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Among all the literary genres, the Gothic emerged as a new device, a new starting point to explore different ideas that did not fit properly in the already well known fields of Art. In 1764, Horace Walpole opened a new path with his Castle of Otranto, which is considered to be the first pure Gothic Novel. This novel contains the most typical Gothic elements that many authors and artists have been interested in and have applied to their own works. One hundred years later, the Gothic suffered several transformations and we can consider many works of literature that hold some innovations in the field. This essay focuses its study on three great works of fiction in the fin de siècle period Dracula, The turn of the Screw and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We will analyse the resemblances and new features, concerning the Gothic tradition firstly stated by Walpole, that these works show and the elements within them that inflate the narrative technique with that atmosphere of fear and mystery so common in Gothic works.
Needless to say, not only did the Castle of Otranto influence the Novel but also other fields of literature such as Drama and Poetry. Moreover, the Gothic devices mixed together with the already existing ones, rising in some cases the feelings of the reader or the audience. Many authors have argued that the main purpose of the Gothic fiction is to arouse new reactions in the people and provoke fear and terror. In this way we can see the Gothic as a means of evasion from the common feelings and sensations, experimenting a new conciousness of the mind
It was a new literary form in the late nineteenth century. At that time, the purpose of Gothic fiction, like that of the Sentimental novel, to which it was closely allied, was to educate the reader's feelings through his identification with the feelings of the characters; to arouse his "sympathy", as the aesthetics of sensibility demanded, by evoking pity and fear; and to explore the mind of man and the causes of evil in it, so that evil might be avoided and the virtue fostered (…). Gothic fiction has been called escape literature, intended to inspire terror for terror's sake .
What Elizabeth MacAndrew points out in this extract of the preface of her work The Gothic Tradition in Fiction is that we can establish connentions between the reader and the characters in the Gothic novel. When the reader identifies himself in the work of fiction, he feels what the fictional character feels and has the same emotions. Thus, the Gothic uses this phenomenon to transmit fear and horror. The use of realistic elements in Dracula, The Turn of the Screw and Dr. Kekyll and Mr. Hyde makes this fear grow because the readers keep in mind the possibility that this events described could happen, that they could come to their own reality, and create disorder and chaos in the modern world. Just because Gothic has always been seen as the bearer of uncontrollable evil forces, and when they are introduced in civilized areas, they break up the calmness. Before this, the Gothic remained in rural or wild and exotic settings such as castles and forests, places that were far from the reader, and although he could have fear of it, he felt secure in his comfortable home in front of his chimney.
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Another important device in the Gothic tradition is symbolism. Many of the most common elements that create the story can make the reader associate them with his own present experiences. Moreover, these tales can awaken bad or unpleasant memories hidden in the mind. Elizabeth MacAndrew states the point that this symbolism can function as a way of shaping the characteristic forms of the Gothic tale. Thus, natural forces can symbolize the state of mind of a particular character of the story
The common purpose,which ties these works together, emerges from the peculiar form of symbolism found in Gothic tales. In this literature, the entire tale is symbolic. In analysing it, one has to speak of storms that "stand for" the villain's anger or heroines that more closely represent a concept of virtue than flesh-and-blood women .
This symbolism, with its multiple connotations and interpretations, creates a sense of mystery in the Gothic literature, and confuses the mind of the reader. This can be considered as another example of the effects of the Gothic.
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Bram Stoker's Dracula shares many features with the typical elements of the Gothic tale but it also introduces new changes, changes that surprised the reader and in no case diminished the original purpose of the Gothic.
Dracula has two main settings the castle of the Count in Transilvania, and England. The first of these settings is seen as one of the pure Gothic devices as it appears in Tha Castle of Otranto. Johnathan Harker arrives at a dark and old castle with medieval architecture, surrounded by precipices and neverending forests; everything seems to be immersed in an eternal night. Some parts of the castle are in ruins, and this unknown atmosphere causes claustrophobia to the man who comes from the modern world. Johnathan describes in a surpised tone what he contemplates in his way to the Count's dwelling
We kept on ascending, with occasional periods of quick descent, but in the main always ascending. Suddenly I became conscious of the fact that the driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in 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 moonlight sky .
