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A Glossary of Literary Gothic Terms |
ancestral curse . . . anti-Catholicism . . . body-snatching . . . cemetery . . . claustrophobia . . . gothic counterfeit . . . devil . . . Doppelgänger
dreaming/nightmares . . . entrapment . . . explained supernatural . . . exorcism . . . female gothic . . . ghost . . . grotesque . . . haunted house
incubus . . . Inquisition . . . lamia . . . literature of terror vs. literature of horror . . . marvelous vs. uncanny . . . masochism . . . mist . . . mystery
necromancy . . . parody . . . possession . . . pursued protagonist . . . pursued heroine . . . revenant . . . revenge . . . dark romanticism . . . sadism
sensibility . . . somnambulism . . . spiritualism . . .sublime . . . succubus . . . supernatural gadgetry . . . superstition . . . Unheimlich. . .
transformation . . .unreliable narrator . . . vampire . . . villain-hero . . . visigothic . . . wandering jew . . . werewolf . . . witches and witchcraft
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Ancestral Curse
Evil, misfortune, or harm that
comes as a response to or retribution for deeds or misdeeds committed against or by one's ancestor(s). Figures
largely in the "first" gothic romance,
Example: A deserved ancestral
curse can be found in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables.
In the story, Colonel Pyncheon steals the home and
A slight variation of this
convention is the "burden of the past," which, like the ancestral
curse, concerns misfortunes and evil befalling one as a result of another's
past actions. However, this particular form is not necessarily restricted to
one character and his or her descendants, and usually the actions which have
caused the present character's ill fate occur closer to the present than in the
case of the ancestral curse. Such an example exists in Henry James' The Turn
of the Screw, when the two children are "possessed" by the evil
spirits of the dead maid and caretaker.
Of course, characters in a gothic
story can also be haunted by their own burdens of the past; see the pursued
protagonist.
--Kala Aaron
Anti-Catholicism
A frequent and, for some critics,
foundational feature of early Protestant gothic fiction. In this fiction
Catholicism comes to be associated with forces of horrid repression, greedy
corruption, and mysterious persecution, wrapped in the cloaks of a superstition
that prevents scrutiny of authority. The frequent appearance of the Inquisition
in the first gothics epitomizes all of these things.
Example: (from Fred Frank) In
his Gothified anti-Catholic tragedy, Coligny, Baculard d'Arnaud anticipated the
fiendish Catholicism of the English horror novel of the late 1790s by mounting
a morbid pageant of Catholic maliciousness and Protestant suffering that
featured malicious Trappist fathers, "Corridors,
labyrinthes, et caveaux de
châteaux," and other prime examples of Gothic scenery and atmosphere. The
play was set during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, an apt historical choice that
evoked the kind of atmosphere of religious
terror later common in the pages of the Gothic from Lewis's Monk to
"The Spaniard's Tale" in
Body-Snatching (grave-robbing)
Body-snatching is the act of
stealing corpses from graves, tombs or morgues. This act was quite
prominent during the period of time wherein cadavers were unavailable for
dissection and scientific study (early 18th century to middle 19th
century). Body-snatching came to represent a particularly horrid instance
of sacrilege, an invasion of religious space by an aggressive and often
commercially motivated science. Knowledge of this act resulted in mass riots
and even the ransacking of medical dormitories.
Example: R. L. Stevenson's
"The Body-Snatcher" employs the grisly profession of corpse stealing
to weave a tale in which two grave robbers are horrified to find in their
latest disinterred coffin the body of a man they had previously killed and
served up to the medical profession. The most famous example of a Gothic story
which involves the theft of a corpse in order to bring it back to some form of
life is Frankenstein: Victor frequents "the dissecting room
and the slaughter-house" for his "workshop of filthy
creation"--apparently his monster comes from some kind of assemblage.
A more recent example of
body-snatching comes from Stephen King's Pet Semetary
(actually spelled this way). In the novel, the father of a newly dead boy
digs up the body hours after burial. The father proceeds to re-bury the
boy, Gavin, in a place known as Pet Semetary in hopes
that the child will come back to life. Although the corpse of the boy
does in fact re-animate, it is controlled by an evil demon bent upon the murder
of surrounding mortals. Also see revenant.
--Lauren Gibson
Cemetery
A cemetery defines a place which is
used for the burial of the dead. This term koimeterion (" place of
rest") was primarily applied by early Christains
to the Roman catacombs--a subterranean labyrinth of galleries with recesses for
tombs orignally used by the city's Jewish
population--and became widely used within the 15th century. All cultures
seem to have participated in the idea of a cemetery in a form at some
time. Paleolithic caves, temples, sanctuaries, grave mounds and necropolii are just a few different types differentiated
cemeteries. Christian belief formed the idea of the cemetery as a
churchyard or crypt, but we must remember that a cemetery is any place which is
used to house the dead. 
Cemeteries
are widely used in Gothic Literature as oftentimes frightening places where revenance can occur. Catacombs are especially
evocative Gothic spaces because they enable the living to enter below ground a
dark labyrinth resonating with the presences and mysteries of the dead.
Example: Friedrich, Caspar
David
Cloister Cemetery in the Snow
1817-19
Oil on canvas
121 x 170 cm
Destroyed 1945, formerly in the National Gallery, Berlin
--Lauren Gibson
Claustrophobia
An abnormal dread of being confined
in a close or narrow space. Often attributed to actual physical imprisonment or
entrapment, claustrophobia can also figure more generally as an indicator
of the victim's sense of helplessness or horrified mental awareness of being
enmeshed in some dark, inscrutable destiny. If one were to formulate a poetics
of space for the gothic experience, claustrophobia would comprise a key element
of that definition.
Example: Sophia Lee's The
Recess chronicles the story of two ill-fated sisters literally born into an
underground recess; in this novel the idea of claustrophobia extends beyond
just the obvious physical entrapment to serve as a metaphor of woman's recessive
existence in a world of cruel court and male intrigue. Another intriguing
example can be found in Melville's "Bartelby,
the Scrivener." Bartelby occupies a very
small and dark cubicle. It has no view other than that of a brick wall. This
small space without much light and no view creates a feeling of claustrophobia,
but, oddly, this sense seems to afflict the narrator and reader more than it
does the inscrutable scrivener.
