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Gothic Versus Romantic: A Revaluation of The Gothic Novel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert D. Hume
Robert D. Hume*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
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Abstract

The Gothic novel is defined not by its stock devices—ruined abbeys and the like—but by its use of a particular atmosphere for essentially psychological purposes. Mary Shelley, Maturin, Melville, and Faulkner develop a form crudely forged by Walpole, Mrs. Radcliffe, and M. G. Lewis. Their Gothic novels attempt to immerse the reader in an extraordinary world in which ordinary standards and moral judgments become meaningless and good and evil are seen as inextricably intertwined. Gothic writing is closely related to romantic: both are the product of a profound reaction against everyday reality and conventional religious explanations of existence. But while romantic writing is the product of faith in an ultimate order, Gothic writing is a gloomy exploration of the limitations of man. The one attempts to transcend the flux of the purely temporal to find joy and security in a higher beauty; the other is mired in the temporal and within it can find only absurdities and unresolvable ambiguities.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 84 , Issue 2 , March 1969 , pp. 282 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1969

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References

1 Historically, the term “Gothic” is applied to the novels of Walpole, Mrs. Radcliffe, M. G. Lewis, Mary Shelley, and Maturin. It can be extended to include such works as Wuthering Heights, Moby Dick, and Faulkner's Sanctuary. The work of Poe, Hawthorne, and Charles Brockden Brown, though not discussed here, is actually part of the original Gothic tradition; at that period literary fashions in America ran about a generation behind those in Europe.

2 Samuel Chew, The Nineteenth Century and After, Book iv of A Literary History of England, ed. A. C. Baugh, 2nd ed. (New York, 1967), p. 1196.

3 David Daiches, A Critical History of English Literature, 2 vols. (London, 1960), ii, 740.

4 That Gothicism is closely related to romanticism is perfectly clear, but it is easier to state the fact than to prove it tidily and convincingly. There is a persistent suspicion that Gothicism is a poor and probably illegitimate relation of romanticism, and a consequent tendency to treat it that way. There are those, indeed, who would like to deny the relationship altogether. James Foster, in his History of the Pre-Romantic Novel in England (New York, 1949), pp. 202, 186–189, ignores Walpole almost completely, while discussing Ann Radcliffe's work as “a special development of the sentimental novel” (p. 262) and dismissing Gothicism as mummery imported into sentimental fiction.

5 Montague Summers calls the form romantic escapism; J. M. S. Tompkins blames its appearance on incipient romanticism and the bad taste of contemporary readers; Lowry Nelson believes that Gothic novels are the product of their authors' pursuit of “daydreams and wish fulfillment.” See Montague Summers, The Gothic Quest (London: Fortune Press, n.d.), pp. 12–13; J. M. S. Tompkins, The Popular Novel in England (Lincoln, Neb., 1961), pp. 208–209; Lowry Nelson, Jr., “Night Thoughts on the Gothic Novel,” YR, lii (Dec. 1962), 238.

6 The Castle of Otranto, ed. W. S. Lewis (London, 1964), “Preface to the Second Edition,” p. 7.

7 Northrop Frye, “Towards Defining an Age of Sensibility,” ELH, xxiii (June 1956), 144–152.

8 Otranto, “Preface to the First Edition,” p. 4.

8 For this set of distinctions see Montague Summers, p. 29.

10 Tompkins, p. 208.

11 Tompkins, p. 227.

12 See Clara F. Mclntyre, “The Later Career of the Elizabethan Villain-Hero,” PMLA, XL (1925), 874–880.

13 I refer specifically to Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) and The Scottish Chiefs (1810), and Scott's Waverley (1814). Thaddeus is more a contemporary romance than a historical one, but the method employed is much the same.

14 Otranlo, “Preface to the First Edition,” p. 4.

15 The Mysteries of Udolpho, ed. Bonamy Dobrée (London, 1966), pp. 79–80.

16 Critical Review, Vol. xix (Feb. 1797); reprinted in Coleridge's Miscellaneous Criticism, ed. T. M. Raysor (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), p. 373.

17 Biographia Literaria, ed. J. Shawcross, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1965), ii, 5–6.

18 This widely quoted passage is from a posthumous article in the New Monthly Magazine, Vol. vii (1826).

19 Critics have often called The Monk a work of terror-Gothic, but such a description both fails to differentiate it from Mrs. Radcliff e's work and runs counter to the aesthetics of the day.

20 This progression is suggested by Lowry Nelson, pp. 256–257.

21 Mrs. Radcliffe's Schedoni is close to this group; in The Italian (1797) she seems clearly to show the influence of The Monk.

22 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (New York: Doubleday. n.d.), p. 48.

23 Frankenstein, pp. 50–51.

24 Obviously both terror and horror can be established in an “ordinary” setting. But this would not fulfill the Gothic novel's need to escape the interference of everyday standards and moral judgment.

25 Perhaps it should be noted that the horrors in Vatkek are set on so grand a scale that the story verges on burlesque. The result is a lighter, almost ironic tone which is quite different from the serious blood and thunder of The Monk.

26 See Nelson, p. 251.

27 Critical Review, pp. 373–376.

28 Nelson's terms, pp. 247–248.

28 Sanctuary (New York: Modern Library, 1959), pp. 151, 216–217.

30 Otranlo, “Preface to the Second Edition,” pp. 7–8.

31 Montague Summers makes a distinction between literature which is a reflection of life and literature which leads away from life, calling the latter the expression of the romantic spirit (Summers, pp. 17–18). This can scarcely be the case; romantic literature de-emphasizes external action, but if it led away from life it would be either worthless or pointless. Great romantic—and Gothic—literature has more than amusement value.

32 See D. G. James, Matthew Arnold and the Decline of English Romanticism (Oxford, 1961), p. 21, and Ch. i, passim; and D. D. Perkins, The Quest for Permanence (Cambridge, Mass., 1965).

33 Biographie Literaria, i, 202. See my forthcoming essay in J A AC, “Kant and Coleridge on Imagination.”

34 In a much later period of his life (after having abandoned the romantic poetic endeavor and turned to the Anglican Church) Coleridge himself seems to take the view that imagination is used in serious writing and fancy in less profound work (Table Talk, 1833). This later view has often been used—erroneously, in my opinion—as a gloss on the definitions in the Biographia Literaria (1817).

35 I have concentrated almost entirely on Gothic as a novel form, but there is certainly Gothic poetry as well—“Chris-tabel,” for example. “The Eve of St. Agnes,” despite some architectural and atmospheric resemblances, does not, I believe, so qualify.

36 Walpole uses the terms “fancy” and “imagination” interchangeably.

37 Otranto, “Preface to the Second Edition,” pp. 7–8.

38 Biographia Liter aria, ii, 12.