Romance and the Gothic

in Victorian Fiction
WALTER SCOTT

THE GOTHIC

ROMANTICISM

Morepicturesque, fantastic or heroic
presentation of reality

Complexities
of human experience + ROMANCE=
ROMANTIC REALISM or ROMANTIC IMPULSE

Romantic side of everyday urban life, as in

Dickens

Gothic and Romantic elements

Realistic romances; escapist literature


Paradox: it represents elements of the social
& political world, but also HIDDEN realities

Parasite:the Gothic remains in literary

forms, it puts past & present in
communication

Associated with foreignness

Domesticationof the Gothic: the terrors are

brought to England
 Bertha as Jane’s Gothic character:
ISOLATION doppelganger: Rochester’s mad
Fear of oppresion wife Bertha

Intensity &
strangeness:
Isolation as
imprisonment THE GOTHIC “Lesser known
realities”

New form of
Characters as Psychological
psychology in the
castles interiority
novel
 FEMALE Jane herself tells the tale of REBELLION
BILDUNGSROMAN
against her outcast, orphaned state and

the subsequent search for some sort of

BELONGING, achieved by her final

MARRIAGE

A “happy” ending?
 1. Banned “dirty” matters and sex.
MORALITY
2. Covert ways of meaning or merely elision

3. Moral judgments: fallen woman

4. Morality through authorial comment or the

endings

5. Vehicle for moral teaching and moral

values

6. We can see it in Dickens, Eliot, Thackeray,

Gaskell or Charlotte Brönte

7. Influence of the LITERARY MARKET &

middlemen
NARRATION
1. Identification between narrator & author

2. His morals and ideology are supported by

action & word

3. OMNISCIENT NARRATOR

a. Quiet and unobtrusive

b. Obtrusive

• Speak discreetly
• Openly addressing the readers
Read poems by Tennyson and Browning

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