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Gothic fiction has been a popular literary genre since it was first conceived in Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. While Gothic fiction is varied, three main aspects characterise the genre: an environment of fear, threats of the supernatural, and intrusion of the past onto the present. Sometimes, these three combine into one to create what I like to call ‘the monstrous other’.
During the nineteenth century, anything considered outside the so-called “English norm” rose among the lower and middle classes. This was also the century where homosexuality was outlawed, and the homosexual man was thought of as the bourgeois gentleman. Naturally, gothic stories took these fears and ran with them, turning them into absolute horrors (by nineteenth-century English standards). This would be the blueprint for most horror media in our modern era. It takes the insecurities and fears of its period and turns them into a physical monster (be it human or inhuman) that terrorises the protagonists. Just look at Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) — the decline of American society manifested.
In Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), the villain Edward Hyde is the feral, chaotic, ugly and possibly homosexual alter-ego of English gentleman and repressed homosexual Henry Jekyll. In Mary Shelley’s 1818 classic Frankenstein, college dropout Victor Frankenstein scientifically gives birth to a beautiful yet horrific “monster” that hunts him down and kills everyone he loves, destroying any chance Victor had at normalcy. However, the one I believe that shows this the best is Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. Although it is not the first depiction of a vampire in Gothic literature (that honour belongs to the 1819 story The Vampyre by John William Polidori), it is the most influential.
It tells the story of English solicitor and iconic bisexual Jonathan Harker travelling through the dangerous Romanian countryside (environment of fear) to visit the very old Count Dracula (threats of the supernatural) who wants to buy
a property in London (intrusion of the past onto the present)—seeing the gothic elements? The novel also preys upon English moral standards by placing the middle-class English gentleman into a sexually submissive position by Dracula and his brides.
Something that both Frankenstein and Dracula have in common is the subversion of gender roles through their male protagonists. Victor Frankenstein gives birth (creates) the creature and immediately goes into a type of postpartum depression or hysteria. He takes on the role of a “damsel in distress,” often relying on his traditionally masculine friend, Henry Clerval. Jonathan Harker takes on a similar role. While he escapes the Count’s castle, he suffers a nervous breakdown and must be nursed back to health by his wife, Mina. Harker is pushed into submissive positions at other points in the novel, particularly in chapters 13 and 21.
The scene of Mina feasting on Dracula’s blood in chapter 21 was especially troubling for Victorian English readers, as it challenged the rigid gender roles they heavily relied upon. Rather
than springing to this wife’s defence, Harker is sprawled on their bed unconscious. Rather than Dracula feasting on Mina’s blood, Mina does the feasting (although against her will). The other men of the group (Van Helsing, John Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and Quincy Morris) come to Jonathan and Mina’s rescue after a moment of shock when they walk in on the scene. Their shock at this perversion of gender roles is most likely a reflection of the reader; as SparkNotes puts it, ‘In a world governed by reason and order, Dracula can pose no greater threat than by disordering gender roles.’
Thank you for joining me today at the Lit Corner. Tune in to the next issue, where I’ll explore (info-dump about) absurdism presented by three classic writers: Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, and Patrick Süskind!
Written by El Bancroft
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