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Jessica Gallant
Prof. Grammatikos
ENGL2103A
17 August 2015
Mere Figments: The Gothic Imagination in English Lives and Minds
Jane Austens Northanger Abbey and Bram Stokers Dracula are genres away from each
other, and they were written almost a century apart. The latter is concerned with matters of life,
death and Un-Death; the former, manners and marriage. Austen and Stoker both repatriate the
Gothic, but the horror that Stoker brings to England is a supernatural creature come to life,
whereas Austens is a mere figment of the imagination. The treatment of the Gothic in
Northanger Abbey seems to emphasize its powerlessness on English soil. Stokers monster, on
the other hand, arrives by boat in a time where English naval supremacy is coming to an end,
mounting an invasion that poses a grave threat to the home territory. The Gothic Other is often
said to represent anxieties about changing cultural norms, revolutionary ideas and British
imperialism. By bringing the realized Gothic much closer to home than Austen will allow,
Stoker acknowledges the power of those fears over the mind. The ways in which these authors
modernize the Gothic romance, a tradition that had its roots in exotic settings and the distant
past, reflect very different views on the role of the inner life whether in the sense of the
imagination or the subconscious in reality.
Jane Austen is quite clear about her moralizing mission in her novel. Northanger Abbey
is not the most critically praised of all her works; Waldo Glock responds to detractors who call
Catherine Morlands irrationality, once arrived at the Abbey, not psychologically convincing

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and a breach in the imaginative continuity of Northanger Abbey (Glock 34). His argument,
which I would agree with, is that the psychological and literary flaw is integral to the themes of
the novel, and reflects the tension between the emotions of reality or the common feelings of
common life and the imagination, the refined susceptibilities, the tender emotions of a
Gothic heroine (Austen 9). According to Glock, Catherines primary fault, the Gothic
infatuation that seems to disrupt the harmonious balance of the novel, becomes the symbolic
mark of Catherines charmingly enthusiastic enthrallment to the power of the imagination, and to
the persuasive power of literature to reconcile or transcend the commonplace logic of events
(Glock 35). Here is an explicit reading of Northanger Abbey as symbolizing the part that
fantasy plays in mans life, and the dangers of a too uncritical reliance on imagination unaided by
judgment (Glock 36). Austens novel, therefore, is about the balance between the two;
Catherine Morland is both led astray and taught lessons by her reading.
On one hand, Isabella Thorpes association with the Gothic serves to highlight
Catherines misconceptions about her friend. Catherines belief in Miss Thorpes disavowal of
the importance of fortune could perhaps have been debunked earlier if she had been less sensible
to the Gothic aspects of her character: This charming sentiment, recommended as much by
sense of novelty, gave Catherine a most pleasing remembrance of all the heroines of her
acquaintance; and she thought her friend never looked more lovely than in uttering the grand
idea (Austen 87-8). Catherine misses the clue in the reference to Matthew Lewis The Monk,
which Austen lets the reader in on as she writes, Perhaps Catherine was wrong in not
demanding the cause of that gentle emotionbut she was not experienced enough in the finesse
of love, or the duties of friendship (Austen 22). Glock notes Isabellas lack of attention to her
supposed reading of Gothic romances, writing that Isabellas role-playing is as unreal as her

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appreciation and understanding of good novels ... Her continual inflation of sentiment is marked
by an unimaginative dependence on the word amazingly, a dependence that suggests the
vacuity of a mind forever looking inward on itself (Glock 38-9). Ultimately, Catherines failure
to recognize Isabellas falsity is an aspect of her inability to embrace both worlds at once, the
world of imagination and the world of tangible reality.
In Northanger Abbey, Austen above all advertises control over the imagination in order to
maintain its integrity and importance, and although her Gothic novel is set in England, it is
fundamentally dishonest; that, after all, is the purpose of Jane Austens satire, to point out that a
real heroine of common life must display an honesty which scorns unnatural affectations (Glock
40). The place of the Gothic in England is reflected in its role in the novel: Gothic extravagance
does have a place in literature if it serves an aesthetic rather than an empirical function (Glock
45). Consider her authorial intrusions into the narrative, which as Glock writes, break the
illusion that the created fictional world is real; it prevents the readers ever confusing life and
literature for long, and therefore stresses, by warning the reader not to succumb to Catherines
mistake, the extent of her misunderstanding of the real nature of the imagination (Glock 44). In
the end, reason and judgment must control imagination
by insisting on the possible and the probable (Glock 46). This surrendering of the Gothic to
common English life is in stark contrast to Stokers Dracula, wherein the doctor Van Helsing is
forced repeatedly to point out the power of the irrational and in the inexplicable (Pick 171).
As George Levine remarks, Catherine does find the moral monstrosity that she seeks in
General Tilney, if not in the exact mode of a Gothic mystery. He contests that the
monstrousness is a part of Jane Austens literary imagination, a domestic but more serious
monstrousness that that of, say, Lewiss The Monk, because it is a social commonplace (Levine

