To what extent is Gothic Literature concerned with a fascination for death?

Discuss this view in relation to the texts you have been studying.
Frankenstein tries to challenge and overcome death through his creation of life: To examine the causes of life we must first have recourse to death. He goes to insurmountable amounts of effort and work to do so claiming he spent days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue in his quest. Shelley also describes it as painful labour, this obsession with challenging death is described in hyperbolic form, parodying the act of female labour associated to childbirth. Shelley associates Frankensteins search with great difficulty and therefore suggests this fascination with death/life as unnatural and wrong. Macbeth incorrectly believes he is invincible, that the likelihood of his death is limited, a view powered by the witches prediction that: No man of woman born shall harm Macbeth. This could be viewed as his hubris alongside that of his dangerous ambition lack of fear for death is dangerous leading him to believe in his omnipotence. Could link to Frankensteins initial claim that Darkness had no effect upon my fancy; and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies. The Countess in The Lady of the House of Love wishes to be human: In her dream, she would like to be human. We see beauty and death present together in her world, and her death later abolishes the idea of beauty as a disorder or the soullessness associated to the Countess: In death, she looked far older, less beautiful and so for the first time, fully human. She finds her peace, her comfort in death: links with David Punters idea of the tortured gothic figure finding death as a blessing. Macbeth sees Duncan as blessed with death: better be with the dead...than on the torture of the mind; Nor steel, nor poison, malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing can touch him further. Unlike the Macbeths, Duncan in his death has healthy, undisturbed sleep. This view is Shakespeares subtle inclusion of guilt/remorse of some form in the Macbeths, or at least knowledge and understanding of the terrible crime they committed in their murder of King Duncan.

Idea #1: Gothic characters try to elude death and overcome it.

Idea #2: Gothic characters are fascinated with the idea of death as a blessing.

Idea #3: Writers use of death and its remnants to construct gothic settings.

Carter surrounds the Countess with lingering death: dead lovers, depredations of rot and fungus everywhere and her as the mistress of all this disintegration. The death of natural forms and the idea of decay, the Countess is enveloped by remnants of death yet she is stuck in a repetitive life wishing to be in human form in an act of hope and love. She herself can kill, but cannot award herself with the privilege of human form that death brings her. Motif of death is repetitive throughout the play. We see the omnipresence of death as a result of Duncans death: the innocent death of Macduffs family; lamenting heard ithe air, strange screams of death; And Duncans horses, tis said they ate each other. Violent and traumatising images of cannibalism, death plaguing the audiences senses, and murder is ever present in Scotland. This highlights the result of corruption and what the breaking of social codes brings as a consequence.

To a large extent, Gothic literature is concerned with an obsession or fascination for death which as I have suggested, appears in numerous forms, ever present in the lives of characters. Within Macbeth for example, death is an ongoing motif and challenging it seems to be a fatal flaw in the protagonists mentality. We also see this as being the case with Victor Frankenstein who through an obsession with creating life is thus fascinated with death and Shelley presents this as being unnatural and incorrect. Death also encompasses all three texts in the form of a blessing. The Countess in The Lady of the House of Love is surrounded by death and the decay of nature, only to find comfort in death towards the end of the tale, death provides her with her wish of becoming human. This need for death shown by the characters, is also true of the writers who make use of death and its remnants to demonstrate the effects of key acts within each text such as corruption and murder.