Origins & Genre

Origins & Genre

The name Gothic Horror comes from a type of architecture from the middle ages. There were a lot of gothic ruins round Britain, and people in the 18th and 19th centuries developed an interest in them. This sparked a love for the mystery behind the ruins and the reason for them being there. The setting in a gothic horror novel is as important as the characters in the book, the reason for this is that without the spooky creepy setting it wouldn't be a gothic novel. For example the book I have read which is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde you have the creepy lab and the big dark back building from his house, you also have the dark dirty streets of London which is where Hyde is hiding out, could almost be seen as a labyrinth of some sort the streets of London being a maze for Mr Hyde to hide in. So without setting that gothic background to the story it wouldn't be a horror.

What started Gothic Horror novels was Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto. This was written in 1764, is considered the first Gothic Horror novel. This started the gothic fiction, which includes horror, death and sometimes romance. Gothic Horror became extremely popular and are still popular today with the famous well known novels for example - Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

We had a lecture with showed us a bit about the background to gothic horror and why it is the way it is and how its been carried through the years.

We watched a youtube video called 'The Gothic' which featured John Bowen. He talks about the ins and out to gothic horror.

He talks about 

How the book The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole inspired loads of movies, books for years. Horace Walpole was inspired to write this book through a dream. This was also the era where gothic architecture was popular which influenced the gothic horror novels. 

Place and Time-Gothic Horror is strange places, wild land scape and also very inspiring places. He relates this to Dracula by saying he suddenly captured by Dracula and is in-prisoned in a violent world. It tries to show the link between the present and the past for example another popular story comes from ghosts inspired stories. This goes back to the point of linking the past with the present.

Powers - He talks about mans inner desires which can be so powerful it makes people do things they don't want to do, this is to vulnerable people. This links to the book I've read where Dr Jekyll gives in to his desires and drinks the potion which makes him into Mr Hyde.

Sexual Power - Gothic novels are quite a lot of the time inspired by horrible sexual power, for example rape, incest, same sex desire. He also talks about how there is normally an innocent desirable women which is very vulnerable and possible triune over her. 

The Uncanny - Something that is new but takes us back to something archaic. Figures that are not quite human but look human. Dolls, wax works these are things that represent the uncanny. 

Crisis - Gothic novels thrive off of political and social crisis. 1790s there was a burst of gothic novels because of the crisis around that time. 

Supernatural - There are two different types of novels ones that use super natural and some that give a natural explanation for things. 

I found it really interesting when John was talking about how crisis inspires gothic horrors because people can relate to them which makes them even scarier and have a deeper meaning to people sometimes. They thrive off of peoples anxiety over social and political change. Science was a very big part of this, when science was becoming more and more in depth people were scared of it and slightly over whelmed with the idea. Thats where Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde came from, the idea that science could take over your body. Also the City became a huge part of Gothic Horror because this was another anxiety that people had, it was growing bigger and bigger, the landscape around them was changing. London city could have been seen as a dark confusing castle in those days, a labyrinth of houses back to back. 

He also talks about the Uncanny how the past could not be forgotten. Victorian mourning traditions became very popular which was almost not letting go of the past and gothic horror brought this to life in literature. For example Victorians had strange mourning traditions like curtains were drawn to show the family were in mourning, clocks stopped at time of death, mirrors were covered with crape or veiling to prevent spirit from getting trapped in the looking glass, black ribbons were hung on the front door to alert the passerby that a death occurred, Wake the body was watched at all times, photographs and death masks were produced of the dead and houses used to be filled with mementos. A lot of gothic horrors would have been inspired by these eerie traditions.

Victorians used to also do Spirit Photography because they had a weird fascination with death and the afterlife. They created this other type of photography called spirit photography, they used double-exposure to create the effect of a spirit within ordinary photography or portrait. They were so obsessed with the after life and paranormal they loved things like this.