Gothic Literature

Gothic Literature has been popular for many years and still continues to be. Gothic is generally characterised by “setting in a castle, an atmosphere of mystery and suspense, an ancient prophecy, omens, portents, and visions, supernatural or otherwise inexplicable events, high, even overwrought emotion, women in distress, women threatened by a powerful, impulsive, tyrannical male and the metonymy of gloom and horror.” (Harris 2013) in Castle’s essay The Gothic Novel (2005), the gothic is described as a ‘sensation machine’ and ‘fantastic psychic compression chamber’ where ‘one might recreate, atavistically, the thrilling sense of being overwhelmed by something bigger and more potent than oneself.’ (Castle, 2005) Examples of this can be seen in the 1968 film, Rosemary’s Baby (Castle, & Polanski, 1968) and the Jane Austin’s 1817 novel, Northanger Abbey (Austen, 1995).

The film Rosemary’s Baby is the story of a couple, Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse, who move into a new apartment with quirky neighbours, Minnie and Roman Castevet. The couple decide to have a baby but Rosemary has a dream that she was raped by a demonic presence. When Rosemary becomes pregnant, the Castevet’s become invested in her pregnancy. They insist she sees their good friend and reputable doctor, Dr. Abraham Sapirstein, who says that Rosemary is to drink something that Minnie will prepare for her daily as this will work better than multivitamins. Her friend Hutch provides her with a book which suggests that Roman is a witch and she feels that they are after her baby. She tries to get help but no one would believe her. When she goes into labour, she is heavily sedated and when she wakes up, she was told that the baby had died. She hears cries coming from Minnie and Roman’s apartment and she goes to investigate. There she finds her husband, Minnie, and Roman and all their friends, and a black bassinet with an inverted cross hanging from the top. In the bassinet was her baby and she is informed that he is actually the spawn of Satan.

Northanger Abbey is the story of a seventeen-year-old girl, named Catherine Morland, and her visit to a town named Bath. Catherine is very fond of reading Gothic novels. At Bath, she meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor. They invite her to stay at their home, Northanger Abbey, for a few weeks. Due to her fondness for Gothic literature, she is fascinated by the idea of staying at an abbey and Henry teases her that there are frightening things at the abbey. The abbey, however, is not gothic. While there, she discovers that Henry and Eleanor’s mother had died nine years earlier and Catherine was convinced that Henry and Eleanor’s father had something to do with this. Henry angrily informs her that she had died of an illness and his father was upset by her death and that he loved her.

In both stories, female characters suspect something is happening that is being kept