setting Flashcards
(13 cards)
Introduction
In Gothic literature, setting plays a central role in shaping the genre’s atmosphere and key tropes. Graveyards, abbeys, dungeons, and castles help identify a story as Gothic, Establishes expectations, and immerses the reader in Gothic tradition, allowing the writers to subvert or play with those conventions. It is crucial to creating a backdrop and emotional landscape of the story. It allows the reader to situate the context and the atmosphere in which the story will take place.
Main themes setting
-to create the atmosphere of fear and suspense.
-Gothic settings also reinforce the power structures which are a very important theme of gothic literature
-setting can also act as a pathetic fallacy,
-Settings often feature unnatural or unexplainable elements which symbolizes the supernatural or the uncanny.
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Conclusion
Gothic settings aren’t just backgrounds — they reflect characters’ emotions, build tension, and make the supernatural feel real.
Bram stoker and Angela carter use the setting in gothic literature to create the atmosphere of fear and suspense
They do this by portraying grand ancient castles and dark forests which are often decaying and ruined to convey isolation and danger.
( Dracula Johnathan and bloody chamber and werewolf)
In the bloody chamber the remote castle on
the edge of cliff is “cut off from land for half a day” this represents the protagonists entrapment and sets the scene to the inevitable helplessness she feels when she is in need for help or an escape. This emphasizes her powerlessness.
In the werewolf, the young girl’s mother’s instruction
to “not leave the path because of bears, the wild boar, the starving wolves” creates a sense of impending danger and suspense in the dark deep forest.
Gothic settings also reinforce the power structures which are a very important theme of gothic literature
For example the castle in the bloody chamber represents patriarchal power and control as it is the Marquis’s domain and the narrator is forced to move there after marriage.
In gothic literature, setting can also act as a pathetic fallacy,
mirroring the characters’ psychological state like guilt or madness. The external description of the characters inner thoughts makes all their emotions more vivid and plunges the reader into that same state of mind.
( courtshipMr Lyon and Marianna lard Alfred Tennyson )
In the courtship of mr Lyon, the house represents loneliness and sorrow
it is personified and described as “sweet” “hiding itself shyly” and with a “retiring melancholy grace.” which is a reflection of the beast’s soul. The transition from winter to spring shows the beast’s emotional growth of character. At the start of the story the house has a snowy drive but at the end “Mr and Mrs Lyon walk in the garden in a drift of fallen petals”
In “Marianne”, the poem is set in a “moated grange” symbolising isolation
the “rusted nails” and the “blackest moss” represent decay and desolation. All these elements reflect marianne’s state of mind as she feels abandoned and neglected by her lover.
Settings often feature unnatural or unexplainable elements which symbolizes the supernatural or the uncanny.
In “la belle dame sans merci” by John Keats the “elfin grot” that the knight is taken to gives a sense of mysterious supernatural and liminal space where the knight enters a dream like prison where he loses touch of reality. (+Drac) ere king )
There is also a supernatural atmosphere in Dracula’s castle that is filled with shadows,
secret passages and eerie silences as well as in the earl king where “ You step between the first trees and then you are no longer in the open air; the wood swallows you up.” Here the forest is portrayed as dense and magical.
Lucy’s tomb in the churchyard becomes the site of her vampiric transformation where she feeds on children.
one more so small child was missing, and we find it thank god unharmed amongst the graves”. The setting here that is supposed to be a holy and restful place adds to the perversion and horror and reinforces the gothic idea of the uncanny.
