Unearthing Gothic Literature Part 5, Split Personalities & Masking the Dark Side

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Gothic fiction features some perfect examples of split personalities and doubles, but what is their significance in the genre?

Dichotomy of lust and virtue

Dorian Gray is a man living a criminal and immoral existence indulging in London drug dens and orgies whilst also attempting to be perceived as a model of society. The two parts of his personality are in conflict with one another. Desire versus moral standing. In Victorian society there was a belief that immoral criminal acts were only performed by the low classes and thus Dorian inhabits and closes the divide between the upper and lower classes.

Picture of Dorian Gray exhibits a subtle example of the conflict between righteous living and repressed desires. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is the more obvious choice of text. Mr Hyde is seen trampling a young girl to death which he then holds his alter ego, Mr Jekyll, responsible. Hyde was an interesting choice of names for the villain who hides within the respectable gentleman Jekyll.

Such works could be said to demonstrate need of an outlet for sexual behaviour in a hypocritical 19^th Century society that considered itself pure.

Gothic texts also encompass shape shifting human/ beast transformations to represent the savage desires within us. Human by day, beast by night!

Unearthing Gothic Part 3, Mental Disorders

Throughout Gothic fiction you will find numerous examples of characters with mental disorders, many of them written at a time when little was known about such conditions. Perhaps part of the attraction to works on the malfunctioning of the mind had to do with curiosity of a subject which was mysterious.

Feminist readings

A feminist reading into the theme of ‘madness’ in Gothic Lit might establish that the inability to be in control of one’s mind leaves the character powerless. Madness was then a device for depicting the powerlessness of women to men in male dominated society.

However, not all characters indicating mental disorders in Gothic are female. (see Roderick Usher in Poe’s The fall of the House of Usher or the narrator in Poe’s Telltale Heart who becomes obsessed with the old man’s eye.

Female characters exhibiting what was often termed as ‘hysteria’ were generally locked away in attics etc. so that they could be contained. It is the case in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman published in The New England Magazine in 1892. The woman’s husband keeps her shut away in one room of the house as he claims that she is suffering from. He is himself a physician and therefore an authority on the subject of course!

‘A slight hysterical tendency,’ he says.

Shut away from the world and with no stimuli, she begins to obsess over the yellow wallpaper and eventually begins to see women behind it. She sees herself as one of these women. When the rental of the house is up she refuses to leave as she is afraid of the outside world and has developed an attachment to her yellow surroundings as a bird that has become cage bound even when it is allowed to fly. If reading this from a feminist angle then man has the power to control.

Then there is the intermingling of reality and delusion, just as Oates’ Goat Girl is an intermingling of animal and human, so does the women in this story become a blending into yellow wallpaper. The confines of domesticity if you like!

Aside from this there is this human fascination with the mind which I have discussed above. Much of the genre of horror is based on psychological fear of the unknown as opposed to blood guts and gore.

In Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher Roderick calls upon his old friend to comfort him from his suffering of malady which in today would be termed hypochondria, hyperesthesia and nervous anxiety! His sister is also suffering from some unknown illness and frequently enters trance like states. She would nowadays be described as cataleptic. A condition whereby the patient often suffers symptoms such as rigidity of the body, fixed limbs, and a slowing down of all body functions. A scientific explanation for her illness is much less alarming than the mysterious description in the text. The Victorians just loved to be frightened by such things.





Gothic Literature Part 2 - The Grotesque

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'Ladies and gentlemen, why have you come here? to be delighted...or disgusted?'

The word grotesque comes from Italian grotte or cave.  Such places were filled with various rocks, animals and vegetation and therefore the term grottechi, or as we would say grotesque came into literature to describe the combining of human, beast and vegetable elements.

There are many fine examples of grotesque characters throughout Gothic Literature, a genre which delightfully indulges in anything sickening, horrific and repulsive.  However grotesque in Literature is a hard adjective to define. Here are some of my thoughts.

Animal, vegetable, human intermingling

Take Joyce Oates Secret Observations on The Goat Girl. Here is a character who is seen as grotesque because she inhabits the third space, undefined as goat or human. However although the reader finds her disgusting, we can also empathize with the poor creature who is rejected by the family. Both disgust and empathy are factors which characterize the grotesque.

Then there is Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, born of a human creator he is so grotesque that he is unable to fit into society. Frankenstein’s physical deformities induce negative responses in the reader, that of horror, repulsion and rejection. Such feelings were considered the appropriate responses to arts and architecture that did not conform to the neoclassical ideals of harmony, unification and order.

The grotesque was also used by Shelly as a vehicle to warn against the dangers of attempting to play God and dabble in experimental science.

The attraction of the grotesque

Grotesque characters spark interest. It seems the reader is attracted, fascinated by them and we find intrigue and enjoyment in reading about characters who are deformed. In Victorian times fair goers could pay to see the Elephant Man or some other unfortunate deformed human being. The grotesque in literature is then an extension of our delight and disgust with anything a bit inappropriate!

The grotesque is not specific to Gothic Literature. Other characters who would classify as grotesque are Gollum in Lord of The Rings who is both repulsive in appearance and behaviour but also pitiable. He is ‘outcasted’ from society by the power of the ring.  Gollum also encompasses mental illness as a clearly paranoid schizophrenic. Interestingly we also find the character comical, he only has to utter the words ‘hobbitses’ or prance about on all fours singing to himself to make us laugh. Comedy is another aspect of the grotesque.

The grotesque in Children’s Literature.

Lewis Carroll’s characters in Alice in Wonderland take on the uncanny aspect of the grotesque. However they were not made disturbing enough as to be unsuitable for a child audience.