Through the words of Harker, the reader is introduced in a new world that is unknown for him and discovers that his nightmares can come true. The fear of Harker is the fear of the reader. That atmosphere of mystery and suspense is present in many parts of the story and one of them is carried out in the first chapters of Dracula, specifically when Stoker describes the arrival and captivity of Harker by the Count. The silence of the passengers in the carriage and the incredulity of Johnathan before this behaviour can have different interpretations. An english man arrives at a strange country with customs full of superstitions and mysteries. He does not know anything about them, so the fear he can experience differs from the reactions of the people that are conscious of these beliefs. Stoker is aware of this and puts everything together with the use of gothic vocabulary
I saw around us a ring of wolves, with white teeth and lolling red tongues, with long, sinewy limbs and shaggy hair. They were a hundred times more terrible in the grim silence which held them ever when they howled. For myself, I felt a sort of paralysis of fear. It is only when a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand their true import .
In this extract from the diary of Johnathan Harker, Stoker includes the wolves with fearful howling and later on, Count Dracula makes a curious appreciation of it before Harker, saying it sounds to him as music. Someone who says that is seen as a strange person, and in fact, Dracula is a strange being. This character was shaped by Stoker in a way that almost everything he says is peculiar and sometimes ironic. The reader can imagine his tone of the voice, which is normally calm and in some cases impulsive and intimidatory
The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation "Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!" (…) "Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely and leave something of the happyness you bring .
Moreover, the contrast in the movements of the Count, full of anti-natural gestures, reaches its maximum domain in the moment when Johnathan discovers the Count creeping in the walls of the castle .
One of the most remembered episodes in Dracula is without any doubt, the encounter between Van Helsing and his group and the vampirized Lucy Westenra. The technique Stoker applied to the setting of this scene is very peculiar and transmits perfectly a sense of mystery, and later, horror. He starts by describing an unknown figure in ghostly terms. Afterwards, he reveals the identity of this figure through the reaction of Arthur Holmwood, as Seward tells in his diary. Arthur was going to be the future Lucy's husband. He is supposedly to be the most suffering character when seeing the macabre transformation, so it is not a coincidence that Stoker chose him to kill this vampire. This resource adds terror to the story
We saw a white figure advance a dim white figure, which held something dark at his breast. The figure stopped, and at the moment a ray of moonlight fell between the masses of driving clouds and showed in startling prominence a dark-haired woman, dressed in the cerements of the grave (…) My own heart grew cold on ice, and I could hear the grasp of Arthur, as we recognized the features of Lucy Westenra. Lucy Westenra, but yet now changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity of voluptuous wantonness .
All the aspects we have already seen above can more or less be found in a gothic tale as The Castle of Otranto but this varies when we consider the second main setting of Dracula. Then, we are no more in the dark castle and we can feel the terror behind us, in our modern world. This novelty is an attempt to show the monster as a continuous threat, a monster that can reach every part of the world and cannot be stopped. People identify this creature as an enemy both for his inner and outer order, as a symptom for their agony and despair. When this happens, the Gothic fiction reaches its objective, because it pulls out the most obscure fears from our imaginations.
But Dracula is not the only monster that threatens human integrity and Stoker presents three creatures that are the constant life-suckers of Johnathan Harker. This is a contemplation of another disparity in the traditional Gothic elements, where the usual is to find an impulsive and tyrannical male who has the power over women. In Dracula, Johnathan is controlled by women who obly him to do intolerable things endangering his actual mental state. Moving on to the character of Mina, she is also a new archetype because although being threatened by the Count, this threat is sweet and becomes passionate when Mina desires him. This is the power of the vampire, that brings a disorder that his victims tend to adore as it functions as a liberation of social boundaries, particularly those held in the Victorian society of the nineteenth century.
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The entire setting in The Turn of the Screw is an old big house that gives that feeling of mystery and suspense. This is an ideal excuse to include the Gothic figure of the ghost. Henry James makes use of this supernatural device to create a complex story where an oppressed heroine faces the danger by her own. We can see here her resemblance with Johnathan Harker who unaware of the dangers, enters the Count's castle. But she is not entirely alone as Harker, and she has someone with whom she can share her anxieties and fears. However, Mrs. Grose is a character full of doubts and the reader may notice that she sometimes sides with the governess and sometimes not.
The most memorable scenes in The Turn of the Screw are the sudden encounters between the governess and the ghosts, and for them, Henry James does not make necessarily use of the Gothic vocabulary to place the scene. In this way, some of the appearances of the ghosts occur in broad daylight. This technique assures an effect of surprise in the reader and fear reaches him more easily. We have an example when the governess contemplates the spirit of Peter Quint for the first time
He did stand there! but right up, beyond the lawn and at the very top of the tower to which, on that first morning, little Flora had conducted me (…) It produced in me, this figure, in the clear twilight, I remember, two distinct gasps of emotion, which were, sharply, the shock of my first and that of my second surprise (…) the man who met my eyes was not the person I had precipitately supposed .
