TPoDG

victorian anxiety

• immigration and social structure.

• rigid class and social system - very 'proper' society.

• concerned about degeneracy and moral transgression (which extended to homosexuality → wilde imprisoned for it)

• Darwinian theory of regression was the idea that society would go backwards

gothic tropes

• the attick as a sight of repression

• fin de siecle

• the uncanny

• the revenant (return of the unwanted/ repressed → figure come to seek retribution)

fin de siecle

• gothic novels take place in significant/ clashing time periods

• DG takes place at the fin de siecle (end of the century) which implies the end of the old order and the adoption of new radical ideas

• was applied to the 1890s Aesthetic and Decadent movements

• focus on the human body as a sight of gothic tropes and exploration

the uncanny

• Idea of unfamiliar or supernatural events, something unhomely and uncertain.

• Almost normal but not quite, such as Dorian and his immortality.

• No such thing as true repetition - dopplegangers/ person's double.

• Uncanny includes splitting of the ego - doubles/masks/hybrids.

• Uncanny provokes feelings of discomfort and unease because of its disturbing presentation of reality as both familiar and unfamiliar.

freudian idea of duality

• freudian idea of two selves, and the uncanny being the home we refuse to acknowledge

• ideas about repression were influenced by the gothic investigation into the self

  • id (basil), ego (dorian), superego (henry)

  • the self as vulnerable and open to outside influence

beauvoir and the little stranger