--Elizabeth Thomas
Gothic
Counterfeit
A playful fakery of
authenticity. From the Castle of Otranto (1764) onwards, many
gothic texts present themselves as an editor's recovery and presentation of
some ancient text, cloaking the true author's writing of the story. Such
"counterfeit" framing narratives frequently complicate the point of view
and "authenticity" of gothic stories. Jerald Hogle has written extensively about the
"counterfeit" as a trope of Gothic textual instability.
Examples: William Beckford's
infamous Vathek first appeared as a
counterfeit editor's recovery of an anonymous translation of an Arabian
tale. Henry James’ “The Friend of the Friends” is
presented as excerpts from a
young woman’s diary
retrieved by an un-named narrator, when, of course, the tale is by Henry James.
--Jody Kemp
Devil
The Devil, as portrayed in Judaism and
Christianity, stands as a spirit of incarnate evil who rules over a dark
kingdom. This spirit stands in constant opposition to God. The
actual term ‘Devil' comes from the Latin term diabolus
which is an adjective
meaning slanderous. Within the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the
Bible, the diabolus is translated as the Hebrew
"he-satan". Also within this translation,
the diabolus is characterized as God's personal spy
who travels the earth to gather information concerning human existence. Later, in
Jewish tradition, the term satan
becomes the proper Satan who is seen as an adversary of human beings as well as
God. The base of this belief possibly stems
from Persian philosophy. In many areas of Jewish thought, Satan is linked
with the idea of evil impulses, i.e. the Devil made me do it.
Examples: There generally
exist two different ways that the old Adversary can appear in Gothic works,
ways that tell us much about the moral universe of the literary work. If, as in Bloch's Rosemary's Baby, the Devil's visitation is
arbitrary and he selects a good or innocent person as his victim, we wtiness a dark, pessimistic moral universe, in which an
expansive sense of evil randomly blights the human world. If, on
the other hand, the victim deserves demonic punishment (for example, Ambrosio in Lewis's The Monk), his appearance
signals a more traditional and Christian moral universe, in which sinners recieve their due punishment. The literary stakes get
a bit higher in variations of the Faust legend, in which Satan appeals to
potentially noble human qualities (e.g. the thirst for knowlege)
but twists those qualities in a way that parallels his own alienation from God.
--Lauren Gibson
Doppelgänger
Dopplegänger comes from German; literally translated,
it means “doublegoer.” A dopplegänger
is often the ghostly counterpart of a living person. It can also mean a double,
alter ego, or even another person who has the same name. In analyzing the
dopplegänger as a psychic projection caused by
unresolved anxieties, Otto Rank decribed the double
as possessing traits both complementary and antithetical to the character
involved.
Example: In Psycho, by
Robert Bloch, Norman Bates becomes so distraught after killing his mother in a
jealous rage that he gradually takes on her personality. She becomes his alter
ego, and by the end of the novel has taken over his mind completely.
Other famed doubles in Gothic lore include Jekyll/Hyde, Victor Frankenstein/his
monster, Caleb Williams/Falkland, and Jane Eyre/Bertha. Perhaps the most
perfect literary example of a dopplegänger can
be found in Henry James' "The Jolly Corner."
--Jessica Dunlap
Dreaming /
Nightmares
Dreaming is characterized as a form
of mental activity that takes place during the act of sleep. Dreams
invoke strong emotions within the dreamer, such as ecstasy, joy and terror.
Dreams dredge up these deep emotions and premonitions that reflect tellingly
upon the dreamer, what one might conceal during waking
hours but what emerges in sleep to haunt and arouse the dreamer. It is
most likely due to this heightened emotional state that dreams are used so
often within Gothic Literature. For by invoking dream states within their
characters, authors are able to illustrate emotions on a more unmediated and,
oftentimes, terrifying level. Dreams reveal to the reader what the
character is often too afraid to realize about himself
or herself. Dreaming also has an ancient relation with the act of
foretelling wherein the future is glimpsed in the dream state.
The actual term nightmare seems to
be a bastardization of the Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon term mara.
A mara is defined as a demon which sits upon the
chests of sleepers and brings bad dreams.Most
cultures seemed to characterize nightmares as being caused by demons; for
example, in
An
important point concerning the dream state was proposed by Sigmund Freud
at the start of the 20th century. Freud believed that a unique mental
process is used within dreams that is rarely activated
during the waking hours. He defined this state as the "primary
process" and theorized that this state was marked by a more primitive
thought process ruled by the emotions. This theory helps explain
widespread occurence of dreams in Gothic Literature
as a state during which characters express their deepest emotions of horror and
terror. Freud essentially "psychologizes"
the older, folk (and still prevalant) tradition that
dreams foretell future events: what the ancients widely and superstitously regarded as portents, Freud read as telling
illuminations of the buried psychic life of individuals--and their success in
dealing with these dream-state phantoms might very well direct their future
success in life.
Examples: Ancient
literatures contain many examples of dreams with prophetic content, such as
Clytemnestra's dream of a viper at her breast (signifying Orestes' return) in The
Libation Bearers. Perhaps the most famous Gothic example occurs in
Shelley's Frankenstein. Following two years of difficult work, Victor
Frankenstein re-animates a once dead corpse. However, the elation he
expected to feel at this conquest does not occur because he is horrified at the
monster's loathsome appearance. Exhausted and saddened by his prolonged
work and dashed expectations, he falls into a dream state that begins with his
kissing of
Within Stephen King's novel Bag
of Bones, an author named of Mike Noonan is plagued with dreams.
These dreams involve the death of his wife as well as frightening visions of
the summer home that he now inhabits full time. They are also
interspersed with nightmares, acts of sleepwalking,
and glimpses of the future. Eventually, through the recurrence of these
dreams, Noonan is able to discover the events surrounding the death of his wife
as well as a dark fact concerning his summer home that was secreted by the
entire town. Finally, Noonan's glimpses of the future within the dreams
enable him to save the life of an innocent child from an avenging spiritual
curse.
--Lauren Gibson
Entrapment
& Imprisonment:
A favorite horror device of the
Gothic finds a person confined or trapped, such as being shackled to a floor or
hidden away in some dark cell or cloister. This sense of there being no
way out contributes to the claustrophobic
psychology of Gothic space.
