Behind a Mask by Louise May Alcott

Behind a Mask

Louisa May Alcott was often writing under a pseudonym or anonymously, and Behind a Mask is one of her blood and thunder tales where the protagonist is considered to be a femme fatale. Femme fatale is a different kind of a Gothic heroine; she knows what she wants and knows exactly how to get it. Moreover, she is the one every other character is intermingled around and everyone does things she subconsciously wants them to do. Basically she is the starter of every action, but also Louisa May Alcott’s heroine is portrayed as if she is acting on a stage of life.

I liked Alcott’s writing style; she is fast with the actions and gives foreshadowing clues that set the plot in the motion. At the end, Behind a Mask with femme fatale Jean Muir playing to be someone else, getting exactly what she wants is a mask Louisa May Alcott is hiding to be someone else. Gothic elements are not as obvious as in the other stories we read, but are rather hiding in the small which crafts of Jean Muir who appears to have supernatural powers.

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

The Fall of the House of Usher

Typical style of Edgar Allan Poe, you can tell it was dark romanticism from the title itself. Roderich Usher, the last of his family line, suffers great depression after the death of his twin sister, the only relative he had. His friend, also the narrator comes to see him and eventually witnesses the falling of the house of Usher, the falling of the Roderick Usher himself.

One of the ideas was that the scene of the house with the zigzag crack on its wall foreshadows the future outcomes. The house was also situated on the lake, where the reflection in the water might be representing the female figure, in this case the deceased sister. The creepy Gothic element that serves as the turning point for the climax to appear is that the deceased sister comes back to life and kills the brother. In my opinion she is presenting the haunted thoughts of brother, maybe even guilt over the sins he made in his life. And the zigzag fissure opened after the blood red moon and the house of usher tumbled down.

“The radiance was that of the full, setting and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure …. in zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened …”

Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Young Goodman Brown

If I was to describe Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown with at least words as possible i would have said mysterious dark romanticism play with time and Devil’s work. There are many scenes in which the author places his characters in situations where Devil has his fingers in the eeriness and mysteriousness. The reader, or me in this case, just can’t get over the feeling how he will soon place his characters in the Limbo itself. Very spooky, dark short story, that I couldn’t really decide who it is trying to criticize. Then I realized, it is the dark realism. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses Gothic elements with Christianity motives to start convincing the reader life isn’t sweet and bright reality and sin is hidden in everyone, inside us. At the same time you are not sure if it is all an illusion of young Goodman Brown who might be going insane or really the work of Devil.

Both stories have the evil planning and playing against their protagonist. That evil comes either in the light of imagination or the evilness of humans. Both stories portrait human evil nature and evil intentions - “Homo homini lupus”

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

  I have seen Tim Burton’s version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow first, and as a Tim Burton fan, naturally I like it. The way he made it clearly showed his unique style. Unfortunately that was my mistake, to see the movie first before reading the book. At first I didn’t like the book. It was written with very confusing style, for the long time and many pages I was just waiting for the plot I knew in the back of my head to come about. Of course it didn’t happen; Gothic that I was on the screen was going as if in the head of Ichabod Crane from the book. The protagonist created the Gothic elements, he enjoyed them and was scared of them and it almost felt as if there was no reality to him, but just an illusion he wasn’t aware of.

The more I think about that novel, the more l like it an appreciate it. It is not just about what it says; it is about the contact of two worlds, both with flaws and with imperfections. Educated people and people still living like peasants, isolated from the world.

“Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is little valley, or rather lap f land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world.”

“A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere.”

“He [Ichabod Crane] was a native of Connecticut, a state which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters”

The Mortal Immortal and Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde

The Mortal Immortal - Mary Shelley

What first struck me was that the after just reading the short story by Mary Shelley, is the title. With its oxymoron title, Mary Shelley managed to capture my attention, and judging by my reaction, she probably succeeded in capturing the attention of the audience in the year 1833. What is also interesting about her short story  is that it is written in the first person point of view as if written by a man's diary, and it dances between fantasy and science fiction by playing with the elements of Gothic.
In my opinion this is a story of a heart broken by the time. All Whinzy wanted, the immortal mortal that is telling the story, is to have Bertha, the girls of his dreams and desires, falling in love with him. The simple greed for the cure for love, and the simple greed for the immortality were the story's theme Mary Shelley was trying to work around.
What is new in Gothic literature, and starts with Mary Shelley's work, is that the mystical part from the former Gothic is replaced with the witchcraft and mysterious potions.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

All his life Robert L. Stevenson wanted to be someone else. From the young age, being very sick he had to be locked in a house in Edinburgh. Even thought this is based on bare assumption, how wrong could I be to say that every little boy wants to be mischievous, bursting with energy, curios about the outside world. Little R.L.Stevens was spending his time in the home, instead of doing what other boys his age were doing, playing freely and carelessly. I could imagine him starring outside the window and pretending to be someone else in the outer world, someone strong and powerful.

