Gothic and the Medieval Revival

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Gothic and the medieval revival

Origins of the term

The term Gothic originally refers to the Goths, an ancient Germanicpeople, and then comes to mean related to a style of architecture of the

twelfth-sixteenth centuries. However, in literature it is usually associated

with an aspect of the English Romantic movement, and especially to the

renewed interest of that time (late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century) in

all things medieval.

A fashionable style

The fashion for Gothic permeated almost every aspect of life, and

lingered on well into the reign of Queen Victoria (1837 - 1901), when much

new architecture reflected the Gothic Revival: many parish churches,

village schools and railway stations were built in sham medieval style. Old

castles such as Windsor and Belvoir, which had been modernised, had

their ancient battlements restored at great expense, and the writer Horace

Walpole turned his house, Strawberry Hill, into a mock medieval mansion,

complete with ornate plaster vaulting. This became so fashionable that he

was inundated with visitors wanting to see it.

The fashion for ruined castles was so strong that those who had new

estates without real ruined castles on them would sometimes build

themselves a ruin as an interesting feature of landscape gardening.

The effect on interior design

The taste for everything medieval led to household objects being designed

in the Gothic style: the pointed arch with ornamental tracery, so common

in fourteenth and fifteenth century English church architecture, was

reproduced everywhere on the backs of chairs, the bases of vases, thefronts of cabinets, or in purely decorative panels. Everything from clocks to

candlesticks, fans to fish-slices, might be covered with Gothic tracery and

medieval ornamentation.
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Gothic literature

In literature, too, the taste for medievalism was constantly indulged, and

especially its association with the strange, the weird and the exotic. The

work which is generally considered to be the forerunner of the vogue forthe Gothic horror novel in Britain is Horace Walpoles The Castle of

Otranto, published in 1765, ostensibly as a translation of a medieval tale. It

is set in medieval times in a strange, gloomy and haunted castle in Italy.

Walpole unashamedly makes fantastical and imaginative use of the

supernatural, which was to become a feature of Gothic novels. This was

in itself a reaction against the stress in much late seventeeth to mid-

eighteenth century writing on the importance of reason. The castle of

Otranto is riddled with dark vaults, subterranean passages, trap-doors,

caverns and ghosts.

Contemporary gothic horror

Walpoles success was quickly followed by the novels of Mrs Ann

Radcliffe, especially The Mysteries of Udolpho, published in 1794:

% Her tales do not take place in the distant past, but are set amongst

medieval castles and monasteries in France, Switzerland and Italy

% She makes use of fear of supernatural horrors without supernatural

events actually occurring% She suggests horrific discoveries which turn out to be harmless: for

example, the ghastly sight behind the black veil which Jane Austens

heroine Catherine Morland (in Northanger Abbey) is so frightened of

when reading The Mysteries of Udolpho, turns out to be not a real

skeleton but a wax model.

%

Female suffering

Generally the sufferings of heroines in Gothic novels are not allowed to beslight. Imprisonment, rape, murder often at the hands of perverted nuns

or monks such things are commonplace, especially in the novel The

Monkby Matthew Gregory Lewis, published in 1796, which earned him the

nickname Monk Lewis. (Lewis, incidentally, was a guest of Lord Byron at

the Swiss villa where Byron started a competition, among friends staying

with him, to write a Gothic novel, which resulted in Mary Shelleys
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Frankenstein.)

Mere escapism?

Such novels today might well be regarded as sheer escapism and to Jane

Austen, writing in the early nineteenth century, the fact that such works

appeared to be totally divorced from reality made their immense popularity

suspect. She mocked such novels in Northanger Abbey, warning young

ladies of being too easily taken in by the pleasures of the circulating

library. The sensible Henry Tilneys gentle rebuke to Catherine questions

the public taste for improbable horror:

Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your

own observation of what is passing around you what ideas have you

been admitting?

Ongoing influence

If the taste for medievalism went hand in hand with the unbelievable in the

Gothic horror novel, it also strongly influenced more serious 19th century

writers such as the Bronts and Dickens, and 20th century and 21st

century writers such as Mervyn Peake, Angela Carter and Margaret

Atwood.

In other areas of literature it fostered a growing interest in true

medievalism: many writers saw medieval life as offering an ideal of nobility

and harmony, where feudal ties linked people together in a way which was

impossible in their contemporary, factory-based economy. Attempts were

made to reconstruct the glories of medieval existence, and authenticity

became the keyword. The nineteenth century Arts and Crafts movement

was another outworking of this.

In literature, this can be seen in:

% The novels of Sir Walter Scott, who, in works such as Ivanhoe or

The Talisman, endeavoured to reproduce as faithfully as possible

the language, dress and manners of the historical period he was

representing, without falling into the error of being merely obscure

% Keats set his poem The Eve of Saint Agnes in a medieval castle,


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and he reinforces the setting by choosing archaic terminology such

as liege-lord, beadsman, well-a-day and mickle

% Later, Tennyson wrote Idylls of the King a poetic rewriting of the

story of King Arthur and his knights.

