Gothic Waves

First Wave of Gothic- Romantic Gothic 1764-1818

The Romantic period. The first Gothic novel was the Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764). Ann Radcliffe was considered the ‘Queen of Gothic fiction she wrote about terrors, suggestion and implication- dark, mysterious and sombre texts. Romanticism- wild landscapes- the sublime, nature could strike us with awful majesty and power as both terrible and delightful. Linked to the Gothic concept of “pleasing dread”. Romantic poets often wrote about the sublime effect of nature on the imagination.

Second Wave of Gothic- Victorian Gothic 1837-1901

Context: Physical deformities- the ‘other’ (influence of Darwin). Less supernatural, more human monsters, homosexuality and female sexuality as dangerous. Angel in the House/femme fatale, the middle class gap between the rich and the poor. Urban gothic (mid 19th century)- industrialisation leads to mass migration to the cities, city as a place of evil- intrusion of the other, labyrinths and isolation- transgressions.

The fin de siecle (1880-1900)

Anxieties:

• Immigration and orientalism- villainisation of the ‘other’, the new woman, overcrowding, mentally ill people, falling birth rates, mass alcoholism, Max Nordau- Degeneration, 1896.

• Possibility of Britain losing its imperial power, emergence of the New Woman- challenged traditional gender roles- the Angel in the House.

Third Wave- Modern Gothic- 20th Century (1990s)

Granting heroines agency, breakdown of social structures- marriage, the family and the church, subversion of the traditional Gothic and societal conventions, breaking taboos.

Fourth Wave- Post-modern Gothic (1950s onwards)

Explores human evil as well as supernatural forces, they look at the nature of evil in childhood and child perpetrators- The Wasp Factory (1985) by Iain Banks.

Southern Gothic

Common themes: deep-rooted anxieties over race, class and slavery, the grotesque and the uncanny- to explore racial tensions. ‘Othering’, blurring of the natural and the supernatural, landscape of decay and violence, Jim Crow laws.