The Victorian Gothic: What is a Gothic Novel Exactly?

Crumbling Ruins: L Grove via photopin cc

My post today is going to be hosted on Oh, For The Hook of a Book, which was the first book review site to compare my novel to some of the classics and which is giving away a couple free copies of my e-book, so go on over and enter before the giveaway ends and checkout my new giveaway page on my website to stay up to date on all the contest fun! 

Here's a taste of the post you'll get at Oh, For the Hook of a Book: 

What Exactly is The Gothic Novel?

By Stephanie Carroll

Reviewers have compared my debut novel A White Room to the classic gothic novels The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (thank you Oh, For the Hook of a Book!). I was so delighted when this happened because I wrote my novel in a way I felt was reminiscent of gothic fiction, but when I looked at other gothic novels, mine didn’t seem very gothic in comparison. That led me to wonder, what exactly is a gothic novel?

 * I’m not an expert on the gothic novel, so I am including my sources for where I got my information and for you in case you’d like to do further research.

The Origin of Gothic

The term gothic actually derives from the Visigoths and Ostrogoths (the barbarians) who conquered Rome in the 5^th Century A.D. After the collapse of Rome, the world fell into a dark age and the Goths were ultimately forgotten until artists and architects rediscovered Greco-Roman culture during the Renaissance. They began to refer to certain (barbaric) architecture built during the middle ages as gothic even though it wasn’t necessarily built by the Goths. These were castles, mansions, and abbeys, many of which were in ruins.

The Gothic Novel – UC Davis

The Original Gothic Novel

Writers developed the first gothic novels in England from 1790 to 1830. These works were termed gothic because they took place in and around gothic buildings and architecture. Many themes and conventions developed that also came to define the gothic novel. In addition to usually taking place in a mansion, castle, or abbey, these buildings were often in ruins in the story, which created a mood of mystery and dread because it reminded readers of a world lost, a fallen society, or a world in decay. The hero was usually isolated in some way, and the villain was usually a man who had fallen from grace and represented the epitome of evil.

These novels also dealt with serious real-world fears like murder, rape, and sin, but on an exaggerated level and often times through the supernatural, so the gothic novel also became associated with horror fiction. Some examples of gothic literature from this time period are Matthew G. Lewis's The Monk and Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho.

The Gothic Novel – UC Davis

Victorian Gothic

Another form of the gothic novel came about in the Victorian Era starting in the 1880s (my kind of gothic). The setting, again, played a role and....

Read the rest at Oh, For the Hook of a Book! 


About Stephanie Carroll
Stephanie Carroll is the author of A White Room and "Forget Me Not" featured in Legacy: An Anthology. She blogs about magical realism, her research into the Victorian Era and Gilded Age, writing, and life in general at www.stephaniecarroll.net and at The Unhinged Historian. She also founded Unhinged and Empowered, a blog for Navy wives and girlfriends.

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