It is worth thinking about that resource of the eyes that is so well put into practice by Henry James. The eyes of the governess are the vehicle between the worlds of the living and the dead. The descriptions of the gazes are intense and powerful, transmiting that great sense of horror that fits so well in the whole story.
The apparent stability in the mansion at the beginning of the narration is the basis for the hidden disruption. Soon after arriving at Bly, the governess starts to think that there is something strange waiting for her
It was not that I didn't wait, on this occasion, for more, for I was rooted as deeply as I was shaken. Was there a "secret" at Bly, a mystery of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected confinement? .
At this point in the story, the governess is not sure of what is really happening and she asks herself questions about it, developing several suppositions. This lack of information makes her feel unsafe and arises the mystery in the house. She talks about a "secret" and also "a mystery of Udolpho" which is a clear reference to Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, another Gothic tale where the heroine is under the power of a wicked man. In The Turn of the Screw this being is represented by Peter Quint, who pursues the governess relentlessly. But there is another ghost whose evil personality is not as deeply defined as that of Quint
James in The Turn of the Screw divides the figures of the heroine and the witch, but he does so only to confound them the more. We cannot know ultimately if there is any difference between Miss Jessel and the governess, since the one may inhabit the mind of the other. If we could keep them separate, moreover, we still would not know wether Miss Jessel were evil or only seen as evil .
MacAndrew' words suggest us that the dark side of Miss Jessel is doubtful. Therefore, we can suppose that it is only the result of Quint's influence, and here it is clear his resemblance with Dracula as both are Gothic elements of transgression and disorder. Miss Jessel is Lucy Westenra, and the governess the almost "untouched" Mina Harker.
The fact is that the governess becomes stronger through the development of the story and what she fears the most, is to fail in protecting the children. But although the reader may sympathise with the children, he then discovers that their dark side. This is another innovation in the Gothic, as Henry James includes in the novel a boy and a girl that represent both innocence and horror. This is again a matter of contrasts that results in in a much more shocking response in the readers, and we have the best example in Miles. He is a child, but expresses himself as an adult. During his conversations with the governess, he speaks with the seriousness and irony of a man, treating her sometimes in a tone of superiority. This behaviour leads to confussion and we cannot tell if he is speaking seriously or if he is laughing at the governess …this voice tinkled out. "I say, you there come in." It was a gaiety in the gloom (…) "What is it" I asked "that you think of?" What in the world - my dear, but you?" .
As the children are closer to the monster Quint, they become monsters, and they are no more what they used to be. The narrator gives us a dreadful description of Flora once she knows how special they are
She was not at these times a child, but an old woman, and that description of her could not have been more strikingly confirmed than in the way in which, for all answer to this, she simply showed me, without a concession, an admission of her eyes, a countenance of deeper and deeper, of indeed suddenly quite fixed reprobation .
We then reach the point in which the governess is afraid of the children and she decides to abandon the mansion without telling anyone. There is no explicit reason for this as there can be multiple motives but it is true that she is araid of the increasing power of Miles
For the first time since my arrival I wanted to get away from him. As I paused beneath the high east window and listened to the sounds of worship I was taken with an impulse that might master me, I felt, completely should I give it the last encouragement. I might easily put an end to my predicament by getting away altogether .
Her words describe a great moment of tension and in order to avoid fatal consequences she chooses to escape from terror. It is true that The Turn of the Screw is a ghosts story but it also focuses in the monstruosity of children till considering the Gothic theme of the ghost as an excuse to elaborate a narration about children over adults.
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With The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde we return to the urban setting, as in the second part of Dracula. Stevenson portrays a Gothic London, making use of the fog to create an effect of mystery. He also describes dark narrow streets and strange old houses (Hyde's dwelling). This shadowy London can be seen as a big ruined castle in the Gothic tradition. This "castle" has its monster, but it is a very special one a monster that hides himself in the body of a serious and respectable member of the Victorian society.
Stevenson sets the character of Mr. Hyde, identification of horror but also of freedom. This evil side of Dr. Jekyll is free to do the things that society does not do, and in a way this is against society. He is, as Dracula and Quint, an element of disruption. Kelly Hurley identifies this as "the abhuman"
In the Gothic fiction one may witness the relentless destruction of "the human" and the unfolding in it stead of what I will call, to borrow an evocative term from supernaturalist author William Hope Hodgson, the "abhuman". The abhuman subject is a non-quite-human subject, characterized by its morphic variability continually in danger of becoming not-itself, becoming other .
