Gothic and the medieval revival

Origins of the term

The term ‘Gothic’ originally refers to the Goths, an ancient Germanic
people, and then comes to mean ‘related to a style of architecture of the
twelfth-sixteenth centuries’. However, in literature it is usually associated
with an aspect of the English Romantic movement, and especially to the
renewed interest of that time (late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century) in
all things medieval.

A fashionable style
The fashion for ‘Gothic’ permeated almost every aspect of life, and
lingered on well into the reign of Queen Victoria (1837 - 1901), when much
new architecture reflected the Gothic Revival: many parish churches,
village schools and railway stations were built in sham medieval style. Old
castles such as Windsor and Belvoir, which had been modernised, had
their ancient battlements restored at great expense, and the writer Horace
Walpole turned his house, Strawberry Hill, into a mock medieval mansion,
complete with ornate plaster vaulting. This became so fashionable that he
was inundated with visitors wanting to see it.

The fashion for ruined castles was so strong that those who had new
estates without real ruined castles on them would sometimes build
themselves a ‘ruin’ as an interesting feature of landscape gardening.

The effect on interior design

The taste for everything medieval led to household objects being designed
in the ‘Gothic’ style: the pointed arch with ornamental tracery, so common
in fourteenth and fifteenth century English church architecture, was
reproduced everywhere – on the backs of chairs, the bases of vases, the
fronts of cabinets, or in purely decorative panels. Everything from clocks to
candlesticks, fans to fish-slices, might be covered with Gothic tracery and
medieval ornamentation.
Gothic literature
In literature, too, the taste for medievalism was constantly indulged, and
especially its association with the strange, the weird and the exotic. The
work which is generally considered to be the forerunner of the vogue for
the ‘Gothic horror’ novel in Britain is Horace Walpole’s The Castle of
Otranto, published in 1765, ostensibly as a translation of a medieval tale. It
is set in medieval times in a strange, gloomy and haunted castle in Italy.
Walpole unashamedly makes fantastical and imaginative use of the
supernatural, which was to become a feature of Gothic novels. This was
in itself a reaction against the stress in much late seventeeth to mid-
eighteenth century writing on the importance of reason. The castle of
Otranto is riddled with dark vaults, subterranean passages, trap-doors,
caverns – and ghosts.

Contemporary gothic horror

Walpole’s success was quickly followed by the novels of Mrs Ann
Radcliffe, especially The Mysteries of Udolpho, published in 1794:

% Her tales do not take place in the distant past, but are set amongst
medieval castles and monasteries in France, Switzerland and Italy
% She makes use of fear of supernatural horrors without supernatural
events actually occurring
% She suggests horrific discoveries which turn out to be harmless: for
example, the ghastly sight behind the black veil which Jane Austen’s
heroine Catherine Morland (in Northanger Abbey) is so frightened of
when reading The Mysteries of Udolpho, turns out to be not a real
skeleton but a wax model.
%
Female suffering
Generally the sufferings of heroines in Gothic novels are not allowed to be
slight. Imprisonment, rape, murder – often at the hands of perverted nuns
or monks – such things are commonplace, especially in the novel The
Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis, published in 1796, which earned him the
nickname ‘Monk’ Lewis. (Lewis, incidentally, was a guest of Lord Byron at
the Swiss villa where Byron started a ‘competition’, among friends staying
with him, to write a Gothic novel, which resulted in Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein.)

Mere escapism?
Such novels today might well be regarded as sheer escapism and to Jane
Austen, writing in the early nineteenth century, the fact that such works
appeared to be totally divorced from reality made their immense popularity
suspect. She mocked such novels in Northanger Abbey, warning young
ladies of being too easily taken in by the pleasures of the ‘circulating
library’. The sensible Henry Tilney’s gentle rebuke to Catherine questions
the public taste for improbable horror:

Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your
own observation of what is passing around you … what ideas have you
been admitting?

Ongoing influence
If the taste for medievalism went hand in hand with the unbelievable in the
Gothic horror novel, it also strongly influenced more serious 19th century
writers such as the Brontës and Dickens, and 20th century and 21st
century writers such as Mervyn Peake, Angela Carter and Margaret
Atwood.

In other areas of literature it fostered a growing interest in ‘true’

medievalism: many writers saw medieval life as offering an ideal of nobility
and harmony, where feudal ties linked people together in a way which was
impossible in their contemporary, factory-based economy. Attempts were
made to reconstruct the glories of medieval existence, and authenticity
became the keyword. The nineteenth century Arts and Crafts movement
was another outworking of this.

