Gothic Novel – Read with the Bookmistress

If you love a slow burn, look no further!

When you put the word “gothic” in the title of the book, you can bet your sweet butt I am looking for that book to fulfill some certain things. Some things that are very special to me, because I’m kind of obsessed with the gothic- it was my specialty in grad school, and I even taught guest spots in some of my peer’s classes on gothic novels. Sooooo, does this one make the cut?

First of all, a brief summary: this is the story of Noemi, a socialite from Mexico City who is pulled from her fast city life to go to a small village in the mountains to check on a cousin who sent a very disturbing letter after a too-quick marriage. Catalina dropped away from her family after her marriage to Virgil Doyle and now Noemi’s father is concerned for her. She arrives at the Doyle family home, High Place, which is situated near the defunct silver mine that had made a fortune for the family years ago. But Noemi finds that everything about High Place has gone a bit…moldy.

Now- is this a gothic? Oh, yeah! Not only is it, but it was clearly written by someone who has the same kind of love I have for the genre- respect and even some gentle tongue in cheek ribbing! Here’s the standard way to check if a book is gothic: the laundry list!

Old & maybe haunted house/castle– Check, and the house even has a name!

Subterranean spaces/live burial- There are tunnels under that damn house for sure.

Sublime nature- Moreno-Garcia fills the book with lavish descriptions of the landscape, which at times, can be dangerous (huge ragged cliffs & misty forests)

The forest around High Place, El Triunfo

Females who generally fit into either a virgin/whore stereotype– Noemi vs the somber Doyle women.

Themes of decay, madness, secrets, and persecuted women– This is all over this novel, from the wallpaper to the constant gaslighting of the women.

A Tyrannical older man

A Villainous and usually very handsome younger man

A “hero” who is not as stereotypically manly as the others

“Supernatural” events that can be explained logically– well, it’s a crazy explanation, but…

There we have it! Moreno-Garcia packs this book full with all the classic gothic tropes, and it is beautiful to behold. I loved every moment of it, and I give it all 5 stars. I’m not going to get into the details, because a review spoiled it for me & I don’t want to spoil it for anyone else. But if you love gothic novels, go get this right now!

OK, as soon as I said goth guys, I know you were immediately thinking about this…

But really, the men I’ll be talking about today were more like this…

Yeah, I’m talking about the guys in tights and powdered wigs mostly, because these are the men who first wrote the type of novel we now know as the gothic. The beginning of the 18th Century in England was steeped in the Age of Enlightenment, and so the modern novel was born as a morality tale, or a philosophical type of story meant to (yep) enlighten the reader on the pitfalls of evildoing. As the century closed, though, Romanticism was on the rise, and the gothic fit both of these perfectly.

Horace Walpole published the Castle of Otranto in 1764, and he was “fond of mediaval romance and mystery as a dilettante’s diversion” (HP Lovecraft). That was really how most people thought of novels at that time- as a non-academic pursuit. One that is probably better suited for the weak of mind (re: women). Anyways, Castle of Otranto is considered by most to be the first Gothic Novel. It is the story of Prince Manfred and his family- on his son’s wedding day, part of a giant suit of armor falls from the sky and crushes the groom. The remaining family returns to the dreary castle & then Manfred plots to divorce his wife and marry the girl his son was going to marry. Much intrigue and some death follows. Most importantly, it is spooky and there are some clearly supernatural elements.

A few years later, the most popular author writing in this new genre was Ann Radcliffe, who began publishing in 1789. Radcliffe marks the genesis of what some think is a different subgenre of the gothic altogether- the female gothic. It can be useful to note the differences between the masculine & feminine gothic, and it has helped me understand the genre more completely. Of course, I will be covering the ladies in a different post!

So to really understand the difference, I’ll actually use one of Radcliffe’s own definitions. We have to look at the difference between terror and horror. She says that terror is the feeling of dread at the possibility of something frightening. Horror is the feeling of revulsion & disgust at actually seeing that horrible thing.

These are human emotions, apparently! Horror to the left & terror to the right. Not sure I’ve ever made those faces, but…

Terror is the type of feeling that Radcliffe, and generally the female gothic after her, looked to evoke. Never quite showing what was behind the curtain, but building that tension so that we’re afraid to look behind it.

Now, Radcliffe would say that horror contracts the soul, by absolutely annihilating our ability to respond to the displays of atrocity. That once the curtain is pulled aside, we are essentially frozen, unable to feel. The male gothic doesn’t think that way, and that is how we get to the horror of today! You know how every modern horror movie shows us every damn thing? Usually with overdoses of CGI. That is horror.

One of the things that these “masculine” gothic novels do differently is they are more likely to have unexplained supernatural events. Like a giant suit of armor falling from the sky, or like you’ll see later- bloodsucking vampires and crazed monsters. Those stories came primarily from men(but not always-I would say that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is in this category). The ladies tended to explain away the supernatural- like, oh, those noises? That’s just my crazy first wife up in the attic!

So those are the bad boys of the gothic novel! Here is a great list of books to read should you want to sink your teeth into some of these hotties:

Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole

Vathek, William Beckford

Vampyre, John Polidori

Caleb Williams, William Godwin (Mary Shelley’s dad)

Carmilla, Sheridan le Fanu (birth of the lesbian vampire?)

Dracula, Bram Stoker

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson

The Monk, Matthew Lewis (I love this one! It is slow at times, but worth it!)

Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue, Marquis de Sade (yes, he had a great deal of influence on the genre)

Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

Turn of the Screw, Henry James

I hope you enjoy these, and keep an eye out for the gothic ladies coming up next.

Tag: Gothic Novel

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