Gothic Romance: the Cheap Epic of the Rising Class in the Eighteenth Century

志異羅曼史：新興階級的廉價史詩

Suelien Chen (陳素連)

南台科技大學應用英語系助理教授

Abstract

Gothic romance dominated the market of literature in Britain during the mid-eighteenth

century. Meanwhile the bourgeoisie, securing their fortune by manufacturing industries and

some mysterious reasons, gradually voiced themselves in different fields of the British society.

Tracing the rise of these two forces enables people to comprehend the transformation of

Britain from feudalism to modernity. The term “cheap epic” is coined to manifest the

capitalistic influence on the literary market and the pretentious characteristic of the rising

class. As a commodity available to the common populace, Gothic romance provided the

domain where the middle class could fulfill their heroic dream through imagination. However,

this disposable amussette turned out to be a discursive site of various viewpoints of history,

culture, and politics ever since the outbreak of the French Revolution. By clarifying the origin

of Gothic romance and its interrelationship with the bourgeoisie, I expected to expound the

vicissitude of the British society and culture during the eighteenth century. In this paper, there

are four parts. In the first part, the rise of Gothic romance and its target reader, the bourgeoisie

is introduced. In the second part “Fake History and the Pretentious Group,” the sense of

“history” is appropriated and the desire of the rising class to be included into the heritage of

history is manifested. In the third part “Revolution, Nation and Identify,” the influence of the

French Revolution on Gothic romance and the rising class is depicted. Undoubtedly, the

upheavals domestic and abroad trigger heated debates of different factions and the Gothic, as

a relatively free style, is manipulated to serve different interests, which initiates the

formulation of English nation and identity. The last part is conclusion and the historical and

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cultural role that Gothic romance plays is again emphasized.

Keywords: Gothic romance, bourgeoisie, the eighteenth century, culture, history

Introduction

At the present time, popular literature, like other industries, may become the venture

where an ordinary person can secure his/her wealth and fame overnight by publishing a

best-seller, and then would become a celebrity or be recognized as a legendary icon. For

example, J.K. Rowling, a divorced single mother turns out to be a wealthy celebrity because

of her best sellers, the series of Harry Porter. Another example is the American novelist,

Steve King, renown for his horror fiction and those thrillers based on his works. However, the

novelists that strove for their bread and recognition during the inception of the genre could

hardly imagine the status and reputation that the authors like Rowling and King have assumed.

In other words, though those authors of best sellers nowadays incite skepticism that their

works can be juxtaposed with the classic ones such as Shakespeare’s, they have become part

of history because of their tremendous demography of readers and viewers as well around the

world. Nevertheless, the popularity and fortune could not guarantee the novelists of best

sellers against the bitter criticisms of the arbiters of tastes when the pen had become the

means of living by intelligent but impoverished men and women in the eighteenth century.

Meanwhile, as the booming of the novel genre in the eighteenth century, the bourgeoisie,

obtained their fortune by manufacturing or by some mysterious means, gradually

distinguished themselves from the other walks of life. Since the birth of ‘novel’, light

literature such as romances remained controversial in terms of acceptance by the sophisticated

society owing to its erotic and exotic obliquity and its appeal to the lower classes. Both the

Gothic and the bourgeoisie, exerting a great influence on culture and economy of Britain

during the eighteenth century, were labeled with the stigma of corrupting the established

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morale.

If every era would inspire artists and authors to create artistic works for its distinct aura

and milieu, the eighteenth century must have stimulated novelists to portray this rising class

in their narratives. The epic, ranked the highest form of literature extolling nobility and

bravery that man could performed, passed down the legacy of narratives and legends; novels,

intriguingly enough, adopted the legacy but developed into a wide variety. Gothic romance2

was one of them. Compared to the other subgenres derived from novels, Gothic romance was

called into question for its obsession of supernatural beings, sensational phenomena and

superstitious cults. As the romance and fantasy were rejected by the circle of letters, this

rising class faced the similar predicament. Suspended in the middle of the social ranking, the

bourgeoisie strove to win recognition from the above group in spite of their lack of titles and

blue blood. They duplicated what they saw about the nobility and believed that education and

wide reading might carry them to fly higher. Nevertheless, if they would have had the tragedy

of Icurus3 in mind, they might have realized the illegitimate ambition would cause them

trouble. The English aristocracy certainly disgraced and despised the new class just as the new

genre “novel” was severely expelled from sophisticated tastes,4 not to mention the Gothic,

which was condemned for the vulgar and sensational plots in it. If the epic was the proper

mode for eulogizing the ancient heroes, then fiction or romance sarcastically served as the

fitting fashion to “praise” this rising class. The adventurous plots and heroic deeds in Gothic

romance were simulacrum of the chivalric Middle Ages; however, like the arrogant Icurus, the

romance writers forgot their “documents” were nothing but amateur imitations, which failed

to bring them into the domain they desired. And therefore, the postulated ambition brought

                                                       
2
  Here I use the term “romance” in a broader sense, which includes novels and fantasies.
3
  In the Greek mythology, Icurus fell into the sea and became drown when he flied to the sun and forgot his
wings were attached to him with wax. When he approached the sun, the wax became melting, and finally he fell
and failed to fulfill his desire of competing with the sun.
4
  In Jane Austen’s parody of Gothic fiction Northanger Abbey, the protagonist General Tilney said to the heroine
Catherine Morland that men did not read novels.

