Wandering Jew
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Anti-Catholicism
Anti-Catholicism was certainly a sentiment in gothic fiction. As I have discussed in Part One of this series, The Graveyard Poets reacted against the Catholic teachings of St Augustin (whereby self-indulgence was frowned upon.)
Later gothic texts raised the issue of the morally corrupt Catholic through their depiction of sinful clergy (Friars, Monks, Nuns and so forth). Horace Walpole’s character Friar Jerome has a son called Theodore whom the reader realises was conceived by failing to observe his vow of chastity! In The Monk by Andrew Lewis, there is a bleeding nun who was killed by her lover, symbolising the negative views towards immoral living and breaking of sacred vows.
Anti-Semitism
The Wandering Jew appears in several gothic texts i.e. The Melmouth Wanderer and The Monk, symbolising a man who has taunted Jesus and must remain wandering the earth until the second coming of Christ. The Wandering Jew may thus consider himself both punished and alienated. He haunts and represents anti-Semitism in Gothic writings.
The Spanish Inquisition.
Gothic fiction also deals with the subject of the Spanish Inquisition. Many Gothic texts were located in Spain or Italy, such places as represented the Roman Catholic Institution.
The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allen Poe is the story of a tormented prisoner at the time of the Spanish Inquisition. The story is not historically precise; however it deals with the horror and psychological terror of torture.
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