Example: Poe's "Fall of the
House of Usher." Madeline Usher is buried alive in a coffin (the ultimate
entrapment) to cure a strange malady but then left by Roderick who thinks she is dead. The reader experiences the full Gothic
horror of her awakening within her own tomb.
For an illustration of imprisonment
from a Gothic chapbook, visit Douglas Castle;
or, the Cell of Mystery
--Elizabeth Thomas
The
Explained Supernatural
Bearing close similarities to what Todorov will later term the "uncanny,"
the explained supernatural is a genre of the Gothic in which the laws of
everyday reality remain intact and permit an explanation or even dismissal of
allegedly supernatural phenomena.
Example: In Ann Radcliffe's
novels, the author allows both the character and reader to question throughout
the entire novel whether the weird phenomena described are happening in a
setting of known laws of nature or in a setting where miracles or supernatural
intervention must be in place to account for the strange events. At the end
of the novel Radcliffe always reveals her rationalist allegiances by
identifying normal explanations for what seemed supernatural events.
--Michelle
Bryson
Exorcism
Exorcism is the religiously based
act of forcing the Devil or a demon from the body of a possessed person.
This act is usually performed by a religious figure, such as a priest or
shaman, and involves the performing of rituals. Various cultures
including the Greeks, Babylonians and Egyptians all had forms of what we term
today as exorcism. For instance, the Babylonian exorcism consisted of the
formation and eventual destruction of a clay doll fashioned in the shape of the
demon. Supposedly, with the destruction of the doll the Devil or demon
would be forced from the mortal body. Many cultures and religions
practice the act of exorcism to this day. It is known that the current
Pope of the Roman Catholic Church has participated in an exorcism although he
refuses to divulge the exact details.
Example: William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist
--Lauren Gibson
The Female
Gothic
One of the earliest forms of Gothic
literature, the Female Gothic often aims to socialize and educate its female
readers and is usually morally conservative. Yet the Female Gothic
can also express criticism of patriarchal, male-dominated structures and serve
as an expression of female independence. This form is often centered on gender
differences and oppression. Female Gothic works usually include a female
protagonist who is pursued and persecuted by a villainous patriarchal figure in
unfamiliar settings and terrifying landscape. While achieving a
considerable degree of terror and chills, the Female Gothic usually eschews the
more overt and graphic scenes of violence and sexual perversion found in the literature
of horror, often opting for the "explained
supernatural" instead of the real thing. This kind of fiction first
achieved controversial prominence in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
century. The initial development of this form was led by writers such as
Clara Reeve, Sophia Lee, and Anne Radcliffe, and then later by Mary Shelley,
the Brontes and Christina Rosetti
("Goblin Market"). A durable strain of the Gothic, it can be found
everywhere in later 19th and 20th century women writers and even in the
Harlequin romances of today.
For a helpful overview of the Female Gothic, visit UVa’s page on the subject and the abstract of Angela Lynn Rae's thesis: "The haunted bedroom: female sexual identity in Gothic literature, 1790-1820" (Rhodes University, 1999).
For information on a 6-volume edition of Female Gothic writers, edited by Gary Kelly, visit Pickering's and Chatto's Varieties of Female Gothic
Also see Diane Hoeveler's reflections on the subject from her course syllabus on the Female Gothic
--Katherine Jordan, Starla Bailey, and Marnite Zachery
What is the Gothic? ( a very provisional sketch)
Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto introduced the
term "gothic romance" to the literary world in 1764. While it
presented, at first, a topic for argument and inflammatory rhetoric, over the
years the gothic has come to be respected as a venerable albeit still
controversial genre. However, due to its inherently supernatural, surreal and
sublime elements, it has maintained a dark and mysterious appeal. Since 1764,
many authors have followed in the footsteps of
So then, what is "the gothic"? Generally speaking, gothic literature
delves into the macabre nature of humanity in its quest to satiate mankind's
intrinsic desire to plumb the depths of terror. We offer seven descriptors that
frequently appear in works called gothic: 1) the appearance of the
supernatural, 2) the psychology of horror and/or
terror,
3) the poetics of the sublime, 4)
a sense of mystery
and dread 5) the appealing hero/villain,
6) the
distressed heroine, and 7) strong moral closure (usually at least). But
expect us to revisit this contentious issue in the near future.
Also see Diane Hoeveler's reflections on "What
is the Gothic"?
--T. McDonald and James Flynn
Grotesque
(1)
This term originated from oddly shaped ornaments found within Roman
dwellings, or grottoes, during the first century. From a literary
standpoint, this term implies a mutation of the characters, plants and/or
animals. This mutation transforms the normal features and/or behaviors into veritable extremes that are meant to be
frightening and/or disturbingly comic (Cornwell 273). Example: An example
of the term grotesque can be found within the short story "Rappaccini's Daughter." Within the tale, the
flowers found within the garden of the inventor have been mutated into
beautiful harbringers of death. While the
physical features of the plants have grown more exquisite, their interior
workings have become a frightening caricature of normal plant-life.
(2) The term grotesque also
defines a work in which two separate modes, comedy and tragedy, are
mixed. The result is a disturbing fiction wherein comic circumstances
prelude horrific tragedy and vice versa.
Example: Within the short
story "Revelation," penned by Flannery O'Connor, the author blends
the comic aspects of the conversation between the two elder women within the
tragic appearance and anger of the young girl. Comedy and tragedy
continue to mix throughout the tale as the elder woman, Mrs. Turpin, comes to
discover the "true" nature of God as a result of the young woman's
outburst. A perfect example of the grotesquely sublime is
her heavenly vision while standing in the hog-pen.
--Lauren
Gibson
The
A dwelling that is inhabited by or
visited regularly by a ghost or other supposedly supernatural being.
Examples: Horace Walpole's The
--Shayla Willis
Incubus
The incubus is characterized as a
male demon who forces himself sexually upon mortal women as they sleep.
This type of coupling is theorized to result in the subsequent births of
demons, witches, sorcerers or children with noted deformities. Legend
attends that the incubus and his female counterpart, the succubus,
were angels fallen from Heaven. The belief in incubii
was very strong during the Middle Ages and stories of
such attacks were common.
Example: In the movie Village of the Dammed an entire town suddenly
lapses into a type of forced sleep state which lasts several hours. In
the weeks following awakening, it is discovered that eight women within the
town are pregnant through malign means that occurred during the sleep.
