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Gothic Versus Romantic: a Revaluation of the Gothic Novel Author(S): Robert D Gothic versus Romantic: A Revaluation of the Gothic Novel Author(s): Robert D. Hume Source: PMLA, Vol. 84, No. 2 (Mar., 1969), pp. 282-290 Published by: Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1261285 Accessed: 04-11-2016 13:16 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to PMLA This content downloaded from 209.221.91.250 on Fri, 04 Nov 2016 13:16:08 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms GOTHIC VERSUS ROMANTIC: A REVALUATION OF THE GOTHIC NOVEL BY ROBERT D. HUME THE Gothic novel has not fared well among The literature of the later eighteenth century literary critics, even in this age of sym- attempts to rouse the reader's imaginative pathetic evaluations of largely forgotten minor sympathies; the particular device employed works. Literary histories treat the subject with toward this end by the Gothic novel writers is chilly indifference or condescension, granting terror, it which Burke had stressed as a factor in only cursory attention.' emotional involvement in his A Philosophical It is usually assumed that all Gothic novels Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime are much the same, and that the form is defined and Beautiful (1757). By Walpole's account in by the presence of some stock devices. These his "Preface to the First Edition," "terror" is "Gothic trappings" include haunted castles, "the author's principal engine" and serves to supernatural occurrences (sometimes with nat- grip and affect the reader.8 To what end we will ural explanations), secret panels and stairways, have to see. First, some discriminations must be time-yellowed manuscripts, and poorly lighted attempted. midnight scenes. Such "Gothicism" is only too There were three varieties of novel widely often ridiculous, even in the hands of its leading current in the late eighteenth century, sentimen- exponents. In consequence, the Gothic novel tal-domestic (the novel of manners), "Gothic," writers have been associated with "the sub- and didactic. The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), literary depths of romanticism...into [whose] The Castle of Otranto (1764), and Caleb Williams noisome fastnesses we need not descend."2 1 Historically, the term "Gothic" is applied to the novels of The object of this essay is to suggest that the Walpole, Mrs. Radcliffe, M. G. Lewis, Mary Shelley, and Gothic novel is more than a collection of ghost- Maturin. It can be extended to include such works as story devices, "the product of a dilettante in- Wuthering Heights, Moby Dick, and Faulkner's Sanctuary. The work of Poe, Hawthorne, and Charles Brockden Brown, terest in the potentialities of the Middle Ages for though not discussed here, is actually part of the original picturesque horror."3 Specifically, I wish to do Gothic tradition; at that period literary fashions in America three things: to analyze the characteristics and ran about a generation behind those in Europe. development of the Gothic novel; to define the 2 Samuel Chew, The Nineteenth Century and After, Book iv essence of that "Gothic" which can be significant of A Literary History of England, ed. A. C. Baugh, 2nd ed. (New York, 1967), p. 1196. for Walpole, Melville, and Faulkner alike; and 3 David Daiches, A Critical History of English Literature, to set the original Gothic novels in better his- 2 vols. (London, 1960), ii, 740. torical perspective by defining their relation to 4That Gothicism is closely related to romanticism is the romantic literature of the same period.4 perfectly clear, but it is easier to state the fact than to prove it As a historical form the Gothic novel flourished tidily and convincingly. There is a persistent suspicion that Gothicism is a poor and probably illegitimate relation of between 1764 and 1820; Walpole's The Castle of romanticism, and a consequent tendency to treat it that way. Otranto and Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer are There are those, indeed, who would like to deny the relation- its limits of demarcation. The appearance of the ship altogether. James Foster, in his History of the Pre- form has been variously accounted for.6 But in Romantic Novel in England (New York, 1949), pp. 202, 186-189, ignores Walpole almost completely, while discussing general it can be seen as one symptom of a Ann Radcliffe's work as "a special development of the senti- widespread shift away from neoclassical ideals of mental novel" (p. 262) and dismissing Gothicism as mum- order and reason, toward romantic belief in mery imported into sentimental fiction. emotion and imagination. Horace Walpole saw 6 Montague Summers calls the form romantic escapism; J. M. S. Tompkins blames its appearance on incipient roman- his novel as part of a resurgence of