Gothic Novel or The Novel of Terror

December 27, 2010 Literary and Critical Essays

Introduction:
Broadly speaking, the first half of the eighteenth century was a period of realism
and didacticism in literature. The two new genres created in this period-the
periodical essay and the novel-are particularly steeped in the realistic and didactic
spirit.
The note of realism in fiction which started with Daniel Defoe continued even in the
second half of the century. It was carried forward by Richardson, Fielding, Smollett,
and Sterne. The novel all along was essentially concerned with life and society as
they were, and often with the exploration of the ways and means to make them
better. In addition to didacticism and realism, a note of sentimentalism can also be
discerned in later fiction under the influence of Richardson. But sentimentalism was
only a secondary characteristic; the primary and essential characteristics of the
novej from Defoe to Fanny Burney are realism and didacticism.

But after Fanny Burney, and even some time before her, the English novel seems to
have grown out of the grooves of conventional realism and didacticism. The last
years of the eighteenth century are often dubbed as the age of transition
transition from the neoclassicism of the school of Pope to the romanticism of the
early nineteenth century. In these years we find a shift of emphasis in the novel too.
Horace Walpoles Castle of Otranto (1765) was the first work of fiction which broke
away completely from the traditions of the realistic and didactic (and often,
sentimental) novel and started the vogue of what is called the Gothic romance or
the novel of terror. Walpole and his followers created in their novels a bloodcurdling and hair-raising world of haunted castles, eerie ruins, macabre ghosts,
harrowing spectacles of murder, and a hundred other elements calculated to strike
terror in the reader and to make him perspire all over. Mostly, the terror novelists
were crude sensationalists whose works were mere schoolboy exercises devoid of
any artistry. Most of them transported themselves to the medieval Europe
supposedly full of the spirit of chivalry, romance, and mystery. As most of them
turned to the Middle Ages for their material, they are called Gothic novelists
(Some of them, like William Beckford, however, looked to the Orient for their
material). Very few of these novelists showed any appreciable knowledge of human
psychology, perhaps because no such knowledge was at all required for the kind of
work they were up to. Most of them turned to the supernatural to add to the
atmosphere of awe and terror. All this goes to show that the terror novelists were of
the nature of crude and thrill-hungry romantics who came before the true

efforescence of romanticism in the early years of the nineteenth century. But some
of them like Horace Walpole were in fact hard-boiled intellectuals who indulged in
Gothic romance as an escape from the oppressive boredom of the world of reality.
Their medievalism was, thus, a sham, a mode of escape. For the true romanticists
like Coleridge and Keats the hazy and romance-bathed Europe of the Middle Ages
was a real world: they lived and breathed in it; they did not escape into it, as they
were always there. But the terror novelists like Walpole were dilettantes and
pseudo-medievalists who did not believe a word of all that they wrote. Their world
was a make-believe world created just to kill a few idle hours which happened to be
free from any intellectual activity.
After these preliminary remarks let us consider individually the work of the more
important of terror novelists.
Horace Walpole (1717-97):
Horace Walpole was the pioneer of the Gothic novel in England. Just as Percy with
his Reliques and Macpherson with his Ossianic poems heralded the romantic
movement in English poetry, Horace Walpole with his novel The Castle ofOtranto
(1764) heralded the romantic movement in English fiction. He reacted against the
realism, didacticism, and sentimentalism of the followers of Richardson and Fielding.
He did not think higly of even Richardson and Fielding themselves. After reading the
fourth volume of Richardsons novel Sir Charles Grandison he set it aside saying :I
was so tired of sets of people getting together, and saying, Pray, Miss, with whom
are you in love? His desire was to shake arid shock such niminy-priminv
sentimentalism and to give a story altogether chilling and thrilling. He said goodbye to his own age and chose for the scene of his novel Italy of the twelfth or
thirteenth century, full of the spirit of mystery, supernatural ism, and crime. It is of
interest to note that he was something of an antiquarian very much interested in
the art of the Middle Ages, particularly Gothic architecture. Ifor Evans in A Short
History of English Literature observes; Walpole carried out the medieval cult more
completely than most of his contemporaries, and at Strawberry Hill he constructed a
Gothic house, where he could dream himself back into the days of chivalry and
monastic life. Horace Walpole was the son of Sir Robert Walpole, the famous Prime
Minister of England. He was a witness to the boredom of higher political life, and his
medievalism was perhaps an escape from this oppressive boredom.
The Castle of Otranto was first published in 1764 and was given out to be the
English translation of an old Italian manuscript. In the second edition, however,
Walpole admitted that it was all his own work. The events narrated are supposed to
belong to Italy of the twelfth or thirteenth century. The scene of action is the castle
situated at Otranto. Manfred, the villain-hero, is the grandson of the usurper of the
kingdom. He intends marrying his son to the beautiful Isabella; but on the day of the
marriage his son is mysteriously killed, and he himself decides to marry Isabella
after divorcing his wife. But Isabella escapes with Theodore, a young peasant.