Six of the eight children which result from this bizarre process are inherently
evil and thrive upon the pain of others. These children are able to read
minds as well as force those in close proximity to do harm to themselves. The children are finally destroyed but
only after the loss of many innocent lives.
Inquisition
The Inquisition was a permanent
institution in the Catholic Church charged with the eradication of
heresies. The judge, or inquisitor, could bring suit against anyone. The
accused had to testify against himself and did not
have the right to face and question his accuser; torture became a frequent
means of soliciting testimony from the accused. It was even acceptable to take
testimony from criminals, persons of bad reputation, excommunicated people, and
heretics. The accused did not have right to counsel, and blood relationship did
not exempt one from the duty to testify against the accused. Sentences could
not be appealed. Abuses by local Inquisitions early on led to reform and
regulation by
--Jessica
Dunlap
The
Literature of Terror vs. the Literature of Horror:
Following a distinction drawn by
Ann Radcliffe in her essay "On the
Supernatural in Poetry", many critics rely upon a sharp division
between the literatures of terror and horror.
·
Works of terror create a
sense of uncertain apprehension that leads to a complex
fear of obscure and dreadful elements (see the sublime).
The essence of terror stimulates the imagination and often challenges
intellectual reasoning to arrive at a somewhat plausible explanation of this
ambiguous fear and anxiety. Resolution of the terror provides a means of
escape.
· Works of horror are constructed from a maze of alarmingly concrete imagery designed to induce fear, shock, revulsion, and disgust. Horror appeals to lower mental faculties, such as curiosity and voyeurism. Elements of horror render the reader incapable of resolution and subject the reader's mind to a state of inescapable confusion and chaos. The inability to intellectualize horror inflicts a sense of obscure despair.
Examples: Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Matthew Lewis' The Monk, respectively, perfectly illustrate this divide between terror and horror and helped establish the distinction throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The former causes the reader to imagine and cross-examine those imaginings; the latter causes shock and disgust; the former aspires to the realm of high literature; the latter wallows in the low. But this distinction is not always clear in works that follow in the gothic tradition, and this uncertainty fuels critical debates about these works.
For more on the debate see UVa's "Terror
vs. Horror."
--Betty
Rigdon
The
Marvelous vs. the Uncanny
According to Tsvetan Todorov, a certain hesitation exists throughout a Gothic tale:
the hesitation of the reader in knowing what the rules are in the game of
reading. Can our understanding of familiar perceptions of reality account
for strange goings-on or do we have to appeal to the extraordinary to
account for the setting and circumstances of the mysterious story?
At the novel's close, the reader makes a decision, often apart from the
character's or narrator's point of view (see unreliable
narrator), as to the laws that are governing the novel. If she
decides that new laws of nature must be in place for the phenomena to occur,
the novel is classified in the genre of "the marvelous," also called
supernatural accepted. If she decides that the laws of nature as she
knows them can remain unchanged and still allow for the phenomena described,
the novel is in the genre of "the uncanny," or supernatural
explained.
Examples: Comparing the works of Horace Walpole and Clara Reeves
illustrates the difference between "marvelous" and
"uncanny" works. Walpole's The Castle of Ortranto resides in the genre of the marvelous, or
supernatural accepted, adopting new laws of nature for the setting and
circumstances. Clara Reeves' works, on the other hand, fall into the
genre of the uncanny, or supernatural explained, citing known laws of nature as
reasons for the phenomena described. She, in fact, consciously set out to
rehabilitate the extravagances of
For more on the debate see UVa's "The
Uncanny and the Fantastic."
--Michelle
Bryson
Masochism
The word “masochism”
is derived from Chevalier
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, an Austrian writer.
Masochism is a psychosexual perversion where one person gains erotic pleasure
by having pain inflicted on them. A looser definition is used to describe the
behavior of a person who actively seeks out pain and/or humiliation.
Example: In his book Venus in
Furs, Leopold uses an alias to describe the abuse he suffered as a child in
the hands of a fur jacket-wearing aunt, and the consequences it had on his
adult life. In one scene, the aunt whips young “Severin”
(Leopold) and then forces
him to get down on his knees, thank her, and kiss her hand. This is his first
real experience with females, and it is the one that shapes his life: “In
her fur jacket she seemed to [him] like a wrathful queen, and from then on [his] aunt
became the most desirable woman on God's earth” (Grosz). Severin/Leopold spends the rest of his life
searching for a woman to dress like his aunt and beat him for sexual
gratification.
--Jesica Dunlap
Mist
A grouping of water particles due
to a change in atmosphere. This convention in Gothic Literature is often
used to obscure objects (see Burke's notion of the sublime) by
reducing visibility or to prelude the insertion of a terrifying person or
thing.
Example: Within the short story "The Mist," written by Stephen King,
a typical summer day in Maine is transformed into a strange new world. An
odd mist, clearly demarcated, begins to creep upon the town and by midday it
has taken it over. However, terrifying creatures ranging from insect-like
birds to dog-sized spiders reside within the mist and are bent upon destroying
any mortal who dares venture outside. Also see the mist which preludes
the horrific in George's ascent of Arthur's Seat in Hogg's Confessions.
--Lauren
Gibson
Mystery
A term derived from the Latin word mysterium. Mystery is also closely related to
the Latin word mysterium tremendum, which is a term used to express the
overwhelming awe and sense of unknowable mystery felt by those to whom some
aspect of God or of divine being is revealed. Mystery is an event or situation
that appears to overwhelm understanding. Its province is the unnatural,
unmentioned, and unseen.
Examples: In Edgar Allen Poe's
"Tell-Tale Heart," the narrator is haunted by the mysterious eye. The
frightening eye drives the narrator insane: "I think it was his eye
. . . He [the victim] had the eye of the vulture." "The
Fall of the House of Usher" is also filled with mystery, especially that
of the unmentioned. What is the cause of Lady Madeline of Usher's malady? Why
is Roderick Usher terrified of the unseen? What is the dreaded Usher family
secret?
--Shayla Willis
Necromancy
Necromancy is the black art of
communicating with the dead. This is usually done to obtain information
about the future, but can also be used for other purposes, such as getting the
dead to perform deeds of which humans are not capable. The conjurer often
stood in a circle, such as a pentagram, in order to protect himself from the
dead spirit, yet he was often overpowered by the spirit.