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336). Levine is not quite right to say that the anglicised Gothic represents a greater danger, as
does Stokers true horror; by seeing the imagination as a tool, Austen asserts its importance but
denies its power over the rational mind, whereas in Dracula the fears of the subconscious are
turned into a grave threat not only to the individual Englishman but all of British civilization.
Monstrosity is a term Levine uses to mean something akin to the Gothic imagination, an
energy larger than life, managing to squeeze past Jane Austens ironies into the world that
pretends that monstrosity does not exist (Levine 338). It is true that such monstrosity does exist
where some, such as Henry Tilney, would not see it, and the way Levine words it here suggests
that Austen is somewhat more equivocal about the Gothic in the narrative than one might think.
During an interesting discussion where Eleanor Tilney believes Catherine is speaking about a riot
that is about to break out in London when she is only referring to a Gothic novel, Henry reminds
Eleanor that such an event is unlikely to occur. Appealing to Catherines own understanding
and her own sense of the probable after she relays her suspicions about Henrys father, he
insists that she Remember that we are English, that we are Christians (Austen 145). However,
Austen goes on to hint that every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies
(Austen 145), an implication which ironically undercuts Henrys confident belief in the
orderliness and security of English civilization (Glock 43). Glock believes that Austen is giving
the reader proof that Henry is, in fact, mistaken, and another purpose arises for the Gothic
presence in England which reminds us of Dracula: such violence and insecurity can indeed
arise, even in tranquil and law-abiding England, from the unrestrained fantasies of ones own
mind and the terrors of the subconscious (Glock 42).
Levine, a bit bizarrely, links Austens creation, her heroine Catherine Morland, to Victor
Frankensteins monster in Mary Shelleys Frankenstein. He sees a duality in Northanger Abbey

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that simultaneously celebrates and rejects Gothic and sentimental fiction, bearing a
resemblance to the relationship between Victor and his monster, the quite valid clich that they
are one creature (Levine 345). Levine even goes so far as to suggest that Catherine Morland is
a little, incipient monster since the full power of her creator is behind her, manipulating
experience (Levine 349), earlier giving the reason that he believes Austen has to invoke
rebellion, heroism, monstrosity: because through them the novelists can most effectively assert
the value of the domestic and the ordinary (Levine 344). In this manner, too, Northanger Abbey
recalls Dracula, where Stoker makes sure to utterly destroy the Gothic horror in order to restore
the Victorian order. In summary, romance, energy, aspiration beyond the limits that ordinary
life allows are impossible and dangerous. But they constitute an important element even in Jane
Austens fiction (Levine 350). The imaginative inner life, although somewhat quashed by plain
good sense, has a role to play in Austens reality.
The boundaries between the supernatural and the natural in Bram Stokers Dracula,
however, are blurred beyond anything seen in Northanger Abbey, mirroring the frightening loss
of distinction between male and female, natural and unnatural, civilized and degenerate, human
and nonhuman in Victorian England (Spencer 203). Each critic has his or her own idea of
which anxieties Dracula represents: Kathleen Spencer explores sexuality, whereas Stephen Arata
emphasizes reverse colonization and racial degeneracy. The Count, with his child-brain, is the
supernatural realization of the subconscious, a link that Arata makes explicit: The primitive and
the occultist alike operated beyond or beneath the threshold of the civilized rational mind,
tapping into primal energies and unconscious resources as well as into deep-rooted anxieties and
fears (Arata 624). Dracula was published the year after the term psychoanalysis is said to

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have been coined, which is perhaps related to the reason so many believe its task is to represent,
externalize and kill off a distinct constellation of contemporary fears (Pick 167).
The overarching point most critics build up to in their discussions is that the true fear lies
in the threat to the ground of individual identity, the ultimate distinction between self and other
(Spencer 203). Arata argues that horror arises not because Dracula destroys bodies, but because
he appropriates and transforms them. Having yielded to his assault, one literally goes native by
becoming a vampire oneself (Arata 630). The supernatural Count Dracula invades Britain just
as the subconscious fears invade the mind, taking such complete control that the English are
forced to become the Other that they so dread. Arata makes it clear when he writes, the
vampire is here revealed as disquietingly familiar. And since the colonizations of bodies and
territory are closely linked, the same blurring of distinctions occurs when we consider more
closely the nature of the Counts invasion of Britain (Arata 633).
In the text, we see that Stoker sets up the interchangeability of Dracula for an
Englishman, for as Jonathan Harker discovers, the Counts expertise in English life and
customs and manners provides the groundwork for his exploitative invasion of Britain (Arata
634). He has to become them to conquer them. When Jonathan Harker arrives at the Counts
castle, he is comforted by the fact that by Harkers own criteria, Dracula is the most western
character in the novel. No one is more rational, more intelligent, more organized, or even more
punctual than the count (Arata 637). The Count dons Jonathans clothes to leave the Castle and
terrorize the neighbouring town. His power over Jonathans very will extends to committing
crimes in the guise of his own body, replacing Jonathan with himself; the townspeople even
believe it was he, and Jonathans newfound understanding is that he is powerless to prove
otherwise. Jonathan is an altogether different sort of heroine than Catherine Morland, whose

