Gothic - Conventions

Question 1

Freud - The uncanny

Answer 1

‘The Uncanny’ locates a strangeness in the ordinary - coined by Sigmund Freud’s 1919 essay on the subject.

• that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar”).

Doubles or doppelgängers – The sight of a twin or a figure that mirrors oneself can create anxiety, as it challenges our sense of identity and autonomy.

Mechanical automata – Human-like figures, such as dolls or robots, can seem lifelike yet disturbingly unnatural, creating tension between the real and the imagined.

Repression – Uncanny feelings can emerge when something repressed, such as a forbidden desire or a traumatic memory, returns in disguised form. Eg) uncanny symbol of memory

Question 2

The sublime

Answer 2

Burke - Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger … is a source of the sublime;

Rudolf Otto’s exploration of the human/ religious experience posits a ‘numinius dread’ , this feeling of awe simultaneous to fear can reflect egt)Dr. Frankenstein’s initial creation of life is portrayed as an awe-inspiring, almost divine act, but it quickly devolves into horror as the monster becomes an uncontrollable force.

Question 3

The other

Answer 3

Otherness” describes the qualities and characteristics attributed to individuals or groups perceived as outside the dominant social norm

Hegel - introduced the concept of the Other as a constituent part of self-consciousness (preoccupation with the Self),- “The Other is a mirror image of the self.”

At its heart a question of identity = The question of why one exists as themselves and not as someone else has been called the vertiginous question

Edward Saïd said that:

To build a conceptual framework around a notion of Us-versus-Them

Question 4

The doubleganger

Answer 4

The word “doppelgänger” is a loanword from the German noun Doppelgänger, literally meaning “double-walker

Often Symbolizes the moral conscience

The term ‘doppelgänger’ emerged around the same time as the Gothic novel, appearing for the first time in Johann Paul Friedrich

Richter’s Siebenkäs (1796). The doppelgänger motif is depicted by Richter in Siebenkäs as “so heissen sie Leute die sie selbst sehen” (“So people who see themselves are called”.)

Question 5

Horror and terror

Answer 5

According to Radcliff -Terror expands the soul and awaken the faculties to a high degree of life whereas horror contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them.

-It is so because terror is fear of the unknown, of something that have not happened, but horror is a sort of fear after experiencing the horrible.

Question 6

Miscegenation

Answer 6

sexual relationships or reproduction between people of different ethnic groups, especially when one of them is white. Contemporary fears of cultural degeneration

Influences location to often be eastern europe - locus classicus of distant foreign land

Question 7

Female gothic

Answer 7

• The emergence of the ghost story gave women writers something to write about besides the common marriage plot, allowing them to present a more radical critique of male power, violence, and predatory sexuality
• prime examples of Female Gothic, exploring woman’s entrapment within domestic space and subjection to patriarchal authority and the transgressive and dangerous attempts to subvert and escape such restriction.

Question 8

Incarceration or labyrinthine setting

Answer 8

Labyrinths represent our fear of the unknown, but more than that there’s a fear of becoming a wanderer, someone with no destination– a person who feels their way around life aimlessly looking for release that may never come.

The labyrinth also represents the mind. The protagonist who must navigate the labyrinth in a gothic novel is also forced to navigate the labyrinth of the mind–complete with hidden/forbidden rooms and a basement or dungeon. A limited understanding of what is happening to the protagonist makes them vulnerable

Question 9

Dreams

Answer 9

serving as a window into the unconscious mind and reflecting characters’ deepest fears, desires, and unresolved issues

• Dreams reveal to the reader what the character is often too afraid to realize about themself

. Freud believed that a unique mental process is used within dreams that is rarely activated during the waking hours. He defined this state as the “primary process” and theorized that this state was marked by a more primitive thought process ruled by the emotions

Freud read as telling illuminations of the buried psychic life of individuals–and their success in dealing with these dream-state phantoms might very well direct their future success in life

Question 10

Madness

Answer 10

Its intangibility means that it cannot be fought, and its irrational nature makes it nearly impossible to understand.

Pre victorin era, focus on madness to create terror and psyical horror

By victorian era madness becomes psycoligcal study, externalisation of moral and mental conflicts in the mind

Later - According to Freud (1937), the three structures that exist in relation to human madness include neurotics, perversion, and psychosis

Question 11

Monsters

Answer 11

1)-Monsters as a Symbolic Perversion of Values

Pervesion of religous morality
Eg)monsters in monastery symbolise a pervesion of religion/sacreligious identity
Gothic monsters often symbolize the breakdown of class and race psychology and traditional structures,

Eg)Dracula, fear of miscegenation

Monsters in these narratives often embody resistance against societal sexual norms
Eg)reflection of non comoformtaive sexuality that is seen as inhuman
Extends to the portrayal of women and the monstrous feminine. eg)women who defy societal norms are portrayed as witches, femme fatales, or madwomen,

2)monsters as response to enlgithenemnt

-embody the fears and anxieties associated with the limits of human reason and the uncontrollable aspects of nature and the human psyche

3) monsters as psychoanltiycal reflection

A Freudian examination of monsters see them as an obscure reflection of the self
-symbolise our own capacity to commit evil and reject social convention
-monster a mirror to the indidividals ID

4)monsters as the sublime

often evoke the sublime by embodying forces that are beyond human control or comprehension

Romantic fascination with the unknown and the mysterious, using monstrosit

Question 12

Subterranean /underground settings

Answer 12

Symbolise power disparity

-Eg)In Wells’s novels, the strict dichotomy between ‘above’ and ‘below’ as reflection of divisions in social class

-Descending into underground spaces can symbolize a journey into the subconscious, uncovering repressed desires and fears.

-Eg) the subterranean regions evoke the subconscious mind, where fears and anxieties reside. The darkness and labyrinthine passages mirror the complexity and hidden aspects of the human psyche

Subversion of social boundaries

-this distinct underground world is away from watchful eye of the law and judgments

-becomes a liminal landscape where ones behavior can transcend moral standards eg)The monk

Claustrophobic setting as oppressive

-can mirror the societal oppression those fail to conform face

Often subterranean exploration of own mortality

-question what happens when we return to the ground
-places where the boundary between the living and the dead becomes blurred.

Question 13

Anthropomorphism of buildings

Answer 13

Reflects inhabitants nature

Settings are often an externalization of the characters emotions
Buildings often come to be a mirror to their inhabitant

Reflection of the phsyce

-The crumbling of such an imposing physical structure might symbolize the collapse of a social order or an individual. Parallels the mental deterioration of its resident

• The intricate design of these homes reflects the characters’ psychological states, with hidden rooms and corridors representing repressed memories and emotions.

Reflection of ancestral trauma

symbol of inherited guilt and the inescapable weight of familial legacy.

Question 14

Burning house

Answer 14

Often fire symbol of purgatorial cleansing

Symbolises the new life that follows, possibility of new beginnings amidst the ashes

The destruction of a house often signifies the collapse of oppressive structures Overcoming of woldy attachments - necessity to transcend them

Question 15

Bifurcated ideology/Paradox

Answer 15

The possibility of contradictory moral behaviour, used in the Gothic to format characters of a distrustful nature.

-Subject good/ evil at the same time

A paradox in literature refers to the use of concepts or ideas that are contradictory to one another, yet, when placed together hold significant value on several levels.

‘The apparent delight with which we dwell upon objects of pure terror’ (Aikin) in talks of the heart’s paradox.