Examples: The most famous examples
of necromancy can be found in literary renditions of the Faust legend, from
Marlow to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Byron with his Manfred. In
these works, Faust not only speaks with the devil in order to strike a deal but
necromantically invokes various dead, famous figures
from the past for his amusement and edification.
--John Belcher
Gothic
Parody
A form of satirical criticism
or comic mockery that imitates the style and manners of a particular writer,
often employing, self-consciously and ironically, the narrative devices of the
Gothic (Jones 271). Parody of the gothic often relies on travesty and
burlesque: a favorite strategy transports the exotic, aristocratic, antique,
and foreign setting of the gothic tale to a
contemporary lower-class British setting, and lets the resulting dislocation
indict both gothic absurdity and the English taste for it. But some
parodies can express some sympathy for their alleged targets, confirming Graeme
Stone's recent contention that Romantic parody involves a “simultaneous commitment to exalted visions and
to a renegade impulse which mockingly dissolves them”
(Parodies of the Romantic
Age xxi).
Example: Jane Austen's Northanger
Abbey. The heroine, Catherine Moreland, is introduced as an avid
reader of the gothic. At the opening of the story, Catherine is reading
Radcliffe's The Mystery's of Udolpho.
Later, she's given a list of other gothic-style books to read. The list
includes Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont,
Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell,
Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries (all titles once regarded as
inventions of Austen but which 20th century scholarship has tracked down as
real gothics: Austen knew the target of her
parody). Catherine Moreland's gothic readings and predispositions
cause her to dramatically misread ordinary events--she in essence gothicizes events--and these misreadings
lead to her embarrassment. Austen gently suggests that overly avid
reading of gothic literature will cause one to lose sound moral judgement. Mr. Tilney more
clearly states Austen's viewpoint when he says, "the art of art lies in
its power to deceive . . . [I]t is not so much a question of what
we read: we must exercise our judgment after all, and not mistake fantasy for
reality." So maybe there's nothing inherently wrong with Gothic
tales; it's just how critically and well we read them.
Go here for more on the Northanger
Canon.
Go here for the funny
cover and edition of a Paper Library Gothic edition (
--Jody Kemp
Possession
The popularity of belief in demonic
possession seems to have originated within Christian Theology during the Middle Ages. During this time, Christians lived in
fear concerning the war being waged between God and the Devil over every mortal
soul. Hence, this fear of possession seemed to culminate into an act that
could be viewed by the mortal eye. This act is defined as the forced
possession of a mortal body by the Devil or one of his demons. There are two
types of possesion and either can be voluntary or
involuntary. Voluntary possession seems to involve a willing exchange in
the form of some compact between evil spirit and mortal, often involving
wealth, power or goods; involuntary possession ocurs
when the devil randomly selects an unwitting host. The two types of
possession consist of the transference of the Devil or demon directly into the
mortal body or the sending of the Devil or demon into the body by a third
party, usually a mortal dabbler in the dark arts. Following the act, the
possessed is said to show many symptoms including abnormal strength,
personality changes, fits, convulsions, bodily odors resembling sulfur, lewd
and lasviscious actions, the ability to levitate, the
ability to speak in tongues or the ability to foretell future events. Many
religions acknowledge the act of possession still today, most notably the
Catholic Church. There seem to be three ways in which to end a
possession. These include the voluntary departure of the possessing Devil
or demon, the involuntary departure of the possessing Devil or demon through an
act such as
Example: R. L. Stevenson's "Thrawn
Janet" depicts the body (later realized as a dead body) of a servant woman
possessed by the devil.
--Lauren Gibson
The
Pursued Protagonist
Refers to the idea of a pursuing
force that relentlessly acts in a severely negative manner on a
character. This persecution often implies the notion of some sort of a
curse or other form of terminal and utterly unavoidable damnation, a notion
that usually suggests a return or
"hangover" of traditional religious ideology to chastize
the character for some real or imagined wrong against the moral order.
Example: This crime and retribution
pattern interestingly emerges in the work of many "free-thinkers" and
political radicals of the Romantic Age, including such haunted and hounded
figures as Godwin's Caleb Williams and St. Leon, Coleridge's Mariner, and Mary
Shelly's Frankenstein, who both is pursued by and pursues his monster. A
classic contemporary example of an infamous pursuer/pursued can be found in
Anne Rice's Vampire series. These works typically employ a villain-hero,
the vampire, who is both compelled and pursued by a greater force
that causes him "to wander the earth in a state of permanent exile,
persecuting others as a result of a contradiction of being which is itself the
mark of his own persecution by another" (Mulvey-Roberts
115).
The Wandering Jew is perhaps the
archetypically pursued/pursuing protagonist.
--Drew McCray
Pursuit
of the Heroine
The pursuit of a virtuous and
idealistic (and usually poetically inclined) young woman by a villain, normally
portrayed as a wicked, older but still potent aristocrat. While in many early Gothic novels such a
chase occurs across a Mediterranean forest and/or through a subterranean
labyrinth, the pursuit of the heroine is by no means limited to these settings.
This pursuit represents a threat to the young lady's ideals and morals (usually
meaning her virginity), to which the heroine responds in the early works with a
passive courage in the face of danger; later gothic heroines progressively
become more active and occasionally effective in their attempts to escape this
pursuit and indict patriarchy.
Examples: The pursuit of the
heroine can be physical, such as in Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, or more of an emotional/mental pursuit, as
found in Joyce Carol Oates "Where Are You Going, Where Have You
Been?"
The return of the dead to terrorize or to
settle some score with the living.
Examples: See “The Ostler" (first published in the Christmas 1855 number
of Household Words), which redeploys the figure of the revenant or
ghostly being who "returns" to life to achieve its sensational
effects. The Dream Woman is a knife-wielding succubus
whose horrid appearance at her victim's bedside is one of Wilke
Collins's best night shades and jolting moments:
"Between
the foot of his bed and the closed door there stood a woman with a knife in her
hand, looking at him. He was stricken speechless with terror, but he did not
lose the preternatural clearness of his faculties, and he never took his eyes
off the woman. She said not a word as they stared each other in the face, but
she began to move slowly towards the left-hand side of the bed. Speechless,
with no expression in her face, with no noise following her footfall, she came
closer and closer and stopped and slowly raised the knife. He laid his right
arm over his throat to save it; but, as he saw the knife coming down, threw his
hand across the bed to the right side, and jerked his body over that way just
as the knife descended on the mattress within an inch of his shoulder."