Then on college, he allowed the R.L.Stevens he want to be to take the charge. His father wanted him to be engineer, but Robert wanted to do the poetry. The society even, it wanted for Robert to be a “normal” citizen, but he wanted to be bohemian. Cold one not argue Robert L.Stevens had the constant fight of two people inside him. One person is what society wants him to be, what is socially accepted and that is who Dr. Jekyll was , and the other person are all the secret desires, the rebellious one, represented by Mr.Hyde. The solution for one side of the personality to win is the suicide, but in the real life, he escaped the society and joined one where he can be whatever he wants; where he finally got free of the fight with two persons in him, and united them making peace with himself.

Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey, a novel by Jane Austin which incredibly reminded me of Pride and Prejudice, didnt really satisfied my thirst for Gothic novel, at least the way i was expecting it to be. Throughout the novel I got an impression that while admiring, she has been mocking Ann Radcliffes The Romance of the Forest and Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto.
"...it shall be MrsRadciffe's;her novels are amusing enough; they are worth reading; some fun and nature in them."(page 40)
I saw that in the usage of Gothic elements Ann Radcliffe and or Mr.Walpole used, but instead of going with the flow and making it spooky and eerie, Jane Austin makes it very realistic and blunt. Even the characters are mocking the unreality of Gothic literature popular in that time.
"...but on one side perhaps the remains of a broken lute, on the other a ponderous chest which no efforts can open, and over the fire-place the portrait of some handsome warrior."
"Peals of thunder so loud as to seem to shake the edifice to its foundation will roll round the neighboring mountains..." (page 125)
The main Gothic elements are still present. There is a heroine Catherine who we follow through the novel watching her transforming from a child to a woman. There is a villain, Captain Tinley,however, Jane Austin changes it a bit adding more villains to the whole story, probably so that the climax wouldnt come too soon. Saying that, other villains are Frederick Tinley and Mr.Thorpe. All of them contributed to the villainous twistings of a plot.
What is different and interesting from the other novels we read, is how society functions completely different. Women are allowed to be openly coquettes, to talk to men, to perform their own will and so on, being similar to the woman today. However, there are certain rules that had to be followed, such as being introduced to a man before talking to him.
"The master of the ceremonies introduced to her a very gentelmanlike young man as a partner: - his name was Tilney."(page 19)
Very interesting passage is about the authors view of women position in society:
"In marriage, the man is supposed to provide for the support of the woman; the woman to make the home agreeable to the man; he is to purvey, and she is to smile."(page 63)

The Romance of the Forest - Part II

The foreshadowing prophecy from the beginning of the book has been fulfilled.
"The time may come, my friend, when death shall dissolve the sinews of avarice, and justice be permitted to resume her rights." I believe the moral of the story is compressed within that sentence. There is this motive of greed wriggling throughout the whole novel, as if Ann Radcliffe was saying there is nothing scarier in the world, there is no supernatural that should shake our bones, but something as natural as human beings and their tendency to be greedy. The key motive for the whole novel was greed and jealousy, it started it all. Interesting enough, if I was to refer to Bible, then the same greed motive was used in the story of Kain and Abel, two brothers, one being killed by jealous brother. Same element appears in the novel, and same greed motive wraps the plot.
"...but he[the real Marquis de Montalt] had married the heiress of an illustrious family, whose fortune amply supplied the deficiency of his own. He had the misfortune to lose her, for she was amiable and beautiful, soon after the birth of a daughter[Adeline], and it was then that the present Marquis formed the diabolical design of destroying his brother.... His brother and his infant daughter only stood between him and his wishes..."(Radcliffe, Ann, The Romance of the Forest, page 343)

The overall thoughts about this novel is that it pretty much copies the work of Horace Walpole, however I dont find it wrong since he determined the rules for the Gothic literature and that is what Ann Radcliffe was following in her work. Moreover, Ann Radcliffe adds an interesting twist to typical Gothic forms turning the novel into a piece from a Female Gothic Literature. Now the main hero is a heroine, and even though she is fragile as is supposed to be, very sensitive and gentle, she leads the novel from the exposition through the climax, towards the conclusion. Women start getting the right to participate in the discussion. when first conflict occurred between male and a female character, i was expecting for a man to do something dangerous to a woman rather then leave her argue with him. "'Can you then so soon forget our conversation of this morning?' replied Adeline: 'and can you think lightly of me as to believe I would profess a regard, which I do not feel?' .... 'Forgive me, Adeline, forgive the doubts and inconsistencies I have betrayed..." (page 192)
However, it was a woman who wrote the novel, so my expectations based on Horace Walpole's plot, were in vain. Ann Radcliffe definitely put a woman in charge, in charge of her own faith and the faith of others.

At the end, the justice is satisfied, "sinews of avarice were dissolved." Marquis the Montalt committed suicide, the bandits responsible for the abduction were hanged, and our beautiful heroine lived happily ever after.