An exploration of why 18th-century Gothic authors turned to the supernatural to revolutionize storytelling

Beyond the Veil: How the Supernatural Became the Soul of Gothic Literature

An exploration of why 18th-century Gothic authors turned to the supernatural to revolutionize storytelling

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Introduction

The term “Gothic,” emerging in the 18th century, was a literary style born out of rejection of modern literature. As defined by Murphy, in their article Modernism and the Persistence of Romance defines modern Romance which was prevalent in the 18th century stating, “Certainly, one of the more prominent patterns we might identify in modernist thought is the pronounced turn away from frameworks that rely on magic or fantasy.” (Murphy 49) This rejection of magic and fantasy in work of the time completely contrasts the emerging Gothic style of literature, where fantasy and the supernatural predominantly took place within the works. Gothic wished to connect back to its roots in medieval literature, which centered around mystery and the unknown, in a vast juxtaposition with the cerebral-like nature of Modern Romance. Alfred E. Longuei pushes this in his article The Word “Gothic” in Eighteenth-Century Criticism stating, “Men wearied of long vistas and conformity; they commenced to seek a nearer reality in clash and color, and to look not through but to medieval history for the roots of their own proximate past.” (Longueil 453) This longing for medieval roots and rejection of “conformity,” which partnered with the Romance genre of the time, helped give birth to the Gothic of the 18th century.

Viewing the need for change and longing for the past can commence, in works such as The Castle Otranto and The Mysterious Mother, where the introduction from Frederick S. Frank states, “The Castle of Otranto and The Mysterious Mother gratified the timeless human need for inhuman and superhuman things, a need that had been ignored or suppressed by the decorous standards of the Enlightenment.” (Frank 11) So, if one understands that the Gothic acts as a rejection of the modern Romance of the 18th century, the question arises: how does the Gothic do this? One of the defining factors in which the Gothic differentiates itself from the romance literature of its time is through the employment of the supernatural. This paper explores why and how Gothic authors of the 18th century used the “supernatural” in their works.

The Supernatural as Narrative Engine

Gothic, as Hogle defines it in the chapter Introduction: the Gothic in Western culture is an “unstable genre” (Hogle 1). This instability provides flexibility in the context of the structure of the story. One of the main ways Gothic novels employed this instability was through the supernatural or haunting; Hogle later states, “Within this space, or a combination of such spaces, are hidden some secrets from the past (sometimes he recent past) that haunt the characters, psychologically, physically, or otherwise at the main time of the story.” (Hogle, 2) These supernatural hauntings and experiences act as pivotal roles in the novels in both narrative and as a motif in the Gothic. As Matthew M. Reeve, in his article GOTHIC, states, “The lack of a theoretical grounding did, however, lend the Gothic tremendous mobility, such that its meanings as a style could morph to accommodate a wide range of ideas.” (Reeve, 239) This concept of the supernatural in Gothic acting as a narrative tool granting it mobility to tell a story; one can begin to view this in Shelley’s Frankenstein, where at the beginning of the novel, the conception of the Creature is quickly teased and glossed over to the reader, stating, “I see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be informed of the secret of which I am acquainted; that cannot be.” (Shelley 79) Of course, there is no scientific grounding in the Creature’s conception, making its creation supernatural. The story of Frankenstein necessitates this supernatural phenomenon, as without the Creature, it cannot portray any story. The Gothics’ rejection of the Romance of the time and the supernatural acts as a launching pad for these rejections of these premises.

This rejection of the modern, or embrace of the past, can also be symbolized in Frankenstein as the basis of Victor’s research throughout the novel, which structures upon ancient texts seen as false and mythological. In an interaction between Victor and his professor, M. Krempe, who scolds Victor for reading said “ancient” books, Krempe states, “Good god! In what desert land have you lived, where no one was kind enough to inform you that these fancies, which you have so greedily imbibed, are thousands of years old and as musty as they are ancient? I little expected in this enlightened and scientific age to find a disciple of Albertus Magnus.” (Shelley 74). Victor’s fascination with ancient texts and rejection of the “scientific” age can be viewed as an analogy for the Gothic rejection of modernity. This rejection of the scientific and modernity by nature means embracing the supernatural and ancient, which are defining factors of Gothic literature.

The supernatural, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, is “Belonging to a realm or system that transcends nature, as that of divine, magical, or ghostly beings; attributed to or thought to reveal some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature; occult, paranormal.” (OED) The concept of “beyond scientific understanding” directly correlates with the instability of the gothic genre. If one can escape the rigid realism of the modern 18th century literature, one can bend the Gothic to fit virtually any scenario. This definition also connects back to Murphy’s earlier statements of modernity being the rejection of magic and fantasy while Gothic is the supernatural, completely juxtaposing each other. It directly relates to Shelley’s Frankenstein as the Creature’s conception is of supernatural means beyond modern science’s understanding.