So it is a mistake just to see the taste for Gothic as merely the precursorof such later horror stories as Bram Stokers Dracula. In fact it had a huge

impact on the imagination, beliefs and attitudes of writers of all genres -

and on artists of all kinds. This impact was just felt at the time of its main

flowering, but is still influential today.

Gothic fiction

Gothic fiction emerged in the late eighteenth century as a sub-genre

within the larger field of the novel. It was initiated by Horace Walpole with

The Castle of Otranto (1764) and reached the height of its popularity

towards the end of the century with such novels as Ann Radcliffes The

Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Matthew Lewis The Monk(1796).

% It was called Gothic because it employed settings and / or plots that

were associated with the medieval period, when the Gothic style of

art and architecture developed. Gothic fiction is notable for its use of

historical or remote settings to dramatize the ways in which events in

the past may affect individuals in the present.

% It was usually set in a remote country and in the past. As thegenre developed, it began to employ more modern settings, as in

The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794) by Mary Shelleys father,

William Godwin.

% It described events that were often fantastic or supernatural.

However, as in Godwins novel and in Frankenstein, the Gothic

genre began to explore contemporary philosophical, political and

scientific preoccupations.

% Its heroines were usually young women threatened by tyrants,

rescued from their fate by determined and brave men; its heroesusually acting alone against overwhelming odds.

% In some Gothic novels, the heroine is responsible for her own

fate and these books include some of the earliest autonomous

female characters in English fiction.

% The villains were usually powerful men: cruel and tyrannical


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aristocrats or corrupt priests.

% The novels were set in castles or large houses full of dungeons

and secret passages (many of the devices of the modern horror

genre), and often involve stories of torture and persecution. The

authors deliberately set out to create tension, fear and theanticipation of violence or horror.

% The atmosphere of the novels was gloomy and claustrophobic

and the action often included physical and sexual violence.

% The plots usually revolved around issues concerning wills,

inheritance and dynastic marriages.

% Such novels were often seen as providing readers with a kind of

thrill, a delight in being frightened that is perhaps similar to that

derived from contemporary horror films. As well as evoking

anticipation and fear in its readers, Gothic fiction seeks to explorethe psychology of terror, guilt and the divided self.

% Jane Austen, who enjoyed reading Gothic novels, satirizes them in

Northanger Abbey(1818).

%

Sensation fiction

Sensation fiction was a literary sub-genre of Gothic literature, which was

at the height of its popularity in the 1860s and 1870s. The Woman in White

(1860) by Wilkie Collins is usually regarded as the first sensation novel.

% Sensation fiction is sometimes regarded as domesticated Gothic in

that it uses many of the devices of the Gothic novel, but places them

in a contemporary English setting.

% They dispense with the supernatural element of Gothic fiction and

even their most extraordinary events are given a rational and

natural explanation.

% Women (usually wives) suffer at the hands of men (usually

husbands); the heroes are young men who are sometimes helped

by resourceful women.

% Their plots concern issues ofidentity and inheritance.

% Insanity (real or supposed) plays a large part in the plot, with the

private lunatic asylum taking the place of the locked room or

dungeon in a Gothic novel, and the use of drugs taking the place of

physical cruelty.
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% They often have complex narratives making use of first person

statements, diaries and letters, so that the stories are seen from

more than one point of view.As with Gothic novels, sensation fiction aims to thrill and frighten thereader.

Monsters and society

In his book In Frankensteins Shadow (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987),

Chris Baldick shows that, during the nineteenth century, the story of

Frankenstein and his monster was adapted to a number of purposes:

% One of these was to represent the kind of monstrousness of

behaviour created by the French Revolution: the crowd itself was

represented as a monster, a fearsome being composed of disparateparts, a force created by the thinkers behind the Revolution, but now

out of their control

% In England, the image of the uncontrollable monster was attached to

any large grouping threatening the political status quo, including the

working classes, the Irish Nationalists, the Trade Unions and even

the inhabitants of Birmingham!

%

Images of the monster in literature

Images of the monster can be found in writings by the prophetic historian

and social commentator Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), both in The French

Revolution (1837), and in his many comments on the growing strength and

articulation of the mass of industrial workers and their increasing political

demands.

The novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870) inherited from his reading of

Carlyle a strong sense that society was becoming mechanised so that

people were beginning to be transformed into a robotic state.

Elizabeth Gaskell also uses the image of the monster in her novel Mary

Barton (1848), which is about industrial interest in the rapidly growing city

of Manchester. Like many other writers, she tends to confuse the name of

the monster with that of his creator, but the force of her comment is clear:
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The actions of the uneducated seem to me typified in those ofFrankenstein, that monster of many human qualities, ungifted with a soulor a knowledge of the difference between good and evil. (Mary Barton,chapter 15).

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Gothic and the Medieval Revival