See
also James Hogg's "Mary Burnett" and M.G. Lewis’s famous “Bleeding Nun.”
Revenge
Revenge is characterized as the act
of repaying someone for a harm that the person has caused; the idea also points
back generically to one of the key influences upon Gothic literature: the
revenge tragedies of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. Revenge may be enacted
upon a loved one, a family member, a friend, an object or even an area.
Within Gothic Literature, revenge is notably prominent and can be enacted by or
upon mortals as well as spirits. Revenge can take many forms, such as
harm to body, harm to loved ones, and harm to family. The most Gothic
version of revenge in Gothic Literature is the idea that it can be a guiding
force in the revenance of the dead.
Example: Within "The
Cask of Amontillado," written by Edgar Allen Poe, a carefully planned act
of revenge takes place. Montressor has become
aggrieved by the insults of Fortunato and vows that
he will repay his friend for this crime. Montressor
is crafty and careful in his planning: he gives Fortunato
no reason to doubt his continued friendship. One evening, Montressor finds Fortunato
intoxicated on medoc and
feels that the time is right to exact his retribution. Through a course
of conversation focusing upon the sampling of a type of Amontillado, Montressor lures Fortunato into
his family crypt and proceeds to brick him into a wall. There he leaves Fortunato to die a most extended death.
Romanticism/Dark
Romanticism
Why
does the Romantic era offer, amidst its soaring affirmations of the human
imagination and the passions, powerful explorations of the dark side of human
nature? Why, right alongside (or maybe just beneath the surface of) the
dreams of "natural piety," the dignity of the individual, and the
redemptive power of art do we find the nightmare world of the gothic, the
grotesque, and the psychotic? Critics and literary historians have come
up with three main ideas:
1. the sleep of
reason produces monsters: the Romantic rebellion against Right Reason
undermines the moral, primarily didactic role of art, opening it up to all
kinds of previously forbidden or irrational and maybe even immoral subjects; an
aesthetics based on the imagination can just as well lead us down a "dark
chasm" as deliver us to a new paradise.
2. "reason" is in-itself a kind of sleep (Blake calls it "Newton's stony sleep"); over-reliance onrationalism will invariably breed fascination with the terms it banishes; we remember that the first gothic novels came during the zenith of the Enlightenment; this is essentially a Freudian model: the return of repressed content to haunt the official aesthetic doctrine--the eruption of the id upon a too restrictive super-ego.
3. "sinners in the hands of an angry God": this
theory stresses the return of traditional understandings of guilt and divine
retribution upon the freethinkers of this revolutionary age; this is a rich
source of terror, from Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" to
Shelley's Frankenstein. James Rieger calls it
the "Protestant as Prometheus" complex. (See the Wandering Jew
entry.)
For what the Romantic poets wrote and thought about the Gothic, go to Gothic Literature: What the Romantic Writers Read.
Sadism
The word “sadism”
was coined to describe the
writings of Donatien-Alphonse-Francois, the Marquis
de Sade. Sadism is a sexual perversion where one person gains gratification by
inflicting physical or mental pain on others. It can also mean a delight in
torment or excessive cruelty.
Example: In his book, 120 Days
of
One must do violence to the object of one’s desire; when it surrenders, the pleasure is greater
. . . The degradation which characterizes
the state into which you plunge him by punishing him
pleases, amuses, and delights him. Deep down he enjoys having gone so far as to
deserve being
treated in such a way . . . It has, moreover, been proven that horror,
nastiness, and the frightful are
what give pleasure when one fornicates. Beauty is a simple thing; ugliness is
the exceptional thing.
And fiery imaginations, no doubt, always prefer the extraordinary thing to the
simple thing.
-- Jessica Dunlap
Sensibility
Deals with an acutely sensitive
response to the afflicted or pathetic in literature, art, and life.
Originally formulated by Adam Smith as a positive force of compassion and moral
sympathy, sensibility soon degenerated into something of a cult wherein its
members (usually upper-class women or those aspiring to be so) proved their exquisite
sensitivity through tears, blushes, palpitations, and fits of fainting.
Many gothic heroines exhibit sensibility, but the term becomes a hotly
contested one in the culture wars of the 1780's and '90's.'
Examples: We generally
associate sensibility with the poetic reveries of Radcliffe's heroines and her
many followers. Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey and Sense and
Sensibility parody this sentiment. An example of how slippery the
term can be in terms of gender and politics: Mary Wollstonecraft accuses
Edmund Burke of a gothic sensibility in his swooning sympathy for the
sufferings of the French court.
To learn more, visit UVa's Dictionary of
Sensibility
--John
Belcher
Somnambulism
Somnambulism, better known as
sleepwalking, exists as a type of dissociated mental state which occurs during
sleep. Studies indicate that sleepwalking occurs during the period of
"deep sleep," a time during which no dreams are taking place within
the mind of the sleeper. While sleepwalking, a person may engage in a
varied array of motor activities deemed as common during waking life.
Many onlookers find this act to be frightening, noting that the sleepwalker is
not propelled by any type of lucid mental activity. Through sleepwalking,
characters often reveal hidden sources of stress and replay acts of guilt.
Example par excellence:
Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly
The
Sublime
The definition of this key term has
evolved from the early days of Longinus through to various 18th and 19th
century formulations. Always a contested term, the idea of the sublime is
essential to an understanding of Gothic poetics and, especially, the attempt to
defend or justify the literature of terror.
Longinus believes that power is the
essence of the sublime style, as it literally moves or transports its hearers,
and he offers among many examples a rare reference to the Hebrew scriptures,
Genesis 1:3, "And God said, Let there be light; and there was light."
This is an example of the absolute power in which word and effect are
one. Longinus also foreshadows the development of the sublime in
"Samuel Monk's study of the
sublime argues that the term became a repository for all the emotions and
literary effects unacceptable to the dominant neo-classical virtues of balance,
order and rationality" (Milbank).
