Three of the best: Gothic

Hello! Welcome to the first in a brand-new semi-regular series called Three of the best, where (as the name suggests) I'll be giving you a run-down of three of my personal favourite books in a certain category. We're starting off with a genre that's ever so close to my heart (in fact, we're gonna be taking another look at it in the coming weeks as part of the reading challenge), dealing a perfect concoction of melodrama, thrills, trauma and well-rounded characters all within the framework of a decidedly chilling atmosphere. Here are, in my humble opinion, three of the best Gothic stories!

An easy contemporary assumption to make might be that Gothic fiction is predictable, that its prevailing atmosphere will be eerie, its predominant setting crumbling and ancient, and its characters the traditional ciphers of the virginal maiden, clearly defined antagonist, etc.. Clara Reeve's 1778 work The Old English Baron is a wonderful challenge to these assumptions; dating right from the genre's genesis, this study of virtue and power transplants the contemporary cauldron of contentious new political ideas and turbulent cultural developments into a tale of the virtuous peasant youth Edmund Twyford, adopted by the titular baron Fitz-Owen, discovering his true nature and enforcing a restoration of order over the malevolent forces who would seek to disrupt it. Largely ebullient in tone and buoyed by shades of paranoid teenage envy and courtly romance, the latter a direct hangover from the classical romance style which Gothicism sought to transcend, Reeve's work coasts along at a fairly brisk pace, utilising the supernatural sparingly and only when convenient to the plot; a spectral knight haunts Edmund in the boy's secluded and disused set of bedchambers, but this moment of terror constitutes the anagnorisis where Edmund comprehends his true identity, fuelling a slightly unevenly-paced but never flagging denouement incorporating the Gothic motif of a medieval duel, a weary travel across Britain, autonomous castle gates and the heralded restoration of order. Reeve bills the work "the literary offspring of The Castle of Otranto" in reference to the novel's status as a loose rewrite of Horace Walpole's pioneering tome which kick-started the Gothic literary movement - but to merely consider it a reinterpretation of an original source work is to degrade its rapidly efficient characterisation, skilful control of the plot and effective handling of Gothic tropes. With this book, Reeve reshapes the definition of the inchoate genre, altering its parameters to jettison Otranto's wildly uneven Shakespearean comic interludes and what Reeve lamented as the overuse of the supernatural; her tale retains some of the earlier work's more material, surface-level tropes - the ciphers of the tyrant, the weak clergy, the medieval throwbacks - and masterfully holds these in a perfect balance with the supernatural and its uncanny influences, crafting a perfect formula that satisfies the domains of the imagination and of realism, without sacrificing the credibility of either.

The Old English Baron is immensely useful to a scholar wishing to investigate the early development of the Gothic genre. It might be less fondly remembered than some of its contemporaries, but as a artefact of literary interest, as well as as an engaging if insubstantial read, it excels.

Heralded as 'the most analysed short story ever written', Edgar Allan Poe's seminal work revolves around the unnamed homodiegetic narrator's visit to the house of his ailing friend Roderick Usher, whose exhaustion, nerves and heightened senses seem to be attributed to the influence of the house itself, which is also inhabited by Roderick's cataleptic twin sister Madeline. Her sudden death is just one of the story's maze of twists and turns which combine to produce an effect of overall confusion mirroring the mental states of the Usher family. Carefully controlled in its linking of elements of setting and structure to the House of Usher, The Fall of the House of Usher transcends the average Gothic tale - although many of the formula's key ingredients are present within this 1830s narrative - by its psychoanalytical bent which likens the House of Usher - that is, the physical dwelling in which Roderick and Madeline seem trapped forevermore - to the House of Usher - that is, the Usher family, whose bloodline never seems to divert from its single path, arguably passing incestuously down the generations. As the house is cracked down the middle, Roderick and Madeline represent two unbreakable halves of the same psyche. As the siblings die together, the house crumbles into the lake, echoing the denouement of The Castle of Otranto.

Thundering to a climactic conclusion that can only be described as the Gothic, distilled, Poe's short story packs its pages with psychological analysis and thematic depth, challenging its readers to diagnose the situation at hand. If the narrator is such a good friend of Usher's, then why do they barely seem to know each other? Why does Usher bury his supposedly deceased sister, when he later reveals his certainty that she is alive? Can a house really be sentient, as Usher assumes? Poe's reluctance to give these answers, whilst connecting every element to his overall themes of degradation, mental disorder and life, infuses The Fall of the House of Usher with an irresistible Gothic energy and earns it a place as one of the genre's most compelling and interesting works of fiction.

How could this list pass by without a reference to the Count himself? Powered by suspicion and paranoia and infused with doses of folklore, mysticism and horror, Bram Stoker's all-time classic novel Dracula established the blueprint for vampire fiction upon its publication in 1897. His creation of Count Dracula, inspired by tales of the Romanian ruler Vlad the Impaler, as a welcoming and cultured host who transmogrifies into a bloodsucking creature of pure evil reinvigorated the flagging Gothic genre, manifesting the palpable paranoid fear created from sensationalist stories of London serial killers (much as Jekyll and Hyde had done a decade before). Like that earlier novel, Stoker's work presents two different versions of the eponymous Count, arguably lessening the impact of his later acts - yes, he may be intent on spreading his curse to England, but he has a well-stocked library, conducts business affairs amicably, and makes a good show of affecting to be a well-natured Anglophile. To this end, it is difficult to denote Dracula's actions as entirely evil - he has been cursed with vampirism, and is it not in his supernature to want to spread the affliction?

What is incredible about Stoker's novel is that it sustains analysis from almost every corner of the literary world. As a feminist novel, it aligns with the women's conduct literature of bygone times in advocating women's repression, presenting two dichotomous representations of femininity in Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray, both of whom fall victim to Dracula in a rebuttal of the feminist movements Mina represents. As a postcolonial work, it punishes Jonathan Harker's occidental superiority over the Transylvanian peasants by way of a terrifying (and the early chapters are absolutely spine-tingling) sojourn in Castle Dracula which illustrates the naivety of his presumptions - yet, hypocritically, worries over interracial relationships in its depiction of vampiric blood-mixing rituals. As a Marxist work, it depicts disparate forces - a vampire slayer, a doctor, a solicitor, an aristocrat, a cowboy and a teacher - coming together to defeat a malevolence that terrorises them all. From the perspective of narrative theory, its wide-ranging epistolary style aligns the novel's archaic folklore background with the beating, moving real world and its multifaceted denizens.

Interestingly, although the novel's year is never specified, the epistolary style makes clear that its events span six months, ending on 6 November - not only my birthday, but also the day this post is going up! Happy Dracula Day, everyone!


There is, quite honestly, so much more I could say about all three of these texts, and many more texts besides. Gothic fiction's flexibility, whilst being anchored to an ever-changing series of common tropes, compels me to the genre and makes me love it more than I could ever adequately express. Even within this post, we see: Clara Reeve's work which, although pushing out some earlier Gothic elements as failed experiments, retains elements of a classical style; Edgar Allan Poe's more psychological take on the genre, which analogises many of its tropes with mental instabilities; and Bram Stoker's pioneering creation of a true Gothic villain which manifests in a single malevolent being the 'uncanny' undercurrent which powers all of the genre's fiction.

I could write reams and reams about my love for this genre, but that's more than enough for now. I hope you investigate these texts - previews are available on Google Books, Amazon, iOS Books app, etc. - and I'll be back sometime soon with more updates on the Banquet of Books reading challenge. Until then, feel free to follow me on Twitter @Banquetofbooks for notifications and updates. Happy reading!