Disturbing Insights: Revealing Hidden Fears in Gothic Literature
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UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT HILO ◆ HOHONU 2020 ◆ VOL. 18 Disturbing Insights: Revealing loss and abandonment, combined with an intensi- Hidden Fears in Gothic Literature linked to his own psychosis and the development Tyler V. Deal of the characters in his stories. He was thought English 200A demonstrated extremes in consciousness and near- Readers of Gothic literature are conceivably death experiences with dream-like images (Lloyd- obsessed with a need to grasp the elusive side of Smith 31). The grim pictures of murder, death, the human condition. Since the early part of the 19th and insanity composed throughout Poe’s writings century, American Gothic authors have explained the mystery of what cannot be logical or rational and nineteenth centuries. Post-colonial America a world which was stark and unstable, and fear- was very new and unstable. The frontier experi- ful of the future. This paper explores the elements ence was aroused through acts of death and torture of Gothic Fiction by how its narrative draws forth towards Native Americans and Afro-Americans. disturbing truths about the human psyche, allow- Cruelty and fear were conditions people faced ing the reader to face the uncomfortable boundary every day. Edgar Allan Poe’s work emerged from of the unconscious, without necessarily resolving the shaky ground of America. Through Poe’s writ- any fears. However, these fears may be necessary ings, the extremes of horror surfaced in a culture for the individual, culture, and society to examine that was denying its own madness, covered up by in order to advance beyond the world’s instabil- the face of freedom. Furthermore, literature from Washington Irving and Charlotte Perkins Gilman - exposed themes of individual hidden fears and a ed from their own psyche but, more importantly, distressed mass consciousness. came from society and the culture of the time. In contrast to Edgar Allen Poe, Washington As stated in Alan Lloyd-Smith’s book American Irving was considered austere, concerned with Gothic Fiction: An Introduction, “Certain aspects his performance as a writer, and revered as a man of the American experience may be understood who sought to protect and provide for his family. as inherently gothic: religious intensities, frontier Nothing in his upbringing gives any indication of immensities, isolation, and violence…” (Lloyd- being mentally disturbed, yet his short story “The Smith 25). This paper will demonstrate how au- Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is full of disturbing thors Edgar Allen Poe, Washington Erving, and characters, images, and physical environments Charlotte Perkins Gilman weave into their plots that would deliver shrieks to the most fearless characters’ psychosis, objects, stark and empty lo- - cations, and the horror of the sublime. Exploring ally prescribed doctrines of post-colonial America. the Gothic narrative loop is also crucial in plot “…for it is in such little retired Dutch valleys… the great torrent of migration and improvement… reemergence of the Gothic genre through literature which is making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless country” (Irving 1). Puritan Some critics have attributed Edgar Allen Poe’s values deriving from Dutch culture and their trans- stories, which created descriptions of characters’ gressions were not only inscribed into post-colo- mental disorders and demented homicide, to his nial America but became the impetus for reveal- upbringing. His mother died when he was only ing dark hidden truths found in Gothic Literature, two, and his father abandoned him shortly after. such as in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Thus, According to Kim A. Jones’s academic paper through Gothic Literature, the troubled mind of “Assessing the Impact of Father-Absence from a the culture is revealed. Psychoanalytic Perspective,” the child experiences Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s work “The Yellow “...such themes as heightened fears involving object Wallpaper” came a little later in historical Gothic 73 UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT HILO ◆ HOHONU 2020 ◆ VOL. 18 literature. Written in 1892, “The Yellow Wallpaper” to commit murder: “I grew furious as I gazed upon is considered Victorian Gothic. Victorian authors incorporated the themes of spiritualism and psy- blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the choanalysis, both popular within the culture, into very marrow in my bones” (Poe 5). Poe’s story not the scheme of the narrative (Craig 2). There was only evokes fright but allows for the possibility an obsession with the supernatural, and the intel- that one can be deaf to the threats which surround lectual and emotional states these stories relayed. him. The old man was oblivious and never fore- Gilman, a feminist and intellectual, suffered from saw his own