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education is quite the opposite, and helps her to create a distance between herself and the Gothic.
There is a scene where Jonathan looks in the mirror expecting to see the Count and sees only his
reflection. Such a moment supports the idea that the supernatural element in Dracula copies the
subconscious power over the mind. His closeness is what makes him such an enduring monster,
and I would argue that the geographical proximity mimics the intimacy that the fears of our inner
lives have with our reality: A large part of the terror he inspires originates in his ability to stroll,
unrecognized and hindered, through the streets of London (Arata 639). Says Van Helsing, For
it is not the least of its terrors that this evil thing is rooted deep in all good (Stoker 233).
Lucy Westenra, who is turned into a vampire by the Count, is vulnerable to him because
she sleepwalks, a sign that her more primitive, subconscious self has a hold on her, supplanting
the rational mind when she sleeps. As Spencer writes, she yielded to Dracula only during a
trancethat is, when her conscious personality was not in commandso her unconscious
personality alone has become vampiric (Spencer 211). It is only because she dies during her
sleep, when her reality is suspended, that she is transformed. Spencer also ties her susceptibility
to the Gothic to her sexuality, the inner desires that the Victorians encouraged women to repress:
Nor is this desire to marry all three of her suitors the only sign of Lucys suspect character.
She is a sleepwalker, a habit traditionally associated with sexual looseness. She is therefore
doubly vulnerable to Draculas approach; in the symbol-system of the novel, she has
signaled her sexual receptivity. It cannot be an accident that on the night of the storm,
when Draculas ship lands, Lucy indulges in sleepwalking, leaving the house dressed only
in her nightgown. (Spencer 210)
Stevenson highlights what in particular scares Jonathan Harker and the rest of the Englishmen
the most about Lucys aggressive sexuality, the voluptuousness of the other three female

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vampires, and the sexual threat posed by Dracula himself: the ironic thing about vampire
sexuality is that, for all its overt peculiarity, it is in many ways very like human sexuality, but
human sexuality in which the psychological or metaphor becomes physical or literal (Stevenson
142). In effect, this is when the subconscious is realized through the supernatural.
Spencer relates that according to Victorian theory, it is sexual desire rather than sexual
activity that is the source of danger. With respect Minas struggle to overcome her
uncleanliness, Spencer writes, With help, Mina has conquered temptation and the dangers of
degeneracy. It is this effort of will, the effort to conquer her own sexual imagination ... that
makes her worthy, in the end, of salvation (Spencer 217). The triumph of the rational mind over
the repressed sexual imagination is heralded. When the four men defeat Lucy-as-vampire, they
exorcise not only their fear of female sexuality but alsoand more importantlytheir fear of
their own sexuality (Spencer 212). The emerging and enduring truth is that the Count
represents precisely those dark secret drives that the men most fear in themselves, which are
most destructive to both poles of identitythe intimate self of the family man, threatened by
unrestrained sexual appetites, and the communal self of the nation (Spencer 213-4).
The conclusion of Stokers Dracula involves some mental erasure: Every trace of all
that had been was blotted out (Stoker 359). Arata claims that we might see this blotting out,
then, in psychological terms, as a repression of the insights, the living truths, revealed by the
narrative as a whole (Arata 643). So what was brought to the surface of the conscious mind,
through the invasion of England of a Gothic supernatural creature, becomes again a formless
fear. In Stokers novel, the Count endangered Britains integrity as a nation as the same time
that he imperiled the personal integrity of individual citizens (Arata 630). Dracula, brought to
life from the collective imagination of Victorian England, disrupted and terrorized real life and

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the rational mind; in Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morlands Gothic fears are trivialized, but
Catherines imagination also helps her to see the worst in the people around her. The Gothic
experiences of Austens heroine are subservient to the demands of realistic fiction, but we are
still are called to question the role of the Gothic in England. Dracula is the worst part of our
imaginations made real, yet even he is defeated in the end. Despite their differences, though they
each fall on one side of the issue, we see both authors struggle to understand the power of the
imagination and the subconscious by way of their anglicization of the Gothic.

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Works Cited
Arata, Stephen D. The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization.
Victorian Studies 33.4 (1990): 621-645. Print.
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon. Ed. James Kinsley and
John Davie. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. Print.
Fleishman, Avrom. The Socialization of Catherine Morland. ELH 41.4 (1974): 649-667. Print.
Glock, Waldo S. Catherine Morland's Gothic Delusions: A Defense of Northanger
Abbey. Rocky Mountain Review 32.1 (1978): 33-46. Print.
Levine, George. Translating the Monstrous: Northanger Abbey. Nineteenth-Century
Fiction 30.3 (1975): 335-350. Print.
Pick, Daniel. Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c. 1848-1918. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1993. Print.
Spencer, Kathleen L. Purity and Danger: Dracula, the Urban Gothic, and the Late Victorian
Degeneracy Crisis. ELH 59.1 (1992): 197-225. Print.
Stevenson, John Allen. A Vampire in the Mirror: The Sexuality of Dracula. PMLA 103.2
(1988): 139-149. Print.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Markham: Penguin Books Canada, 1965. Print.