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What are the Gothic elements in "Eleonora" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe?
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"Eleonora" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe both feature Gothic elements, including themes of madness and death. "The Tell-Tale Heart" highlights madness through its unreliable narrator and a claustrophobic setting that reflects inescapable fate. "Eleonora" incorporates Gothic motifs with its isolated, wild setting and supernatural elements, such as Eleonora's return. Both stories explore the Gothic fascination with the limits of the human mind and the haunting presence of death.
The theme of madness is prevalent in Gothic literature and is central to both "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "Eleanora." The narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" denies his madness, although unconvincingly, whereas the narrator of "Eleanora" accepts his madness but claims it as an extension, rather than an aberration, of his mental faculties. Gothic fiction, since The Castle of Otranto (published in 1764 and generally considered to be the first Gothic novel) has always been preoccupied with exploring the limits of the human mind and the consequences of those limits being exceeded.
Both stories have very different but equally Gothic settings. In "The Tell-Tale Heart," the story takes place mainly in the bedroom of the old man, which feels like a small, almost claustrophobic setting, reflecting the old man's inescapable fate. In "Eleanora," the setting is among "the dim regions of the mountains" and is described as wild...
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and isolated, reflecting the emotional state of the narrator after Eleanora's death. In Gothic literature, settings are often used to reflect a sense of imprisonment, wildness, and isolation.
This theme of death is also central to Gothic literature. The protagonists of Gothic literature are often obsessed with or haunted by death. In "The Tell-Tale Heart" the narrator at the end of the story is haunted by the death he is responsible for, so much so that he imagines the heart of his victim to be beating relentlessly beneath the floorboards. In "Eleanora," the narrator never recovers after the death of his beloved, eponymous Eleanora, and he complains that "the void within (his) heart refused . . . to be filled."
Most of Poe's "Eleonora" fits more neatly in the Romantic style (Gothic being an off-shoot of this). However, the setting in the undetermined past and the virginal maiden are both elements of the Gothic. The fact that the valley begins to die and lose its colors and Eleonora returns from her crypt to confront the narrator reflects facets of the Gothic preoccupation with death and the supernatural. Even the description of "the strange city" smacks of the Gothic.
"The Tale-Tale Heart," on the other hand, fits more neatly in the Gothic style. Gothic stories often use characters who are mad, and the narrator here fits that category well. The story also features a gruesome murder in the dark, and that preoccupation with fear and death are hallmarks of the Gothic style. Finally, the beating heart, either originating from a supernatural source or the narrator's own madness, is a pretty strong indication that "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a Gothic story.