The Bridge Between Terror and Horror

Beyond the supernatural acting as a tool for Gothic authors to use to push the narrative, it can be explored further as a link between two types of Gothic literature of the times. Hogle, in his article mentioned above, states, “This oscillation can range across a continuum between what has come to be called the “terror Gothic” on the one hand and the “horror Gothic” on the other.” (Hogle 3) The supernatural perfectly fits the threshold between “terror” and “horror,” acting as an oscillating factor between the two sub-genres of Gothic, which, depending on the author and the narrative they wish to push, can connect the two or fixate on one genre. Terror can be viewed as the suspense of the unknown, while horror can be defined as the brutal and grotesque. The supernatural fits both of these thresholds as the supernatural, by definition, is the “unknown” or un-understandable while also providing a means to express brutality and gore. This can be viewed in Horace Walpole’s The Castle Otranto, as the novel begins with Manfred’s son Conrad crushed by a giant helmet with unknown origins. “The horror spectacle, the ignorance of all around how this misfortune happened, and above all, the tremendous phænomenon before him, took away the prince’s speech.” (Walpole 75) This scene demonstrates the “terror” aspect of Gothic, as stated, and “ignorance” is the lack of knowledge of the phenomenon that occurred as the “horror” aspect of the gothic as Conrad is crushed to death by the helmet, giving in to the brutal and gore aspects of the gothic. The means for “terror” and “horror” is via the supernatural.

With this understanding that gothic relies on “terror” and “horror” to convey itself, one can begin to analyze how gothic differentiates itself from other genres such as horror or suspense. Maximillian E. Novak, in his article Gothic Fiction and the Grotesque, speaks about Gothic and its influences, stating, “That a novel written during the second half of the eighteenth century was going to be, at least in part, a novel of sensibility is undeniable, but when all the elements of sensibility are removed, we still have a recognizably Gothic fiction.” (Novak, 52) Novak argues that if one removed the sensibilities in gothic literature, the literature would remain profoundly gothic. The Gothic does this through its employment of the supernatural. As the supernatural is nonsensical and profoundly gothic if one removes the “sensibilities” of the prior works that inspired the Gothic, the supernatural remains.

The supernatural does not just take form in the physical sense in the Gothic; it takes shape in the spiritual and unseen sense as well. The supernatural takes form in this sense through the concept of curses and prophecies in Gothic works. As the journal Introduction: Haunted Hawthorne, Hawthorne’s Hauntings details, “Doubleday insisted that Hawthorne went beyond the mechanical trappings of the Gothic—magic, moonlight, curses, castles.” (Elbert Marshall xii) So, understanding that Gothic employs the use of curses as the article suggests, the question arises: what is a curse – A curse, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “The evil inflicted by divine (or supernatural) power in response to an imprecation, or in the way of retributive punishment.” (OED) The key takeaway of the definition is “supernatural,” and Elbert and Marshalls claim that the mechanical trappings of Gothic use curses to highlight an unseen supernatural that the Gothics employ via curses. One sees this in many Gothic works, such as The Bondswoman Narrative. The Bondswoman Narrative does not contain any overt supernatural phenomenon such as physical embodiments of the supernatural, spirits, skeletons, vampires, etc.… Rather, the supernatural in the novel takes place in things such as curses, which the novel contains many. One of the principal curses of the novel is one from an enslaved woman named Rose, whom her master tortured; in her dying breath, she states, “I will hang here till I die as a curse to this house, and I will come here after I am dead to prove its bane” (Craft 25) This curse takes shape throughout the novel as the estate eventually falls to disarray fulfilling Rose’s curse showing how Rose’s curse was supernatural in the sense she condemned her master and his estate eventually being fulfilled.

These prophecies and curses act as a link between the terror and horror sub-genre as curses and prophecies allow for impending doom, which the characters of said novels will feel, acting as the terror aspect. Depending on what the curse/prophecy is, the horror aspect plays a vital role within this concept as portrayed within works such as The Bondswoman Narrative, where Rose experienced horrible brutality, thus cursing her master, which eventually was fulfilled, leading to the horror aspect of the Gothic.