Manfred decides to kill Isabella, but mistakenly kills his own daughter who loves
Theodore and is at that instant accompanying him. The castle is thrown down by
the spirit of the true ruler who had been killed by Manfreds grandfather. Theodore
is revealed to be the son of that ruler. He marries Isabella and establishes himself as
the ruler of the realm in place of Manfred.
The story is puerile in the extreme. Its Gothicism and supernaturalism are also
crude and unconvincing. Even the most naive reader will fail to believe such events
as the walking of a picture, coming out of three drops of blood from the nose of a
statue, and the descent of a huge helmet apparenly from nowherenot to speak of
the account of ghosts and the mysterious fulfilment of a prohecy. Walpoles
supernaturalism is not at all psychologically convincing like Coleridges for example,
or Shakespeares. It is strange to find Walpole comparing himself to Shakespeare in
his use of the supernatural. He wrote: That great master of nature, Shakespeare,
was the model I copied. Ifor Evans observes about this claim: It is as if all the
poetry and character had been removed from Shakespeares Macbeth, only to leave
the raw mechanism of melodrama and the supernatural. What in reality Walpole
sincerely tried to copy from Shakespeare was the mixing of the tragic and comic
elements by punctuating the very sombre narrative with instances of the naivete of
domestic servants. But Walpole does not succeed here either. As George Sherburn
points out, Walpole draws the domestic servants so feebly that they fail almost
totally in comic power.
Walpoles medievalism is also sham.He never shows any real knowledge of the
times and places which he handles in the story. As a historical novel The Castle of
Otranto is, thus, worthless. His medieval escape, as George Sherburn puts it,
simply provided a no mans land where startling, thrilling, sensational happenings
might be frequent. Everything, however incredible, passes muster in a Gothic
setting. No explanation of the supernatural incidents is considered desirable by
Walpole at all, and none is offered.
The Castle of Otranto became, in spite of all its absurdities, quite popular, and was
imitated by a large number of writers including Clara Reeve and Ann Radcliffe.
Walpole with his own example set the tradition of Gothic romance which was
obliged to him for numerous conventions.^ According to Moody and Lovett, these
conventional elements are:(i)
(ii)

a hero sullied by unmentionable crimes;

several persecuted heroines;

(iii)

a castle with secret passages and haunted rooms;

(iv)

(iv) a plentiful sprinkling of supernatural terrors.

Mrs. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823):