romance ticism and the bad taste of contemporary readers; Lowry against neoclassical restrictions: "the great Nelson believes that Gothic novels are the product of their resources of fancy have been dammed up, by a authors' pursuit of "daydreams and wish fulfillment." See strict adherence to common life."6 Within the Montague Summers, The Gothic Quest (London: Fortune limits of the cliche, we can view the Gothic Press, n.d.), pp. 12-13; J. M. S. Tompkins, The Popular Novel in England (Lincoln, Neb., 1961), pp. 208-209; Lowry novel as a manifestation of Northrop Frye's Nelson, Jr., "Night Thoughts on the Gothic Novel," YR, LII age of growing "sensibility" to aesthetic impres- (Dec. 1962), 238. sions. Like the work of Ossian, Smart, and 6 The Castle of Otranto, ed. W. S. Lewis (London, 1964), Sterne, the Gothic novel is part of the new "Preface to the Second Edition," p. 7. 7 Northrop Frye, "Towards Defining an Age of Sensi- "literature of process" which reflects its creator's bility," ELH, xxii (June 1956), 144-152. mind.7 8 Otranto, "Preface to the First Edition," p. 4. 282 This content downloaded from 209.221.91.250 on Fri, 04 Nov 2016 13:16:08 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Robert D. Hume 283 (1794) are examples of each type respectively. Walpole, Beckford, Lewis, Radcliffe, Mary The popularity of "Gothic" trappings quickly Shelley, and Maturin? Answering these questions brought about their absorption into the other involves us in a dual task. First we must trace the varieties of novel. (Caleb Williams exhibits some evolution of the form, trying to see what pro- of them.) In consequence it is sometimes said duces its unity of impression. Second, we must that there are several kinds of Gothic novel. attempt simultaneously to recognize the serious These are usually described as (1) sentimental- features of Gothic writing, distinguishing be- Gothic, novels which utilize ghosts and gloomy- tween the trappings which gave the eighteenth- castle atmosphere to enliven sentimental-domestic century form its name and the essentials which tales (e.g., Clara Reeve's The Old English Baron). the early examples share with novels in entirely (2) Terror-Gothic, the most nearly "pure" different periods. Gothic novel (e.g., Mrs. Radcliffe's The Mysteries What techniques, objectives, and concerns do of Udolpho). (3) Historical-Gothic, in which these the novels have in common? One of their most Gothic atmosphere is used in a historical setting prominent concerns, though seldom discussed, (e.g., Sophia Lee's The Recess).9 These divisions might grandiosely be called a psychological inter- are unsatisfactory. "Terror-Gothic" is too est.in- As early as Walpole (1764) there is a consid- clusive a category, lumping Radcliffe and Lewiserable amount of concern for interior mental pro- together as it does. And the historical novel must cesses. Justifying his use of the supernatural, at some point be distinguished from the Gothic. Walpole says, "Allow the possibility of the facts, J. M. S. Tompkins speaks of the "historical and all the actors comport themselves as persons novel or Gothic Romance" which "in their origin would do in their situation.'14 The true Gothic . are not easily distinguishable."10 It is per-novels pick up and advance the sort of psychol- haps more accurate to say that the historical ogizing which Richardson began in Clarissa novel is an offshoot or development of (1748). the I say "advance" because, while they are Gothic novel. The relationship is essentially neither so thorough nor so subtle as Richardson, accidental. Gothic novels are set in the pastthey move into deeper and more emotionally and are, as Tompkins says, at least "nominally complex situations. Robert Lovelace is a simpler historic,"'1 but they show no serious interest character in than Lewis' Ambrosio. But although veracity of fact or atmosphere. For Mrs. Rad-Ambrosio is a more repulsive person, his re- cliffe, the sixteenth century is as Gothic as sponses the to his own urges and actions are far more thirteenth. Walpole dabbled in the genuinely complicated and meaningful than Lovelace's ir- medieval, but his good characters, like those resistible of impulse and consequent remorse. the other Gothic novelists, are simply a projec- Gothic novels display the reactions of their tion of late eighteenth-century ideals, while characters his to trying or appalling situations. But villain is a later development of the villain-hero their heroes and heroines are not subjected to of Jacobean drama.'2 The historical element in trials the merely for the sake of exhibiting fine feel- Gothic novel does little more than contribute to ing, as in the sentimental novels of the period- the freedom conferred by distance in time and The Old English Baron (1777), for example, whose space.
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