gothic

the birthmark writer

nathaniel hawthorn

• Novelist and short story writer

• Contemporary of Edgar A Poe

• The scarlet letter

• Not very gore-y in his writing – didactic allegorical tradition

• Focus: guilty feelings, guilt, puritan lifestyle, self-examination and punishment,

• Short story collections: Twice-told tales (1837),  mosses from an old mans (1846)

the birthmark plot

scientist Aylmer drops career and experiments to marry Georgiana (perfect except for a red hand shaped birthmark on her cheek)

Aylmer becomes obsessed with birthmark → dreams of cutting it out → realizing that the birthmark is deeper, continuing all the way to her heart

he does not remember until she asks about his sleep-talking

Georgiana would rather risk her life ermoving the birthmark than endure Aylmer's horror of her mark

Aylmer takes her to the apartments (laboratory), he has a worker Aminadab

she faints → gives concoctions → they fail, tries to take a portrait of her, the image is blurred but the birthmark

while he is sciencing she reads into his scientific work and worships him despite his failures

she enters his laboratory → he accuses her of not trusting him → She professes complete trust in him

he reveals that this is the last experiment → she vows to take the potion, regardless of danger

Georgiana drinks → falls asleep. Aylmer rejoices the birthmark fading

it is nearly gone, Georgiana wakes up to see birthmark almost completely faded. She smiles but then informs Aylmer that she is dying. Once the birthmark fades completely, Georgiana dies.

hawthorne the birthmark themes

• frankenstein - playing god (wating to create life and defy mother nature)

• obsession

• internalized hate

• love for science competing with love for a woman

• chasing perfection/an ideal

• gap between marriage and courtship

• the mark as - sin/death anxiety/mortality/maternity

• alchimism

• intellect vs emotion/intellection vs material work

• talking in sleep - freudian repression

• georgana as eve - female curiosity, bringing ruin

• projection - what they think of it says more about the person

• sexual guilt?

William Wilson writer

Edgar Allan Poe

• American poet, critic, short-story writer

• desperate life (alcoholism, rejection by society, his bizarre artistic visions

• 1840: tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (first collection of short stories)

• exploring terror in the mind - psychology and dark human nature

• recuring motifs: death, fear of death, doubles, premature burials, madness, murders, obsession, guilt

• setting: often original typical location of British Gothic (monastery, old decaying castle, crypt)

• source of terror: distorted, insane psyche, hallucinations, boundaries blurred between reality/illusions

william wilson plot

he denounces his immoral past, but does not accept full blame

Wilson's boyhood in a boarding school in rural England

W meets another boy with the same name and appearance, born on the same date (January 19, Poe's birthday). → rivalry between them

boy dresses and walks like William, but can only whisper

he gives advice to William → W resents his arrogance

one night, W goes into his room → the boy's face now resembles his → W leaves the academy and, in the same week, the other boy follows suit.

later W is at Eton and the University of Oxford, gradually becoming more debauched (eg cheating at cards)

The other appears, face covered and alerts the others to W’s behavior → leaves without anyone seeing his face

William is haunted by the double

W attempts to seduce a married noblewoman at Carnival in Rome →the other stops him → enraged W drags the "unresisting" double away → brief sword fight → the other is stabbed fatally.

a large mirror appears → he sees the dead other: "mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood" but heno longer whispers

"In me didst thou exist—and in my death, see ... how utterly thou hast murdered thyself."

william wilson themes

• Doppelganger – double goer – another who walks

• Other William: the narrator’s conscience (usually the other is the bad part that we don’t want to face - here: he doesn’t want to face his own morality)

• Repression (growing level of detail - conscience braking to the surface)

• contradiction of rivarly (hate but respect/equal, he is the only person he cannot bully)

• revenge compulsion (perverse bond, obsessive cycle of revenge, goal: one unanswarable)

• mimetic rivalry (copying the rival - frankeinstein)

• mimetic desire (wanting something because someone else wants it)

• autobiographical (his birth date, crumbling boarding school, gambling, alcohol, duality of man - artist and social outcast)

• memory (unreliable narrator, fractured reality)

• the imp of the perverse - doing evil for evils sake

• dr. bransby (great reverend <> strict principle)

• school - place of isolation and enchantment (the mind)

• metaphor of light (bright at school → faint at eton → candles go out at cards) - descent into malice

turn of the screw writer

henry james

turn of the screw plot

Christmas Eve - unnamed narrator and friends gather around a fire, Douglas reads a story written by his sister's late governess: hired by a man responsible for niece and nephew in (fictional) Bly, Essex.

master: uninterested in raising children, gives her full charge, she is not to bother him with communications

Miles returns from school for the summer after a letter from the headmaster, he has been expelled. he never speaks of it, and the governess fears there is some horrible secret behind the expulsion, she is too charmed by the boy to want to press the issue.

the governess begins to see the figures of a man and woman whom she does not recognizeon the estate, they seem to the governess to be supernatural. She learns from Mrs. Grose that the governess's predecessor, Miss Jessel, and another employee, Peter Quint, had had a close relationship. Before their deaths, Jessel and Quint spent much of their time with Flora and Miles, the governess becomes convinced that the two children are aware of the ghosts' presence and are influenced by them.

Flora leaves the house without permission, while Miles is playing music for the governess. → governess goes with Mrs. Grose in search of her. → find her on the shore of a nearby lake, and the governess is convinced that Flora has been talking to the ghost of Miss Jessel. The governess sees Miss Jessel and believes Flora sees her as well, but Mrs. Grose does not. Flora denies seeing Miss Jessel and begins to insist that she will not see the new governess again.

The governess decides that Mrs. Grose should take Flora away to her uncle in attempt to escape Miss Jessel's influence. Left alone with the governess, Miles at last confesses he was expelled for something he said but cannot remember what he said or to whom he said it. The ghost of Quint appears to the governess at the window. The governess shields Miles, who attempts to see the ghost. The governess insists to Miles he is no longer controlled by the ghost, only to find that Miles has died in her arms.

turn of the screw themes

Apparitions (ghost story) <> hallucinations (psy. horror)

posession narrative (quint possesses miles → disposession → death)

unreliable narrator (governess, douglas and narrtor from the fire - 3 narr.)

pedophilia (governess and miles as a couple, quint’s sexual behaviour - premature sexual behavior)

‘young and pretty‘ - quint had an affair witht he previous governess, maybe he also abused miles