Edmund Burke locates the sublime
purely in terms of fear, the source of which is the "king of terrors"
himself-- Death-- and a sense of possible threat to the subject's
self-preservation: "In essence, whatever is fitted in any sort to excite
the ideas of pain, and danger, or is conversant about terrible objects, or
operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; it is
productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling"
(A
Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the
Beautiful [1759].) The threat must not be direct,
else "delight" (a lesser form of literary "pleasure")
cannot be experienced from the sublime moment. Burke's insistence on
framing and distancing the sublime moment 
helped shape a Gothic aesthetic in which obscurity,
suspense, uncertainty, ambivalence, and play attend presentations of
terror. Anna Letitia Aikin
(later Barbauld) and John Aikin
follow Burke's lead but go a step further in proclaiming a positive
"pleasure" to be derived from the sublime in ways that anticipate
later romantic theorists: "A strange and unexpected event awakens in the
mind, and keeps it on the stretch; and where the agency of invisible beings is
introduced, of 'forms unseen, and far mightier than we,' our imagination,
darting forth, explores with rapture the new world which is laid open to its
view, and rejoices in the expansion of its powers. Passion and fancy
cooperating elevate the soul to its highest pitch; and the pain of terror is
lost in amazement" ("On the
Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror" ).
Kant's Critique of Judgement (1790) sees
sublime pleasure as disinterested because it seeks no knowledge of the object.
In Kant the sublime becomes a heightened and ennobled capacity of thinking in
the human subject which enables the mind to rise above its physical limitations
after an initial check to its vital forces. In essence for Kant, the sublime is
not so much located in the direct experiencing of a terrific object but in the
way that experience signals an apprehension of the infinite capacities of the
mind's imaginative powers. (Indeed, in language that recalls Wordsworth's
sublime mountain ascents, Kant speaks of the mind usurping upon nature
during these visionary moments.)
One does find in Gothic literature a dialectic between the Burkean
model of endangered subjectivity, and Kantian or idealist belief in the power
of the mind to sublime, to rise victorious over opposition to desire or
imagination's reach. In the Gothic sense, the idea of terrible nature
(lightening, thunder, tornadoes) is extended to include supernatural beings,
witchcraft, and many other vague and extraordinary phenomena. Visit UVa's The
Sublime and the Domestic for more discussion of this complex term.
Example: A good Burkean example of the sublime (somewhat subdued) occurs when Radcliffe's Emily from The Mysteries of Udolpho first sees the the Campagna of Italy:
As the travellers still ascended among the pine-forests, steep rose over steep, the mountains seemed to multiply as they went, and what was the summit of one eminence proved to be the only base of another. At length they reached a little plan where the drivers stopped to rest the mules, whence a scene of such extent and magnificence opened below, as drew even from Madame Montoni a note of admiration. Emily lost, for a moment, her sorrows in the immensity of nature.
Succubus
The succubus is characterized as a
female counterpart of the incubus. The core of this belief is said to
stem from the legend in Jewish folklore of a demon named Lilith. In later
Jewish literature, Lilith is identified as Adam's first wife who ran from him
instead of acting as his subservient. Following, God sent three angels to bring
her back to Adam. If she refused, one of her children would be killed
each day. Lilith refused and, in an act of vengeance, vowed that she
would bring harm to future infants of other mothers. Belief in Lilith
still persists, in some cultures, to this day.
Example: Roasrio
/ Mathilda is a compelling instance
of a succubus, bent upon awakening the sexual desires of Lewis's Monk and
leading him to destruction.
--Lauren Gibson
Supernatural
Gadgetry
Supernatural gadgetry refers to the
physical elements in Gothic works that represent the means by which the various
supernatural beings and or powers display their presence and uncanny
abilities. Some common examples of supernatural props are "vocal and
mobile portraits; veiled statues that come to life; animated skeletons; doors,
gates, portals, hatchways, and other means of egress which open and close
independently and inappropriately; secret messages or manuscripts delivered by
specters; forbidden chambers or sealed
compartments; and casket lids seen
in the act of rising" (Frank 437).
Example: Supernatural gadgetry can
be found in John and A. L. Aikin's "Sir
Bertrand; A Fragment". When Sir Bertrand first attempts to enter the
antique mansion, the light moves about by some unknown power, and the door
mysteriously slams shut as soon as the knight enters the castle. And a casket
lid mysteriously opens to reveal a sarcophogal belle
dame.
--Drew McCray
Superstition
A pivotal term for the religious and political dimensions of Gothic Literature,
especially its reception. "Superstition" generally gathered its
sharply negative connotations in the late 18th century from two sources:
1) Protestant disdain for the ritualistic and
miraculous character of Catholic worship; 2) rationalist opposition to
unexamined systems of belief that impeded the search for truth (see the early
Wordsworth: “Science with joy saw Superstition fly /
Before the lustre of Religion's eye; . . . / No shadowy forms entice the soul
aside, /Secure she walks,
Philosophy her guide"). The term is also frequently invoked by
conservative writers to characterize the potential volatility of the masses (The
Monthly Review, 1794: "that superstition which debilitates the mind,
that ignorance which propagates terror"). Or it can figure as a kind
of cultural malaise, a psychic compensation for a time of troubles (Wordsworth
in his "Preface" to The Borderers on the character of Rivers,
but also of his age: "Having shaken off the obligations of religion
and morality in a dark and tempestuous age, it is probable that such a
character will be infected with a tinge of superstition"). In his
discussion of the sublime, Kant distinguishes the good religious life, which is
characterized by a kind of quiet sublimity, from superstition: "The
latter establishes in the mind, not reverence for the sublime, but fear and
apprehension of the all-powerful Being to whose will the terrified man sees
himself subject, without according Him any high esteem."
Early critics of the Gothic constantly accuse it of appealing to and fueling
readers' inclination for "superstition."
Example: (from Lorne Macdonald of the
Freud’s Unheimlich
(the Uncanny)
"For Freud, the uncanny
derives its terror not from something external, alien, or unknown but--on the
contrary--from something strangely familiar which defeats our efforts to
separate ourselves from it"
(Morris 222).
According to Freud, we find things
to be uncanny (unheimlich) when they are
familiar to us (heimlich or “belonging
to the home") yet also somehow foreign or disturbing. Uncanny feelings can arise when something
seemingly inconsequential in our everyday lives calls forth repressed content
stemming from
past experience, especially
experiences linking back to childhood and our passage into sexual awareness.