Though Mrs. Radcliffe was an imitator of Walpole yet her attempts at the Gothic
romance were much more successful and artistic than Walpoles. She was in fact the
ablest and the best of all the practitioners of this kind of writing. She was the loving
wife of a journalist, and wrote five romances just to while away her leisurer-The
most famous among them are The Mysteries ofUdolpho (1764) and The Italian
(1797). The scene in both of them is the mysterious land of Italy: in the former Italy
of the sixteenth century, and in the latter that of the eighteenth. Mrs. Radcliffe
almost always wrote to a formula. A beautiful young woman is kept imprisoned by a
hardened, sadistic villain, in a lonely castle, and is ultimately rescued by a
somewhat colourless hero. These heroes and heroines are all modelled after the
same pattern. The only variety the heroines admit of is of their complexion.
Otherwise, all are sentimental, and, in Compton-Ricketts words, artrue sisters of
Clarissa, both in emotional expression and in moral impeccability. Add to all that
the usual paraphernalia of terror elements. She, observes L*ouis I. Bredvold,
availed herself to the fullest of loathsome dungeons, secret vaults and corridors, all
essential features of the castles of Gothic romance. Let us consider the main points
of her work, in most of which she differs from Walpole
(a)
She is quite timid in her use of the supernatural. Just before the end of a
novel she tries to explain away all the supernatural incidents as misunderstood
versions of quite natural phenomena She works very well through subtle
suggestion, especially through the description of eerie sounds.
(b)
She introduces in her novels the element of scenic description which was
altogether neglected by Walpole. She is perhaps the first of English novelists in her
interest in the scenery for its own sake. She never visited the countries she dealt
with in her novels, but her descriptions are vivid and entirely credible.
(c)
Her grasp of real history is as poor as Walpoles. On the very first page
of The Mysteries ofUdolpho she expressly tells us that the incidents of the story
belong to the year 1584. However, this year could easily be substituted by another
without any difference.
(d)
In her novels she reconciles didacticism and sentimentalism with
romance, whereas Walpole had entirely forsaken the realistic, didactic, and
sentimental tradition of eighteenth-century novel.
Matthew Lewis or Monk Lewis (1775-1818):
Matthew Lewis, nicknamed Monk Lewis on account of his Gothic romance of that
title, seems to have completely neglected the lesson of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe. The
Monk is a blood-curdling nightmare of macabresque ghosts, rotten corpses, weird
magic and witchcraft, and a thousand other horrifying elements. According to
Samuel C. Chew, in The Monk (1797), a nightmare of fiendish wickedness, ghostly
supernaturalism and sadistic sensuality, there is almost indubitably something else
than mere literary sensationalism: it gives evidence of a psychopathic condition

perhaps inherent in the extremes of the romantic temperament. He further

observes that The Monk may be considered the dream of an oversexed
adolescent, for Lewis was only twenty when he wrote it. Lewis never made any
attempt like Mrs. Ann Radcliffe to rationalise his supernatural. He was out for the
crudest sensationalism, and therefore he cannot be ranked high among the terror
novelists, in spite of being the most terrifying of all.
Miss Clara Reeve (1729-1807), Charles Robert Matnrin (1782-1824), and Mrs.
Shelley (1797-1851):
They were the most important of the rest of Gothic novelists. Miss Clara Reeves
Champion of Virtue, afterwards entitled The Old English Baron, was obviously
inspired by Walpole. She laid the scene in England of Henry VI, but, like Walpole, she
did not show much genuine knowledge of the age she handled. Compton-Rickett
observes : Miss Reeve thought to improve upon the original and economised with
her supernatural effects; but she only succeeded in exceeding Walpoles tale in its
tedium, repeating most of his absurdities and showing even less acquaintance with
medieval life.
Maturin wrote his romance The Fatal Revenge (1807) as a follower of Mrs. Ann
Radcliffe. However, his masterpiece is Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) which,
according to Samuel C. Chew, is the greatest novel of the school of terror. It
differs from most novels of this type in its well-patterned structure and its attempt
at the analysis of motive.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelleys Frankenstein (1817) is, in the words of Samuel C.
Chew, the only novel of terror that is still famous. It is the story of the ravages of
a man-made monster equivalent to the modern robot. Decidedly, Mrs. Shelleys
work gave many hints to the future writers of science fiction such as H. G. Wells.
She may with equal justice be considered the first of the writers of science fiction as
the last of the novelists of the terror school.
William Beckford (1760-1844) the Oriental Romance:
Beckford, in Compton-Ricketts words, was certainly a man of considerable force of
intellect and brilliant though hectic imagination. Though he was a novelist of the
terror school yet we cannot include him among the Gothic romancers, as his novel
Vathek (1786) had for its background not a European country of the Middle Agess
but the Arabia of yore. He was probably influenced by the Mass of translated
versions of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Chinese tales which were flooding the
England of his times. In Vathek there is, to be sure, the usual presence of a good
quantity of the terror apparatus. Vathek is a caliph, a kind of Moslem Faustus, who
sells his soul to Eblis (the Devil). The description of his end and the fiery hell is,
indeed, the most terrifying. In league with Eblis Vathek commits the most bloodcurdling crimes, and his end is as horrifying as his deeds. Beckford succeeds in
conveying a rich impression of Oriental magnificence and splendour combined with

unchecked sensuality. Vathek was immensely popular for the exotic thrills offered by
it.