That theme of becoming other is the central subject in Stevenson's novella. Dr. Jekyll represents the typical upright Victorian man, so when his alter ego appears, he is forced to maintain his integrity, concealing the bad acts carried on by Mr. Hyde. The episode that reveals the incident with the child in the street serves as an example. But the true fact is that there is a continuous fear that besets the doctor. He is afraid of losing his dignity and that everyone sees him as a different person, as something horrible. But we could see Mr. Hyde as the way of fulfilling Dr. Jekyll's aspirations, as we guess from the doctor's words in his Full Statement of the Case
The drug had no discriminating action; it was neither diabolical nor divine; but it shook the doors of the prisonhouse of my dispossition; (…) At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake my ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and the thing that was projected was Edwars Hyde. Hence, although I had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that incongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement I had already learned to despair .
If we certainly consider Hyde as the "breaker" of the libidinous nature of Jekyll, the doctor can be analyzed along with Lucy Westenra and Jonathan Harker, who also escape from the strict laws of routine and liberate themselves into aworld of passion and freedom. As a consequence, the resemblances between Count Dracula and Hyde are much more obvious.
Stevenson also uses the theme of the double character to give the reader a sense of constant threat by an "invisible" monster in the form of an apparent well being. But the monster Mr. Hyde differs from the others in Dracula and The Turn of the Screw as this one is not tyrannical, but anyway, he is a disruptive element in society. His similarity with Jack the Ripper adds anguish to the mind of the reader, and as we have already said, the dark decriptions of the city recreate Gothic atmospheres
It was a fine dry night; frost in the air; the streets as clean as a ball-room floor; the camps, unshaken by any wind, drawing a regular pattern of light and shadow. By ten o'clock, when the shops were closed , the by street was very solitary, and, in spite of the low growl of London from all around, very silent, small sounds carried far; domestic sounds out of the houses were clearly audible on either side of the roadway .
With this short novel, Stevenson evocates terror by means of a monster born in the deepest dark side of the human. The monster in it, is the result of a combination of repressed feelings that can lead to the destruction of the self.
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The three novels we have discussed above show clear connections between them also when we look at the way in which they have been written. The narratives found in Dracula and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are told by different characters. There is no interconnection with the same narrator. In Dracula, the story is told in the form of diaries and the whole plot is linked with the fragments of every character. However, we do not always find all the information we are looking for and there are gaps or unclear explanations that add a sense of mystery and misunderstanding. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde the obscurity of the plot is a redundant feature for the reader, that is totally clarified at the end in Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case. The presence of Dracula in Stoker's novel is scarce and all his appearances are told by others. However, in The Turn of the Screw this situation is different and we have two narrators, one inserted within the other. Emily Bront 's Whuthering Heights is another example of this alternate plot. As Donald Lawler says In a Gothic story, to organize, complete, or resolve the narrative is, aesthetically, to escape the nightmare of the Gothic world .
Despite the differences these three novels have with the traditional Gothic tale, they all share a three parts scheme Firstly the narrative presents a monster or another element of disruption in the order of a system. Secondly we are told the fear that this monster causes and finally how the order is restored and the creature destroyed. Exceptions to this rule can be found in authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and his short Gothic tales. These stories, as many others inmersed in the Gothic tradition, set the action in a remote historical time, but the three works we have seen are described in a specific place and time. This is another novelty in the Gothic, that has also been discussed by Stephen Arata
Bram Stoker's Dracula (187) participates in that "modernising" of Gothic which occurs at the close of the nineteenth century. Like Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (186) and Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray (181), Stoker's novel achieves its effects by bringing the terror to the Gothic home. While Gothic novelists had traditionally displaced their stories in time or locate, these writers root their action firmly in the modern world .
That sense of decadence that was so evident in the fin de siècle period served as a great source in the exploration of the mind of the reader carried on by the Gothic writers . In order to avoid the degeneration of the man and his world, people fight against the power of the abhuman. Thus, the detective side in Gothic works is patent, and Van Helsing and his goup, Mr. Utterson and the governess in The Turn of the Screw try to discover the origin of the badness and destroy it to put everything into its original order.
The Gothic literature includes many different features and its complexity is a source for any writer who wants to create his work giving to it a sense of mystery and terror. As we have seen, an effective way of boosting the fear of the reader is to present common situations and then include a sudden change by means of an exterior threat. But sometimes that is not enough and the writer has to look for new conceptions of terror, new ways of expressing the decadence of the man, and the three novels we have discussed, as many others in the fin the siècle period present a new turn in the Gothic, in an attempt to maintain the main purpose of it, that is to cause fear.
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