Intro: Gothic Horror Blog Series
Recently, I’ve been having conversations with people about what “horror” means in fiction. My personal experience was that I thought of horror as the slasher movies that came out on Friday the 13th and Halloween. I knew instinctively that those sorts of stories were not my cup of tea, and would likely give me nightmares. I also suspected them of lacking any real storyline or cohesive plot. Didn’t the fans just go to see gore, anyway? A wholly unappealing idea of entertainment, I thought then and still think now.
During high school, I read from a wide variety of genres, but most every title had in common the designation of “classic” literature. (By this, I think, people mean it’s old.) My favorite novels and short stories from that time have a gloomy atmosphere, heavy suspense, a riveting plot twist, conflicted characters, and explore complex morals.
The passion and unfortunate predicament of Rochester in Jane Eyre captured my empathy, and then the story plunged me into an inner moral debate when his wife died and I felt relief. The back-and-forth arguments between Frankenstein’s monster and the world in general, and then with his creator specifically, kept me riveted throughout the plot, even as tragedy after tragedy pushed the main characters deeper and deeper into their moral morasses. It felt entirely fitting, holy even, that the monster and his creator should wander frigid wastelands chasing each other until their deaths—something like that is the only resolution which could have satisfied the questions the story posed.
Add to this the vivid characters and plot devices of stories such as The Scarlet Letter, Young Goodman Brown, The Village, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and you can guess my young, impressionable imagination had plenty of fuel for expansion. I think I began to love the feeling of horror before I ever knew what it was. Now I understand that horror encompasses a wide variety of stories and is rather difficult to sub-categorize. For me, many of the titles I enjoy occupy the “gothic” sub-genre because of their setting and foreboding atmosphere.
You can read this article about the history of the genre if you’re interested in learning more.
In the next few months, I’m going to write several blogs about short stories in the gothic horror genre. I would like to explore the themes and symbolism, discuss characters and moral predicaments, etc. I’ll also compare the strategies authors used to create that classic sense of dread in the reader. I’d love to hear your thoughts and how you view the genre. And I hope we can learn something together by taking a close look at some of the masters of suspense.
