Why The Gothic

Question 1

SOCIAL

Answer 1

It is said that the Gothic is a response to fears and anxieties

Question 1

PSYCHOLOGICAL

Answer 1

FREUD famously identifies the unconscious as the place from which nothing ever goes away

thus

ghosts/hauntings are figures arising from our psychological past, figures of fear that we thought we had banished but continues to line on inside us

Question 2

FEMINIST

Answer 2

We might point to the preponderance of suffering women in the Gothic and say that what the Gothic really enacts is

a struggle between genders - men always having the upper hand.

Question 3

• FEMALE GOTHIC - (Ellen Moers 1976)

Answer 3

how 18th and 19th century women novelists employ coded expressions to describe the anxieties over domestic entrapment and female sexuality.

‘terror …linked with the female Gothic, that strand of Gothic written by women and usually featuring female heroines”

Question 4

SCIENTIFIC/TECHNOLOGICAL

Answer 4

The Gothic might be seen as tracing the limits of what is possible for the human, and as questioning how far scientific and technological developments might enable people to extend themselves without threat of divine retaliation.

Question 5

PASSION

Answer 5

Early writers of the Gothic mad it clear that they were against the Enlightenment idea of reason. The Gothic reminds us that we are mainly driven by our passions.

good thing - as we feel emotional intensity towards certain people of causes

bad thing- as it drives us into obsession/madness