This is the first in a series of posts leading up to my favourite holiday, Halloween. The late 18th Century saw the rise of the Gothic genre, a reaction against the rationalism that had defined the century. Leading this trend was Horace Walpole, writer of what is considered the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto. Like many of the novels published at the time, The Castle of Otranto was originally published with the claim that it was a true story, with the original full title being The Castle of Otranto, A Story. Translated by William Marshal, Gent. From the Original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto. In fact it claimed to be a translation of a recently discovered 16th Century Italian text, and it wasn't until the second and subsequent editions that Walpole claimed ownership."The following work was found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. It was printed in Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529. How much sooner it was written does not appear. The principle incidents are such are were believed in the darkest ages of Christianity ; but the language and conduct have nothing that favours barbarism. The style is the purest Italian. If the story was written near the time it is supposed to have happened, it must have been between 1095, the era of the first crusade, and 1243, the date of the last or not long afterwards."
For anyone familiar with the basic plot it seems ridiculous for anyone at the time to actually think the story could be true. I encourage you to go read it if you haven't already because to a modern reader it's absolutely hilarious, it's every horror cliché crammed into around a hundred pages. But if you consider that nothing like this, at least in this genre, had ever been written before, and that all of the Gothic tropes that can be found in the novel were brand new, this isn't just a load of adults falling for ghost stories. It's a very clever writer writing in the dominant story-telling form of the age, and twisting it to tell a story that would captivate its audience by appealing to its darkest fears.
Possibly the most interesting thing about the novel is that it is the first time we see many of the Gothic tropes that we're still familiar with today. These include old castles, secret passages, and virginal maids pursued by evil villains.Another thing that remained a trend in the Gothic is its not-so-subtle psycho-sexuality, for example a character is killed by a falling giant helmet, and this is continued further in other exemplary Gothic novels such as The Monk and Dracula (a piece dedicated to Dracula to follow.) Even today's horror films contain overtly sexual themes. The Gothic represented the hidden desires of the sub-conscience, and presented them to its readers in a way that horrified them.
I'd argue that horror still does the same today, but the use of the supernatural makes the horrors of humanity more palatable for the consumer. When the villain is a vampire, ghost, zombie, or a werewolf, we can walk away from the film safe in the knowledge that these creatures don't really exist.We can process the ideas that are being presented to us in a safe environment, without feeling any immediate threat. Often monsters represent the darker sides of the human psyche, and this is never more apparent than in the Gothic novel. Perhaps that's something to bear in mind as we read these novels. Perhaps the scariest monsters aren't the monsters in ghost stories, but the monsters in our heads.
