Defining the Gothic: Revisited

Gothic literature is not Gothic architecture, gothic fashion, or gothic music. Gothic literature may contain elements of these other gothic enterprises but a woman with black eye make up; playing a guitar in a cathedral does not necessarily a gothic story make. To explain the gothic you should understand what it is doing, how it does it, what appears Gothic but is not, and why it matters.

To call something gothic should conjure up all sorts of images: gargoyles, women running from abusive barons, ghostly apparitions, and a good bit of fainting. This conjuration that accompanies the use of any word makes defining that word all the more important. Calling a piece of literature gothic should let the reader know that the work deals with uncomfortable emotions, and there likely will not be a typical happy ending. Calling the gothic also should cue other ideas of what one might expect from the story.

           

Gothic tropes include:

Supernatural events – giants, skeletons, ghosts, moving paintings, the undead

Oppression of women – forced marriage, rape, reduced role in deciding one’s own fate

Fear of science

Fear of weather

Fear of the mind – are those ghosts real? Am I imagining this?

A story that occurs in a mysterious or ruined abbey or castle

Oppression by the church

Oppression from one’s past

Forbidden love

Some pieces may contain these elements but are not using them for the gothic purpose. Other pieces may contain only some of these elements.

Harry Potter contains giants, but is it gothic? That element of it fits into the gothic literary genre but you must analyze the piece as a whole.

The gothic should frighten you, or at least make you feel uncomfortable.

Go-Daddy commercials can make you feel uncomfortable, and a beautiful woman kissing a nerdy man is certainly an example of forbidden love but the piece as a whole is not very gothic.

The horror genre contains the same aim as the gothic genre but accomplishes its task in different way. The horror genre may even contain some gothic tropes, but when taken as a whole the piece is called horror. This could be because the piece employs more horror techniques (senseless bloodshed, daisy dukes, large shiny knives, men in masks) but lacks the class and modesty of the gothic.

To call a piece of work gothic, you have to be able to justify it. If you believe Dracula, or Twilight to be gothic you have to follow the evidence. Pieces that are missing some gothic elements may be sufficiently gothic if they don’t pull too much from the horror, or science fiction grab bag. If a key part of the work is intimately gothic then you may deem that piece gothic, even if it takes place aboard a spaceship in the year 2045 and not in a baron’s castle.

There is no checklist for gothic; a piece isn’t gothic just because you have seven check marks in the gothic trope category and only four in horror. Assigning a check mark to tropes does not appropriately represent the significance that the trope plays in the story. Assigning a piece into the gothic genre is not black and white. Something is not simply “Goth” or “not Goth” Instead the gothic represents a spectrum. The Castle of Otranto is very gothic; you can find it just past Beauty and the Beast on the gothic scale. Twilight and James Bond can also be called gothic and you can find those pieces just past Ruby Gloom on the gothic scale.

So in the question should not be “is it Goth or not?” The question should be “How gothic is it?” The previously mentioned black-eyed woman playing a guitar in a cathedral could indeed be gothic. The piece would have to be analyzed for any other gothic tropes, the use of tropes from other genres, the significance of those tropes in the piece, and the purpose of the piece. After all that has been done, one could never decide it is not gothic, one could only decide just how gothic it is.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Stetson

“The Yellow Wall Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson addresses the issue of woman’s inability to confront and solve issues imposed upon them by a male dominated society, in a productive and conventional way. Women in this period were denied the means of usual problem solving, because of their role in society. Men of the period believed women were weak, prone to flights of fancy, unable to decide what was in their best interest, and needed a man to direct their life for them.

            The work begins by the Narrator expressing her concern that the house is unusual, and maybe haunted. Her husband, John, laughs at her and the Narrator says, “one expects that in marriage.” The narrator is concerned but her husband will not take her seriously. John believes that he knows what is right.

            Like his belief that the house is okay, John does not believe that there is anything wrong with his wife’s health. However he has recommended a cure that includes isolation rest, and no work of any kind. The Narrator wishes to see her family, and child but John does not think that would be good for her health. John prescribes scheduled naps, and chastises the Narrator for getting out of bed at night. The Narrator is dissatisfied with their bedroom but John does not allow her to change rooms, and attributes her dislike for the room as a fancy, which she must not indulge.

            The room itself represents the Narrator’s, and women in general, place in society. She cannot change the room even though she finds its alarming and revolting. The bed is nailed down, the windows are barred, and the wallpaper forms a prison for a woman, when viewed in the moonlight. Like the Narrator the woman in the wallpaper is trapped. The Narrator tries to help her escape, but rather than the woman escaping out of the wallpaper, The Narrator escapes into it, or rather into her own head, rejecting the world which has resigned her to a nominal role.

            A man in this period would not have been forced to accept bed rest as a cure for a problem that no one believed was really there at all. He would have been taken seriously, and his opinion would have counted. A man would have had the opportunity to decide for himself that he is well enough to work, or visit his family. If a man were unhappy with his room, he would change it. Women were denied the same paths for seeing their will put into effect. They were something to be conducted by men, their decisions contingent on the decisions of the man. The Narrator is denied this options and must resort to a different sort of problem solving. There is no way to seek change within the system, so she leaves the system.