Examples:
A non-gothic example of this train of association can be found in Virginia
Woolf’s story "The
Mark on the Wall." The story in itself isn’t all that scary, but it
is a good example of the uncanny. Woolf's story tells of a woman who notices a
small mark on the wall just above the mantle. Rather than getting up from her
chair to investigate the mark, she sits and ponders what the mark could be—exploring everything
from a small nail hole to the shadow of some small protrusion. The mark itself
isn’t all that
unfamiliar—after all how many marks do we see upon walls on a
daily basis? The mark however does evoke a number of strange thoughts within
the narrator, including a lyrical meditation about people who lived in the
house before her.
Another,
more Gothic example is "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Gilman. Here again
we see a story centered upon something that is very familiar, wallpaper, which
yet evokes strange feelings and hallucinations in the character. Many
critics discuss Dickens' ghost stories as prime specimens of unheimlich.
See
Freud’s seminal essay on
E. T. A. Hoffman's "The Sandman" (“The Uncanny” [1919]), in which he
explains Nathaniel's terrified association of the Sandman, an old
and arguably benevolent device to get children to sleep, with the loss of
sight.
~Jody Kemp
Transformations (Shape-changing)
The
metamorphosis of one being into another.
Examples: H. G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau
and Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde feature horrid transformations
as part of their warning about the dangers of unreflective scientific
progress. King's protean It takes the convention
to furthest extreme.
Unreliable
Narrator
A narrator tells a story and determines the story’s point of
view. An unreliable narrator, however, does not understand the importance of a particular
situation or makes an incorrect conclusion or assumption about an event that
he/she witnesses. An important issue in determining the
The Turn of the Screw.
Vampire
A word of Slavonic origin, a vampire is a
preternatural being of a malignant nature (or a reanimated corpse) who seeks
nourishment and often bodily harm by sucking the blood of the living. Usually
but not always described as highly sexual beings, vampires are often but not
exclusively found in European folklore.
Examples of vampires found in Gothic Literature
include John Polidori's "The Vampyre,"
Bram Stroker's Dracula (which tells the story of
a Transylvanian vampire Count Dracula who can only be defeated by the occultist
Van Helsing), and Ann Rice's Interview with the
Vampire, which brings to the forefront the old bloodsucker's status as a
villain-hero and even (gasp) invites our sympathy for him.
Visit UVa's exhibition on the Vampire for more
information and images.
--Kelsie
Mitchell
Villain-Hero
(Satanic, Promethean, Byronic Hero)
The villain of a story who either 1) poses as
a hero at the beginning of the story or 2) simply possesses enough heroic
characteristics (charisma, sympathetic past, etc) so that either the reader or
the other characters see the villain-hero as more than a simple
charlatan or bad guy. Three closely related types exist:
· Satanic Hero: a Villain-Hero whose nefarious
deeds and justifications of them make him a more interesting character than the
rather bland good hero. Example: The origin of this prototype comes from
Romantic misreadings of
· Promethean: a Villain-Hero who has done good but
only by performing an overeaching
or rebellious act. Prometheus from ancient Greek mythology saved mankind
but only after stealing fire and ignoring Zeus' order that mankind should be
kept in a state of subjugation. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is
tellingly subtitled the "Modern Prometheus."
· Byronic Hero: a later variation of the "anthithetically mixed" Villain-Hero. Aristocratic,
suave, moody, handsome, solitary, secretive, brilliant, cynical, sexually
intriguing, and nursing a secret wound, he is renowned because of his fatal
attraction for female characters and readers and continues to occasion debate
about gender issues. Example: Byron's Childe Harold and, more gothically, Manfred are the best examples, but this
darkly attractive and very conflicted male figure surfaces everywhere in the
19th and 20th century gothic.
--Paul
Quinnell
The Wandering
Jew
Also known as Ahasuerus, Cartaphilus, Malchus, or John Buttadeus. The term originates from a legend about a
Jew who either ridiculed Jesus or refused to allow him to rest at his door on
his way to the 
cross. As a result, Jesus condemned the Jew
to roam the earth until judgement day. Some
variations of the legend connect this figure to the story of Cain. God
condemned Cain for killing Abel and cursed him to wander the earth with a mark
upon his forehead to protect him. In Gothic works, the Wandering Jew
often symbolizes the curse of immortality. Some characteristics include
large, black, flashing eyes; a look of deep melancholy; a black velvet band
across his forehead; slow steps; a vast knowledge of distant countries and events from long ago (Railo
191-7).
Examples: from Matthew Lewis' The Monk. The Wandering Jew known as "the
stranger" says: "No one is adequate to comprehending the misery
of my lot! Fate obliges me to be
constantly in movement. I am not permitted to pass more than a fortnight
in the same place. I have no friend in the world, and from the
restlessness of my destiny I never can acquire one. Fain would I lay down my
miserable life, for I envy those who enjoy the quiet of the grave but death
eludes me, and flies from my embrace"
(169).
Also see the example from Percy Shelley's St.Irvyne. According to Wade Nichols Krueger,
the following description of the character Wolfstein
suggests a connection to the Wandering Jew: "Driven from his native
country by an event which imposed upon him an insuperable barrier to ever again
returning thither, possessing no friends, not having one single resource from
which he might obtain support, where could the wretch, the exile, seek for an
asylum but with those whose fortunes, expectations, and characters were
desperate, and marked as desperately, by fate, as his own?" (36).
--Angela Colson
Werewolf
In European folklore, a werewolf is a normal human by
day that turns into a wolf at night. These wolves eat people, animals, or even
corpses. The condition can be hereditary, or acquired through a werewolf bite.
Also, some werewolves are able to control when they change shape, while others
are unavoidably turned by the fullmoon. In countries
where wolves are not common animals, people can change into other dangerous
animals. There is a psychological condition for people who believe themselves to be werewolves, called lycanthropy.
Example:
--Jessica Dunlap
Witches and
Witchcraft
Within Gothic Fiction, the witch is normally
depicted as an elderly hag-like crone or as a beautiful, seductive woman (and
she is frequently both). However, the term witch applies not only to
these stereotypes but also to Gypsies, heretics, and women of loose
virtue. Witches, in Gothic Literature, are able to perform various acts
of witchcraft including "divination; communing with spirits of the dead; maleficia and heresy; sexual magic; healing and white
magic" (Ringel 254). This depiction of
witches and witchcraft is quite common within Gothic Tales and has seemingly
set the standard within the minds of the readers.
Example: