Gothic novels in english literature plan introduction the Rise of Gothic Fiction in England

What is Gothic literature?

Emerging in Europe in the 18th century, Gothic literature grew out of the Romantic literary movement. It’s a genre that places strong emphasis on intense emotion, pairing terror with pleasure, death with romance. The Gothic is characterized by its darkly picturesque scenery and its eerie stories of the macabre. It draws its name and aesthetic inspiration from the Gothic architectural style of the Middle Ages ⁠— crumbling castles, isolated aristocratic estates, and spaces of decrepitude are familiar settings within the genre. 
Gothic fiction is rooted in blending the old with the new. As such, it often takes place during moments of historical transition, from the end of the medieval era to the beginnings of industrialization. Contemporary technology and science are set alongside ancient backdrops, and this strange pairing helps create the pervasive sense of uncanniness and estrangement that the Gothic is known for. Past and present fold in on each other — even as man’s technological advancements seem to make him increasingly powerful, history continues to haunt.

Elements of Gothic Literature

The Gothic is a genre of spiritual uncertainty: it creates encounters with the sublime and constantly explores events beyond explanation. Whether they feature supernatural phenomena or focus on the psychological torment of the protagonists, Gothic works terrify by showing readers the evils that inhabit our world. 

Characters

Characters in Gothic fiction often find themselves in unfamiliar places, as they — and the readers — leave the safe world they knew behind. Ghosts are right at home in the genre, where they’re used to explore themes of entrapment and isolation, while omens, curses, and superstitions add a further air of mystery.

Atmosphere

The atmosphere of eeriness is as important as the scariness of the events themselves. In a Gothic novel, the sky seems perpetually dark and stormy, the air filled with an unshakable chill.

Themes

In addition to exploring spooky spaces, Gothic literature ventures into the dark recesses of the mind: the genre frequently confronts existential themes of madness, morality, and man pitted against God or nature. Physical and mental ruin go hand in hand — as the ancient settings decay so do the characters’ grips on reality. 
While the term “Gothic” instantly conjures plenty of ghosts and images of dark despair, the genre isn’t all about terror. Let’s look at what makes it so compelling by tracing its history through ten of the most haunting and heart-wrenching works that shaped the genre.

1. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764)

Some sources say that the Gothic truly began with The Castle of Otranto, an 18th-century melodrama by the English writer and politician Horace Walpole. Walpole had a fascination with medieval history, even building the imitation Gothic castle Strawberry Hill House in 1749. This supernatural story is framed as a rediscovered text, an antique relic from the Italian medieval period.
Set in the castle of the lord Manfred, the book opens on the wedding day of his frail son Conrad to the beautiful Isabella. Yet domestic bliss is not in the cards: Conrad meets an untimely end when he is crushed by a fallen helmet. His fate seems proof of the fact that an ancient prophecy, foretelling the tragic demise of the castle’s inhabitants, is starting to be fulfilled.
Filled with locked towers and secret passages, damsels in distress and knights in armor, The Castle of Otranto is a chilling read that introduces countless Gothic tropes that would eventually come to epitomize the genre. 
“But alas! my Lord, what is blood! What is nobility! We are all reptiles, miserable, sinful creatures. It is piety alone that can distinguish us from the dust whence we sprung, and whither we must return.”

2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)

The story of Frankenstein has haunted our collective imagination since its conception by Mary Shelley on one dark night. It’s a classic tale of man’s folly in the pursuit of dangerous knowledge: scientist Victor Frankenstein tries to play God by bringing life to reanimated corpses, but he is unable to confront the sight of the terrible thing he has created.
Considered by many to be among the best books of all time, ⁠Frankenstein is also one of the pioneering works in the science fiction genre. Yet it has plenty of classic Gothic tropes, too: mystery, doomed romance, and supernatural energy lurk in every recess of the text.
In the end, what makes Frankenstein so compelling is the unexpected humanity of the grotesque creature. Unlike the groaning monster of cinematic representations, the creature in the novel is highly intelligent and tormented by spiritual anguish, haunted by his utter aloneness after he is cruelly rejected by his creator. 
“The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.”

3. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe (1839)

Edgar Allan Poe: master of mystery, poet of the macabre, and brooding Gothic icon. In his stories, Poe places his primary focus on psychological torment, turning inward from ominous Gothic atmospheres to explore the horrors of the mind. 
The Fall of the House of Usher begins with the anonymous narrator’s arrival at the remote mansion owned by his friend Roderick Usher — who believes the house to be alive. Roderick is troubled by a crack in the house’s roof, and it does not take long before his sanity starts to crack too. His twin sister, meanwhile, is prone to falling into deathlike trances, and the reader also becomes entranced by the suspenseful narrative that seems destined toward death.
"I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect ⁠— in terror. In this unnerved ⁠— in this pitiable condition⁠ — I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."

4. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)

Like other Gothic novels before it, Jane Eyre makes its setting the quintessential isolated house beset by secrets. The unquiet estate of Edward Rochester, where Jane works as a governess, has it all: a strange attic, winding halls, and imprisoned terrors.
What makes Jane Eyre a beguiling development in Gothic literature is its focus on female interiority, featuring intimate first-person narration from its titular character. Jane, a young orphan brought up with few kindnesses, remains intensely hopeful; her yearning for new experiences is what leads her to take a position as a governess at Rochester’s Thornfield Hall. 
Each unfolding shock is recounted with psychological intensity, and the narration explores Jane’s conflicted outlook on gender roles and class divisions in Georgian England. But even as it explores madness and moral crisis, this classic is not all about woe — Jane Eyre is also considered to be one of the most famous romance novels of all time. Jane soon develops secret feelings of love for the enigmatic Rochester, though she continues to suspect that he is concealing secrets about his past. Their melodramatic courtship tinged with tragedy nods at the romantic roots of the Gothic that remain continuously beguiling.
“I have little left in myself ⁠— I must have you. The world may laugh ⁠— may call me absurd, selfish ⁠— but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame.”

5. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

Nothing encapsulates the themes of man’s psychological torment and self-destruction more vividly than Robert Louis Stevenson’s gripping novella. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is an account of a man with good and evil battling within himself as Henry Jekyll, a morally upright and well-mannered doctor, struggles against the vile urges of his alter ego Edward Hyde.
This dark duality arises from seeking answers in science: Jekyll struggled to quell his most disturbing urges for years, ultimately developing a serum to mask them that propels his transformation into the monstrous Mr. Hyde. Hyde feels no remorse for indulging in vice and violent actions, but Jekyll becomes increasingly unable to control his transformations as he is seized by the terrible desires that lurk within him.
“With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.”

6. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)

The book that launched a thousand vampire stories, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a haunting horror romance that gave us one of the most memorable and mesmerizing of Gothic figures. Count Dracula needs almost no introduction: his name is already synonymous with unquenchable bloodthirstiness.
The count lives in the faraway land of Transylvania in a castle that is a puzzle-box of mysteries, surrounded by an aura of unease. English solicitor Jonathan Harker arrives to help Dracula with legal proceedings... but before long, he finds himself haunted by phantom women, strange sleepwalking spells, and mysterious neck wounds that lead him to the horrifying truth about his host. 
When Dracula journeys to England in search of new blood, he becomes obsessed with the beautiful Lucy Westenra and draws the ire of Abraham Van Helsing, a doctor who quickly realizes the cause of Lucy’s mysterious blood loss. This is a prime example of the Gothic trope of modernity blended with antiquity: it’s not only Van Helsing’s medical prowess, but his knowledge of folk remedies and ancient legends, that enables him to identify and cure the vampire’s curse. This tale of science and superstition is an essential book to read before you die — or become undead.
“Oh, the terrible struggle that I have had against sleep so often of late; the pain of the sleeplessness, or the pain of the fear of sleep, and with such unknown horror as it has for me! How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.”

7. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898)

Are the ghosts in the house real? Or are all those scratching sounds and screaming voices coming from inside your head? Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw proves that the greatest horror of all is this state of unknowing, not being sure of one’s grip on reality.
In this story, a young governess works in an English country house caring for Miles and Flora, the orphaned nephew and niece of her employer. Soon, she begins to notice unfamiliar figures roaming the grounds. As she starts to learn more about those who were employed at the home before her, she becomes increasingly convinced that the place is haunted — and that the children are concealing their own knowledge of the ghosts.
Through the governess’s obsession with the ghosts, the house, and her absent employer, the story touches on themes of psychological manipulation and repressed sexuality, capturing the heightened emotion behind not knowing what lurks around every corner. The novella’s brilliance lies in its lack of answers. Critics continue to be split over its interpretation: ghosts actually present, or the governess is merely unraveling? You’ll just have to read it and decide for yourself.
“No, no — there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don’t know what I don’t see — what I don’t fear!”

8. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938)

This novel begins with the marriage of the unnamed American narrator to a wealthy English widower, and she is soon swept away to his beautiful mansion of Manderley on the Cornish coast. Yet because this is a Gothic romance and not a fairytale, married life for the new Mrs. de Winter is not so immediately picturesque. Her marriage is haunted by the specter of her husband’s first wife, the titular Rebecca, whose memory continues to command control over the house. The narrator battles the sinister housekeeper Mrs. Danvers and Rebecca’s phantom influence, working to uncover the secrets of her husbands’ past and the hidden truths within Manderley.
A thrilling tale of jealousy and rage, Rebecca is also a gripping story of its heroine discovering her inner strength — asserting her power within her marriage, within her household, and within the minds of readers.
“The moment of crisis had come, and I must face it. My old fears, my diffidence, my shyness, my hopeless sense of inferiority, must be conquered now and thrust aside. If I failed now I should fail forever.”

9. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)

The Haunting of Hill House is not just another haunted house story: it is a masterpiece of surreal terror and intense doubt regarding one’s own sanity. It gathers together four strangers connected only by their tenuous ties to the house: Dr. John Montague, an investigator of the occult and paranormal; Luke Sanderson, the brash young heir to Hill House; Theodora, a free-spirited artist with psychic abilities; and Eleanor Vance, a timid young woman haunted by a poltergeist encounter from her youth.
Dr. Montague has selected them as participants in his latest research study: he hopes to find scientific evidence of the paranormal as they take up residence in the house for the summer. The scenes of actual ghostly activity are relatively few and only vaguely described — yet Jackson creates more terror through what she withholds, establishing an atmosphere of dread that leaves the reader in constant fear. It becomes clear that the true horrors lie not within the stately Hill House, but within the deepest abysses of the mind, as Eleanor is seized by a possessive power that threatens to destroy her entirely.
“Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

10. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter (1979)

The Gothic arose from the premise of unearthing the secrets of antiquity and unleashing their terrors in the modern age. In The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter tells age-old tales like you’ve never encountered them before. Her twisted reinventions of folk stories like “Little Red Riding Hood” or “Beauty and the Beast,” told in disquietingly descriptive prose, breathe fiery passion and sensually provocation into the shadows. 
The Bloody Chamber features numerous stories of dangerous sexuality and paranormal romance, but it gives a feminist spin on what were traditionally morality tales warning women against unrestrained lust. In Carter’s hands, fairy tale protagonists become strong and sexually liberated women. Carter’s deconstruction of genre and gender makes this a must-read of the contemporary Gothic.
“They will be like shadows, they will be like wraiths, gray members of a congregation of nightmare; hark! his long wavering howl... an aria of fear made audible. The wolfsong is the sound of the rending you will suffer, in itself a murdering.”

What is Gothic fiction?

Gothic literature (also ‘Gothic fiction’ or ‘Gothic horror’) is one of the oldest and widely studied literary genres. It encompasses novels and stories having Gothic elements such as horror, mystery, adventure, psychological torment and supernatural phenomenon. The dark atmosphere, haunted houses full of passage ways, shadowy corridors, hidden rooms and underground tunnels, the windswept moors, and the gloomy and uncertain landscapes or architecture that create an atmosphere of suspense and mystery—all are the characteristic elements of Gothicism in literature. 
Gothicism actually emerged in 18th century Europe as the sub-genre of the Romantic movement. It placed great emphasis on intense emotion and blending old with new, terror with pleasure, and death with romance. This unique pairing helped create a sense of eeriness and estrangement that Gothic fiction is specifically known for. The works of Gothic fiction also intertwined the past and the present. For instance, even though man’s progress seemed to make him increasingly powerful, history continued to haunt him.
Gothic literature (also ‘Gothic fiction’ or ‘Gothic horror’) is one of the oldest and widely studied literary genres. It encompasses novels and stories having Gothic elements such as horror, mystery, adventure, psychological torment and supernatural phenomenon. The dark atmosphere, haunted houses full of passage ways, shadowy corridors, hidden rooms and underground tunnels, the windswept moors, and the gloomy and uncertain landscapes or architecture that create an atmosphere of suspense and mystery—all are the characteristic elements of Gothicism in literature. 
Gothicism actually emerged in 18th century Europe as the sub-genre of the Romantic movement. It placed great emphasis on intense emotion and blending old with new, terror with pleasure, and death with romance. This unique pairing helped create a sense of eeriness and estrangement that Gothic fiction is specifically known for. The works of Gothic fiction also intertwined the past and the present. For instance, even though man’s progress seemed to make him increasingly powerful, history continued to haunt him.
The gothic novel is a living tradition, a form that enjoys great popular appeal while provoking harsh critical judgments. It began with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1765), then traveled through Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, Charles Robert Maturin, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Brontë and Emily Brontë, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Brockden Brown, Bram Stoker, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, and many others into the twentieth century, where it surfaced, much altered and yet spiritually continuous, in the work of writers such as William Faulkner, D. H. Lawrence, Iris Murdoch, John Gardner (1933-1982), Joyce Carol Oates, and Doris Lessing and in the popular genres of horror fiction and some women’s romances.
The externals of the gothic, especially early in its history, are characterized by sublime but terrifying mountain scenery; bandits and outlaws; ruined, ancient seats of power; morbid death imagery; and virgins and charismatic villains, as well as hyperbolic physical states of agitation and lurid images of physical degradation. Its spirit is characterized by a tone of high agitation and unresolved or almost-impossible-to-resolve anxiety, fear, unnatural elation, and desperation.
The first gothic novel is identifiable with a precision unusual in genre study. Walpole (1717-1797), the earl of Orford, began writing The Castle of Otranto in June, 1764,; he finished it in August and published it in an edition of five hundred copies in early 1765. Walpole was a historian and essayist whose vivid and massive personal correspondence remains essential reading for the eighteenth century background. Before writing The Castle of Otranto, his only connection with the gothic was his estate in Twickenham, which he called Strawberry Hill. It was built in the gothic style and set an architectural trend, as his novel would later set a literary trend.
Walpole did not dream of what he was about to initiate with The Castle of Otranto; he published his first edition anonymously, revealing his identity, only after the novel’s great success, in his second edition of April, 1765. At that point, he no longer feared mockery of his tale of a statue with a bleeding nose and mammoth, peregrinating armor, and an ancient castle complete with ancient family curse. With his second edition, he was obliged to add a preface explaining why he had hidden behind the guise of a preface proclaiming the book to be a “found manuscript,” printed originally “in Naples in the black letter in 1529.” The reader of the first edition was told that The Castle of Otranto was the long-lost history of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. The greater reading public loved it, and it was reprinted in many editions. By 1796, it had been translated into French and Spanish and had been repeatedly rendered into dramatic form. In 1848, the novel was still active as the basis for successful theatrical presentations, although the original gothic vogue had passed.
Close upon Walpole’s heels followed Radcliffe, Lewis, and Maturin. These three authors, of course, were not the only imitators ready to take advantage of the contemporary trend (there were literally hundreds of those), but they are among the few who are still read, for they made their own distinctive contributions to the genre’s evolution. Radcliffe (1764-1823) was born just as Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto was being published. She was reared in a middle-class milieu, acquainted with merchants and professionals; her husband was the editor of The English Chronicle and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. She lived a quiet life, was likely asthmatic, and seems to have stayed close to her hearth. Although she never became a habitué of literary circles and in her lifetime only published a handful of works, she is considered the grande dame of the gothic novelists and enjoyed a stunning commercial success in her day; she is the only female novelist of the period whose work is still read.
Radcliffe’s works include The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789), A Sicilian Romance (1790), The Romance of the Forest (1791), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), The Italian: Or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797), and Gaston de Blondeville (1826). She also wrote an account of a trip through parts of northern Europe, A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794 Through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany (1795). Her remarkably sedate life contrasts strikingly with the melodramatic flamboyance of her works. Her experiences also fail to account for her dazzling, fictional accounts of the scenery of Southern Europe, which she had never seen.
Lewis, called Monk Lewis in honor of his major work, conformed in his life more closely to the stereotype of the gothic masters. Lewis (1775-1818) was a child of the upper classes, the spoiled son of a frivolous beauty, whom he adored. His parents’ unhappy marriage ended when he was at Westminster Preparatory School. There was a continual struggle between his parents to manage his life—his father stern and aloof, his mother extravagant and possessive.
Lewis spent his childhood treading the halls of large, old manses belonging both to family and to friends. He paced long, gloomy corridors—a staple of the gothic— and peered up at ancient portraits in dark galleries, another permanent fixture in gothic convention. Deeply involved with the literati of his day, Lewis (also homosexual) found an equivocal public reception, but his novel The Monk: A Romance (1796; also known as Ambrosio: Or, The Monk), an international sensation, had an enormous effect on the gothic productions of his day. Lewis died on board ship, a casualty of a yellowfever epidemic, in the arms of his valet, Baptista, and was buried at sea.
Lewis’s bibliography is as frenetic as his biography. Although his only gothic novel is the infamous The Monk, he spent most of his career writing plays heavily influenced by gothic conventions; he also translated many gothic works into English and wrote scandalous poetry. Among his plays are Village Virtues (pb. 1796), The Castle Spectre (pr. 1797), The East Indian (pr. 1799), Adelmorn the Outlaw (pr., pb. 1801), and The Captive (pr. 1803). He translated Friedrich Schiller’s The Minister (1797) and August von Kotzebue’s Rolla: Or, The Peruvian Hero (1799). He became notorious for his poetic work The Love of Gain: A Poem Initiated from Juvenal (1799), an imitation of Juvenal’s thirteenth satire.
Maturin (1780-1824) is the final major gothic artist of the period. He was a Protestant clergyman from Dublin and a spiritual brother of the Marquis de Sade. He also was a protégé of Sir Walter Scott and an admirer of Lord Byron. His major gothic novel is Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), as shocking to its public as was Lewis’s The Monk. An earlier Maturin gothic was Fatal Revenge: Or, The Family of Montorio (1807). His other works include the novel The Milesian Chief (1812); a theological novel, Women: Or, Pour et Contre (1818); a tragedy, Bertram: Or, The Castle of St. Aldobrand (pr., pb. 1816), produced by Edmund Kean; and the novel The Albigenses (1824).
Among the legions of other gothic novelists, a few writers (especially the following women, who are no longer generally read) have made a place for themselves in literary history. These writers include Harriet Lee, known for The Canterbury Tales (1797-1805), written with her sister, Sophia Lee, author also of The Recess: Or, A Tale of Other Times (1783); Clara Reeve (The Champion of Virtue: A Gothic Story, 1777; also known as The Old English Baron: A Gothic Story); Regina Maria Roche (The Children of the Abbey, 1796); Charlotte Smith (Emmeline: Or, The Orphan of the Castle—A Novel, 1788); Charlotte Dacre (Zofloya: Or, The Moor— A Romance of the Fifteenth Century, 1806); and Mary Anne Radcliffe (Manfroné: Or, The One Handed Monk— A Romance, 1809).
Critics generally agree that the period gothics, while having much in common, divide into relatively clear subclassifications: the historical gothic, the school of terror, and the Schauer-Romantik school of horror. All gothics of the period return to the past, are flushed with suggestions of the supernatural, and tend to be set amid ruined architecture, particularly a great estate house gone to ruin or a decaying abbey. All make use of stock characters. These will generally include one or more young and innocent virgins of both sexes; monks and nuns, particularly of sinister aspect; and towering male and female characters of overpowering will whose charismatic egotism knows no bounds.
Frequently the novels are set in the rugged mountains of Italy and contain an evil Italian character. Tumultuous weather often accompanies tumultuous passions. The gothic genre specializes in making external conditions metaphors of human emotions, a convention thought to have been derived in part from the works of William Shakespeare. Brigands are frequently employed in the plot, and most gothics of the period employ morbid, lurid imagery, such as a body riddled with worms behind a moldy black veil.
The various subdivisions of the gothic may feature any or all of these conventions, being distinguished by relative emphasis. The historical gothic, for example, reveals the supernatural against a genuinely historical background, best exemplified by the works of the Lee sisters, who, although their own novels are infrequently read today, played a part in the evolution of the historical novel through their influence on Sir Walter Scott. The school of terror provided safe emotional titillation— safe, because the morbidity such novels portray takes place not in a genuine, historical setting, but in some fantasy of the past, and because the fearful effects tend to be explained away rationally at the end of the respective work. Radcliffe is the major paradigm of this subgroup. The Schauer-Romantik school of horror, best represented by Lewis and Maturin, did not offer the reassurance of a moral, rational order. These works tend to evoke history but stir anxiety without resolving or relieving it. They are perverse and sadistic, marked by the amoral use of thrill.
There are very few traditional gothic plots and conventions; a discrete set of such paradigms was recycled and refurbished many times. Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, Lewis’s The Monk, and Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer represent the basic models of the genre.