murder. The old man reasoned with himself, believing what he heard was nothing but the wind in the chimney or only a mouse cross- degradation and sexual repression were prevalent. Women were looked upon by men as irrational the unknown. Madness as a theme gives us a clue into our own psyche. Madness alerts us to our own depression, which weighed upon her, are said to insanity and that of our fellow man. This ties into be the inspiration for “The Yellow Wallpaper.” how the Romantic period, and even the Victorian Madness and the supernatural are the prevailing age, awakened people’s curiosity to discover their themes found within this short story, both of which own multiplicity of self. Additionally, madness as a theme shows imminent collapse of the Victorian era. The cause up in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow of madness and other themes found in Gothic Wallpaper.” The narrator, a young upper-class Literature are thus inherently linked to culture, its woman, diagnosed with “nervous depression,” is fears of the unknown, the potential for violence, and the ever-present trepidation of the masses. John had rented for the summer. She traces the pat- Paul Santilli expresses this idea adequately in his terns, images, and symbols she sees on the yellow academic paper “Culture, Evil and Horror” when wallpaper: “The Colour is hideous enough, and he writes, “...I would say that the antithesis of cul- unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the ture is not nature but the unnatural – that is, the pattern is torturing” (Gilman 149). The story has multiple layers of interpretation. Is she really go- names” (Santilli 174). ing mad from the visions and the effects the yel- Retreating from the unknown, the uncomfort- low wallpaper is having on her psyche or is John’s able and unstable life, was not an option for the patronizing, controlling behavior causing her de- lives of individuals who sought to escape the mad- lusions? Her imagination induces the sublime in the reader. David Morris’s journal article “Gothic just the opposite. It forced the devices of American Sublimity” describes the sublime as, “... a vertigi- and European culture towards extremes and ac- nous and plunging - not a soaring - sublime, which cess of deep-seated fears to the surface to be rec- takes us deep within rather than far beyond the hu- ognized; thus, the troubled mind, now aware, raw man sphere” (Morris 306). As a Gothic short story, and uncanny, was lacking any immediate solution the narrative in “The Yellow Wallpaper” challeng- to the horrors it faced. Authors of the Gothic genre es the reader to move beyond logic and reason and impelled these fears through the creation of their assess a deeper meaning to the narrator’s state of disturbing characters, through their descriptions being. One could argue that the sublime is work- of the “other,” and through their eerie settings and ing on the denial of hidden fears. Morris’s article defends this statement by saying, “Gothic super- Readers of these stories became fascinated by naturalism confronts us with the repetition of what how the narratives impressed upon their emotions. we prefer to keep hidden or covered by denial” In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” a mad- (Morris 310). man is bent on killing an old man with an eye re- The town of Sleepy Hollow is haunted by a sembling a vulture. The old man’s evil eye looked upon the madman, which gave him the incentive through the woods and surrounding regions of the 74 UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT HILO ◆ HOHONU 2020 ◆ VOL. 18 town. He “is ever and anon seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on perched on a hill, the disturbed madman Norman Bates, and the heavy rainstorm which washes to the scene of the battle in quest for his head and Marion Crane to the Bates Motel, are all embodi- rushes back to the churchyard before daybreak. ments of the Gothic. Furthermore, in more recent During the night, the people in this small town, po- stories, like the supernatural romance Twilight, tently aware of the tale, hastily hurry themselves non-traditional vampirism is explored as a Gothic home attempting not to confront the spirit. In theme. Additional Gothic themes found in Twilight include death at a young age, grief, suicide, and throughout the plot – known as the Gothic loop. - The academic paper, “Trauma Reenactment in the ing psyche of the masses as it did two-hundred Gothic Loop: A Study on Structures of Circularity years ago. Gothic themes reveal both social and in Gothic Fiction” explains that “The Gothic nar- psychological instability while considering the rative loop is curved by a forceful intrusion of past amalgamation of cultural circumstances. In the events into the protagonist’s present-day reality... past two hundred years, the horrors found in the the past, not only regains its sense of immediacy and relevance, but also acquires a revised perspec- the multiple fears society still must deal with.