In literature, this can be seen in:

% The novels of Sir Walter Scott, who, in works such as Ivanhoe or

The Talisman, endeavoured to reproduce as faithfully as possible
the language, dress and manners of the historical period he was
representing, without falling into the error of being merely obscure
% Keats set his poem The Eve of Saint Agnes in a medieval castle,
 and he reinforces the setting by choosing archaic terminology such
as ‘liege-lord’, ‘beadsman’, ‘well-a-day’ and ‘mickle’
% Later, Tennyson wrote Idylls of the King – a poetic rewriting of the
story of King Arthur and his knights.
So it is a mistake just to see the taste for ‘Gothic’ as merely the precursor
of such later horror stories as Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In fact it had a huge
impact on the imagination, beliefs and attitudes of writers of all genres -
and on artists of all kinds. This impact was just felt at the time of its main
flowering, but is still influential today.

Gothic fiction
Gothic fiction emerged in the late eighteenth century as a sub-genre
within the larger field of the novel. It was initiated by Horace Walpole with
The Castle of Otranto (1764) and reached the height of its popularity
towards the end of the century with such novels as Ann Radcliffe’s The
Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Matthew Lewis’ The Monk (1796).

% It was called Gothic because it employed settings and / or plots that

were associated with the medieval period, when the Gothic style of
art and architecture developed. Gothic fiction is notable for its use of
historical or remote settings to dramatize the ways in which events in
the past may affect individuals in the present.
% It was usually set in a remote country and in the past. As the
genre developed, it began to employ more modern settings, as in
The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794) by Mary Shelley’s father,
William Godwin.
% It described events that were often fantastic or supernatural.
However, as in Godwin’s novel and in Frankenstein, the Gothic
genre began to explore contemporary philosophical, political and
scientific preoccupations.
% Its heroines were usually young women threatened by tyrants,
rescued from their fate by determined and brave men; its heroes
usually acting alone against overwhelming odds.
% In some Gothic novels, the heroine is responsible for her own
fate and these books include some of the earliest autonomous
female characters in English fiction.
% The villains were usually powerful men: cruel and tyrannical
 aristocrats or corrupt priests.
% The novels were set in castles or large houses full of dungeons
and secret passages (many of the devices of the modern horror
genre), and often involve stories of torture and persecution. The
authors deliberately set out to create tension, fear and the
anticipation of violence or horror.
% The atmosphere of the novels was gloomy and claustrophobic
and the action often included physical and sexual violence.
% The plots usually revolved around issues concerning wills,
inheritance and dynastic marriages.
% Such novels were often seen as providing readers with a kind of
thrill, a delight in being frightened that is perhaps similar to that
derived from contemporary horror films. As well as evoking
anticipation and fear in its readers, Gothic fiction seeks to explore
the psychology of terror, guilt and the divided self.
% Jane Austen, who enjoyed reading Gothic novels, satirizes them in
Northanger Abbey (1818).
%
Sensation fiction
Sensation fiction was a literary sub-genre of Gothic literature, which was
at the height of its popularity in the 1860s and 1870s. The Woman in White
(1860) by Wilkie Collins is usually regarded as the first sensation novel.

% Sensation fiction is sometimes regarded as domesticated Gothic in

that it uses many of the devices of the Gothic novel, but places them
in a contemporary English setting.
% They dispense with the supernatural element of Gothic fiction and
even their most extraordinary events are given a rational and
natural explanation.
% Women (usually wives) suffer at the hands of men (usually
husbands); the heroes are young men who are sometimes helped
by resourceful women.
% Their plots concern issues of identity and inheritance.
% Insanity (real or supposed) plays a large part in the plot, with the
private lunatic asylum taking the place of the locked room or
dungeon in a Gothic novel, and the use of drugs taking the place of
physical cruelty.
% They often have complex narratives making use of first person
statements, diaries and letters, so that the stories are seen from
more than one point of view.
As with Gothic novels, sensation fiction aims to thrill and frighten the
reader.

Monsters and society

In his book In Frankenstein’s Shadow (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987),
Chris Baldick shows that, during the nineteenth century, the story of
Frankenstein and his monster was adapted to a number of purposes:

% One of these was to represent the kind of monstrousness of

behaviour created by the French Revolution: the crowd itself was
represented as a monster, a fearsome being composed of disparate
parts, a force created by the thinkers behind the Revolution, but now
out of their control
% In England, the image of the uncontrollable monster was attached to
any large grouping threatening the political status quo, including the
working classes, the Irish Nationalists, the Trade Unions and even
the inhabitants of Birmingham!
%
Images of the monster in literature
Images of the monster can be found in writings by the prophetic historian
and social commentator Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), both in The French
Revolution (1837), and in his many comments on the growing strength and
articulation of the mass of industrial workers and their increasing political
demands.

The novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870) inherited from his reading of

Carlyle a strong sense that society was becoming mechanised so that
people were beginning to be transformed into a robotic state.

Elizabeth Gaskell also uses the image of the monster in her novel Mary
Barton (1848), which is about industrial interest in the rapidly growing city
of Manchester. Like many other writers, she tends to confuse the name of
the monster with that of his creator, but the force of her comment is clear:
‘The actions of the uneducated seem to me typified in those of
Frankenstein, that monster of many human qualities, ungifted with a soul
or a knowledge of the difference between good and evil.’ (Mary Barton,
chapter 15).