After reading this article, I honestly found my passion and great interest in Gothic novels resurfacing. Being an English major and Psychology minor, these books directly address and incorporate both of my favorite subjects into one style of reading, which makes me want to read even more and analyze these texts deeper than just their surface meanings. This article explains, “the longevity and power of Gothic fiction unquestionably stem from the way it helps us address and disguise some of the most important desires, quandaries, and sources of anxiety, from the most internal and mental to the widely social and cultural, throughout the history of western culture since the eighteenth century” (5). This quote perfectly states everything that Gothic novels are about, as I completely agree with what this author, Hogle, is saying. Taking Frankenstein as the example he used in his article, the Gothic style of writing allows readers to personally become involved, if they so choose, with the characters, and truly experience and witness their anxiety and internal and mental problems and terrors. This brilliant way of writing is perfect for people who are interested in psychology, in this sense.
The article also talks about the Gothic in terms of having the essence of the “seemingly unreal, the alien, the ancient, and the grotesque” (7). Our modern-day ideas of unreal and grotesque often venture off into bloody and gory ideas, while the Gothic, in my opinion, incorporates these elements in completely tasteful and alluring ways. Take Frankenstein again: he is a completely disgusting looking, sounding, and acting creature, without being all gory and murderous, as current movies and ideals might make him out to be. Gothic writers create these creatures almost in a way that pulls at our heart strings, making us wonder and become even more curious of the world we do not know yet. Also, we could see these characters in comparison to ourselves, and notice similarities and differences between us, making the Gothic stories seemingly self-reflective, as well.
If I could ask a Gothic writer any question, I would probably just ask “where do you get your inspirations?” I am more of a critical and analytical writer, so creative writing is difficult for me to do. Gothic writing is so imaginative, and yet so incredibly brilliant in terms of the psychological concepts it employs and introduces. I am almost always impressed with the Gothic literature I read, as it has a certain element that other genres of books do not have, which always intrigues me as a reader.
This is a great post, Shannon! I think it's exciting that this class will be able to link two of your major interests--literature and psychology. Something I would like for you to consider, especially as we move through some of these 19th century novels, is the way in which the novel helps to create ideas of modern subjectivity in terms of the development of the concept of "the psyche." Novels are really a relatively new genre (as compared to drama or poetry), and became incredibly popular in the 19th century. Consider what impact this genre had on ideas of "the self" and "the psyche" for its readership. I once had an epiphany while reading _Villette_ (a gothicky novel by Charlotte Bronte) in a Victorian Literature class. It sounds very simplistic, but it had a major impact on how I look at 19th century novels. I realized that it wasn't Freud who invented the "subconscious," but was just the individual who "discovered it," so to speak. In other words, *something* happened in the 19th century that helped to create the idea of a "subconscious"--a place where we repress and hide things. One of these factors is perhaps social--the 19th century saw a huge wave of sexual repression spurned on by "Victorian" values of domesticity. Still others see this phenomenon as economic--"modern life" alienated workers from their labor. In other words, to go work at a factory everyday like a robot, one has to "repress" their innate humanity. In any case, I think it would be interesting to see you, like Freud, *find* places in these novels where the idea of a "subconscious" begins to manifest.
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