preservation and is characterized by such feelings as awe, surprise, and relief tinged with horror. In fact, the essence of the sublime is the feeling of horror; in this, his theory is unique in aesthetic study. Burke asserts that in order to inspire the sublime, one must be confronted with terrifying ideas. The human response is generated by the following fear-inspiring principles: vastness, difficulty, power, darkness, vacuity, obscurity, silence, solitude, infinity, massive solidity, and magnificence. This unique conception of the sublime is influenced by and has influenced Gothic literature, especially the novels and stories that contain such settings as the dark, mysterious graveyard, the haunted castle, and the lone house on the hill. Images like these have held a strong fascination for readers throughout the ages. Burke contends that nature images—such as the incomparable vastness of the ocean or the infinite darkness of a dense forest—inspire the highest and most intense feelings of the sublime. Many critics praised Burke's ideas regarding the sublime and lauded his imaginative and innovative approach. In the 1890s, as noted by critic David Punter, the Decadent and the Gothic merged in four works—Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), H. G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897)—which, Punter asserts, "are all concerned in one way or another with the problem of degeneration, and thus of the essence of the human." Gothic literature has also been used to portray experiences of class and national identity, such as the difficulties faced by the Irish in English society. Commentator Raphael Ingelbien has offered a psychological approach to the study of the use of the Gothic in representing Anglo-Irish identity in Bram Stoker's Dracula and in works by Elizabeth Bowen.
Recent scholarship has focused on the relationship between race and the Gothic, tracing the depiction of the African American experience as well as of white anxiety and fears surrounding the black presence in society and desire to maintain the status quo of whites in control and blacks in servitude. Toni Morrison, who employs the Gothic to depict the horrors of slavery in her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved (1987), discusses in Playing in the Dark (1992) how the image of "impenetrable whiteness" is used in works of Gothic fiction—notably in works by Edgar Allan Poe—to assuage white Americans' anxieties about black Americans, and to reinforce the institution of slavery by portraying "black or Africanist people who are dead, impotent, or under complete control." Morrison also links the portrayal of blackness in literature to writers' investigations "of the self-contradictory features of the self." In her analysis of the connection between the Gothic and the African American experience—particularly in such works as Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) and Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)—, Teresa A. Goddu asserts that "a focus on slavery, America's most glaring cultural contradiction, shows how it produced gothic narratives during the antebellum period and how these narratives reproduced the scene of slavery." Teresa Derrickson illustrates that even authors whose works and personal actions espouse racial equality participate in the discourse of racism by examining Louisa May Alcott's sensationalist Gothic story "Taming a Tartar" (1867). Derrickson maintains that "tracing the careful way in which the 'monstrous' nemesis of the narrative's triumphant protagonist embodies nineteenth-century fears of racial degradation … underscores the infiltrating power of the Gothic impetus." Anne K. Mellor has examined Charlotte Dacre's novel Zofloya; or, The Moor (1806), in which Dacre depicts a sexual relationship between a black man and a white woman, to illustrate how "the Gothic has long enabled both its practitioners and its readers to explore subjective desires and identities that are otherwise repressed, denied, or forbidden by the culture at large."
Commentary on the relationship between women and the Gothic focuses on works of Gothic literature by women authors as well as on the depiction of women in Gothic literature written by men. In the mid-1800s, women had few rights and were expected to be subservient to men. Not only were women denied the vote, they were denied the right to own property. Cultural expectations required that women refrain from expressing themselves openly in the presence of men. Rather they were expected to be pure, pleasant, and supportive of men at all times. But, as reflected by the controversial Gothic novels, these rigid roles were changing. Feminist critics point out the unusual prevalence of strong female characters in Gothic novels, and the way their independent and often sexual behavior was harshly criticized by contemporaries of the novels. Modern critics also point out the way in which female sexuality was often used to denote strength, rebelliousness, and evil. Appearing as nefarious seductresses, female characters were often demons or villains who were punished or made to see the error of their ways at the story's end. Feminist critics also claim that while women in earlier novels had been portrayed as victims waiting to be rescued, in Gothic novels the roles were often reversed and the male characters were victimized. Other scholars see the validation of marriage as a common theme of Gothic novels and still others argue that the genre allowed women readers of the mid-1800s to enjoy independence vicariously through the actions of the female characters. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) has received particular attention from feminist critics, as the novel offers common themes in the female Gothic tradition: fear and anxiety surrounding the birth process, female sexuality, and women's bodies. In the twentieth century, the works of many women writers—including Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House (1959), Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (1963), and Diane Johnson's The Shadow Knows (1974)—were examined from a feminist, Gothic theoretical perspective for their modernized adaptation of the traditional Gothic that conveys the unique and often publicly unspoken, or even socially taboo, psychological and social realities of twentieth-century women. Modern women authors employ horror and the Gothic to convey the horror of being perceived as freakish by society for engaging in and espousing artistic and vocational pursuits considered outside of the traditional—and, thus, approved—women's realm, or for choosing to delay or avoid pregnancy, marriage, or motherhood. These narratives relate the unique and deeply rooted fear and anxiety experienced by women who are afraid simultaneously of being trapped in stifling, repressive roles and of being rejected or isolated for challenging these prescribed roles. The work most frequently held as an example of female Gothic is Charlotte Perkins Gilman's novella "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892). The novella, a fictionalized account of Gilman's real-life experience with the "rest cure," a commonly prescribed treatment for depression, horrified readers and critics when it was published, largely because the female protagonist's terror and eventual madness were chillingly true to life and offered a harsh indictment of a widely-held belief that women who found motherhood and domestic duties unfulfilling or even confining were mentally ill. Subsequent critical analyses of the work have focused upon Gilman's use of horror and Gothic elements to convey the desperation experienced by women who were both physically imprisoned and deprived of intellectual freedom and expression.
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