Discuss the Presentation of 'the Other' in the Gothic

Discuss the presentation of ‘The Other’

Other, used to refer to a person or thing that is different or distinct from one already mentioned or known about. Gothic literature typically features the presence of a victim and a villain within a surreal environment excluded from civilisation in which “The Other” terrorises a poor helpless victim for their own pleasure. However, it is disputed as to who really is “The Other” and who is “the victim” shown throughout many gothic novels such as ‘Dracula’, Carter’s collection of ‘The bloody Chamber and Other Stories’ ‘Jane Eyre’. As all of these “victims” willingly allow themselves to become prey to their “Other’s”. When and who becomes “the other”, is it who has crossed the boundary or is it who has created the boundaries?

Typical readers would assume “the other” as the villain, described with the usual stereotypical features, such Dracula, “face was a strong//aquiline//lofty domed forehead//his eyebrows were massive//peculiarly sharp white teeth” described by Johnathan Harker, similarly as to the description of ‘The Erl King” in Carter’s story “skin is the tint and texture of sour cream//nipples ripe as berries//sharp teeth”. Despite these grotesque descriptions both of “the other”’s possess human qualities, however, slightly modified. Deformity in Victorian Britain instantly excluded these people into the category of “the other”, they would be segregated and cast aside from the rest of society and forced into the humiliation of performing in freak shows to survive, such as Harvey’s Midges in Picadilly Hall. Deformity was seen as the wrath of God, that the deformed was destined to live that life as God had been angered by the action of the person in their previous life. This did not only apply to the bourgeois or the upper class, Edward Mordrake, was a fictitious character promoted as real in 1895, said to be heir to an English peerage, who had an extra face on the back of his head. In the story, Mordrake repeatedly begged doctors to have his "demon face" removed, claiming that it whispered things that "one would only speak about in hell" at night, but no doctor would attempt it. The story concludes that he committed suicide at the age of twenty-three. It was something that could affect anyone, everyone and anyone could be an “other”. A Victorian audience would be well aware of the concept of disability, however, it is only being accepted and understood in the late twentieth century with the equality act 2010 disability discrimination act 1995. What scared the readers in novels such as Dracula and the stories such as ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ from Carter’s collection, in the words of Leila S May is “not only that this nightmare stalks the streets and public spaces but that its penetration into the private, domestic sphere” being able to imagine a creature such as Dracula or The Bloofer Lady terrorising a place that they would consider to be safe rather than a secluded, desolated place such as Transylvania, Dracula can be viewed just like famous historical figures such as Jack the Ripper, creating fear in a place that many could not imagine being invaded by these “others”.