Creating Gothic Atmosphere Through the Supernatural

The atmosphere is a crucial aspect of the Gothic; the concept of dread and gloom is vital for the Gothic. A fundamental way to instill this feeling of dread and gloom is through the supernatural, as it provides a perfect catalyst for these feelings. A character cannot escape or outwit forces more substantial than the physical realm, which provides this overlooking feeling of dread in the stories. Hume’s article Gothic versus Romantic: A Revaluation of the Gothic Novel states, “These (Gothic novels) are usually described as sentimental- Gothic, novels which utilize ghosts and gloomy- castle atmosphere to enliven sentimental-domestic tales.” (Hume 283) With this in mind, one can see how the supernatural acts as a launching pad for these feelings of gloom and dread, such as in the scene in The Castle Otranto where Frederic is searching for Matilda and during his search meets a skeletal monk, “And then the figure, turning slowly round, discovered to Frederic the fleshless jaws and empty sockets of a skeleton, wrapt in a hermit’s cowl.” (Walpole 157) The horror and shock of finding a skeleton would already serve as a stark reminder of gothic gloom and ambient nature. However, Walpole takes this a step further by having the skeleton come to life and give Frederic a warning (prophecy) about his actions, which serves as a supernatural way to set the mood of the story, also once again connecting back to the claim of the supernatural serving as a means to push the narrative of the story.

One can also see the effect of the supernatural taking form in the atmosphere in the non-physical sense, as outlined earlier. In The Bondswoman Narrative, a scene where Hannah is walking through her master house states, “That it seemed the first scene in some fearful tragedy; the foreboding of some great calamity; a curse of destiny that no circumstances could advert or soften.” (Craft 17) This scene demonstrates how curses play a role in the atmosphere of the Gothic as well. As outlined earlier, curses are a form of the supernatural, and the curse, in this case, leads Hannah to feel suspense or terror, which are staples of the Gothic.

The Supernatural and the Sublime

With atmosphere in mind, one can look at how the supernatural also helps with the sublime in the Gothic. According to the book Keywords for Travel Writing Studies, the sublime is an “Aesthetic emotion engendered by an encounter with the sublime in nature is astonishment held in suspension by a degree of horror that precludes all other rational activity.” (Oudtt 241) Like the atmosphere, the sublime is a theory found in the literature that provides a sense of awe and terror, drawing the reader to a unique emotion labeled sublime. Sublime also shares much overlap with the gothic subgenres of terror and horror, as the sublime takes in both aspects.

The supernatural helps shape this theory of the sublime in the Gothic as the supernatural acts as a force greater than oneself and as a connection between terror and horror. This can be seen in Frankenstein in the scene where Victor is successful in reanimation and thus creates the Creature, “It was a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.” (Shelley 83) This scene uses the Creature’s supernatural creation to give Victor a sense of the sublime. It does this by providing Victor with a sense of awe and terror of realizing what he has just achieved while simultaneously providing Victor with a sense of horror realizing the implications of what his experiment has granted. This scene provides the reader with one of the gothic motifs of the sublime via the supernatural.

Another case of this sublime can be viewed in the atmosphere of the Gothic in a scene from Frankenstein, where Victor is suffering mental anguish from the creation of the Creature, and manifests in a scene in which Victor is traversing the Alps and the awe of the scenery pushing him to experience the sublime, “It had filled me with a sublime ecstasy that gave wings to the soul, and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy.” (Shelly 116) While not following the traditional trappings of the Gothic, such as sites of antiquity. The scene connects points of the supernatural’s role, such as the narrative aspect, as The Creature leads Victor to the sublime experience due to prior circumstances. It also connects to the point of sublime experiences via the supernatural, as one can argue that the sublime experience itself is supernatural as it is beyond human comprehension, playing with the world of the unknown.

Conclusion

The gothic materializes in an obscure plain, simultaneously having a set of mechanical motifs and characteristics while also being opaque enough to bend to the author’s will and shape the reader’s experience. The Gothic does this through the employment of the supernatural in a physical sense, such as reanimation and objects coming to life, as seen in Frankenstein and the Creature and The Castle of Otranto, where giant limbs and skeletal monks take shape. As well as the non-physical plains, such as curses and prophecies, such as Rose’s curse in The Bondwoman’s Narrative. These supernatural phenomena have no rules or limitations, allowing for the gothic only to be limited by the author’s imagination and a vital tool for authors to portray atmospheres correlated with the gothic or to act as a symbol for a more profound concept. Furthermore, the supernatural allows the blending of two popular sub-genres of the Gothic, the “terror” and the “horror,” as the supernatural fills both plains. All of this is to say that the supernatural is an undeniable tool for the Gothic to ensnare readers and convey more significant ideas to their audience. This differs from the predominant Romance genre of the 18th century, which focused on realism and the cerebral aspect of a story rather than a mystical or fantasy-like nature of the past, and the supernatural acts as a portal for this connection of the past while also allowing for complex and intricate thoughts to portraying to the reader.

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Originally written by Trager Bos for Eng. 3231 with Prof. Newman, May 2024

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