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about tragic end—the Gothic genre was discarded by the reader quickly at the turn of the

century. In this paper, the word “cheap” is used to manifest the acceptance of Gothic romance

in the market and society as a commodity available to everyone. And the term “epic” implies

the mimetic tendency of Gothic romance and the attempt of the rising class. In other words,

spending a little money and time, the bourgeois reader might fulfill his/her heroic dream in

Gothic romance. Though emerging like fireworks, flamboyant but transient, the Gothic when

scrutinized in the historical context could be regarded as the bearing of cultural and social

evolution. Henceforth, by laying bare the origin of Gothic romance, I expect to pinpoint how

literature instigated the remodeling of cultural values, rewriting of history, and reforming of

social ills.

Fake History and the Pretentious Group

During the last decades of the eighteenth century, reacting to the stark restrictions of the

Enlightenment, the Gothic emerged, exploring the fields where reason leaves off and the

phenomena that must be judged paranormal began. However, its reaction to the ‘modern’

Enlightenment led to the imposition of the derogative names of ‘barbarous,’ ‘feudal,’ and

‘superstitious.’ Moreover, its emphasis on sensuality and sentimentality roused the charge of

corrupting the young. Nevertheless, these reproaches did not devastate its popularity; on the

contrary, the more controversial and censurable novels the Gothic novel appeared, the more

lucrative and widely received it turned out to be. And its popularity in the market gradually

reshaped the conception of literature. The market determined the longevity of a literary work

instead of the authorities. Owing to the unpredictability of the market, Gothic romance thus

appeared capricious and heteroglossic. For example, to maintain the reader’s excitement about

wonders and extremes, Gothic writers would endeavor to reinforce scenes of violence and sex

and trappings of horrors and occults. But, paralyzed by the extreme stimulation, probably

readers would turn to simple and conservative clichés. On this characteristic, Michael Gamer

has argued,

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 I wish, however, to clarify this formulation slightly by characterizing gothic not as a

site—which carries with it suggestions of anchored stability—but rather as

something more organic and protean. At the very least, if gothic is a site crossing the

genres, it is a site that moves, and that must be defined in part by its ability to

transplant itself across forms and media: from narrative into dramatic and poetic

modes, and from textual into visual and aural media. (4)

As is envisaged, the Gothic, being commodified, had become a genre that would adjust itself

to the mutation of the popular tastes. It pandered to the readership, satiating themselves until

they had had enough to pursue another literary fashion.5 The emergence and demise of the

Gothic genre shed light on the fact that the populace took literature differently—they might

forsake what they liked today callously, and literature turned to be disposable like other

commodities in the market. To make a living, most writers of the popular literature chose to

forget what literature should have been entitled with such as passing down traditions and

heritage, but wielded the sensational mechanisms to the ultimate in their works to titillate

those who had used to the old gadgets. For the exceedingly feeding up the readers with the

coarse and repetitive plots and characters, those writers tended to incite censure; however, the

commercial profit was a stronger allurement than the title and fame. Most Gothic writing,

therefore, was cast into oblivion as time went by, though it happened to be associated with

“history” more than the other literary genres. Deliberately, Gothic writers adopted the

documentary forms in their romances to create the aura of history and legacy. In doing so,

they expected the sense of history to enhance the worth of the texts and reflect the antique

quality of the stories. On the one hand, Gothic romance failed to endure through time; on the

other hand, it retained the classic values of literature. The contradictory facet of the Gothic, in

fact, echoed the anxiety of the rising class—the bourgeoisie—at the time. Criticized for their

                                                       
5
  According to the Gothic scholar such as Robert Miles, the florescence of Gothic writing only lasted for
seventy years, from 1750 to 1820. 

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parochialism and tradership, the middle class endeavored to shake off these philistine labels.

As William Doyle observes, “[T]he ultimate aspiration of most members of the bourgeoisie

was to become noble, and for the most part bourgeois values were more-or-less pale

imitations of noble ones” (123). Just as Gothic romance was the mimicry of epic in literature,

the bourgeoisie, realizing the value system and ideology had been defined by the group above

them, were endeavoring to behave and live like the noble.

Taking Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, the first “Gothic story” officially

recognized, as an example, Maggie Kilgour suggests that “the genealogy of this genre begins

with an idiosyncratic text, written by a truly eccentric individual, who hovered on the class

border between bourgeoisie and aristocracy” (16). Kilgour indicates that oscillating between

the classes, the bourgeoisie and Gothic romance, like chameleons, are difficult to be

pinpointed. Appearing in the silhouette of historical document, Walpole’s Otranto, describes

the restoration of the usurped ruler: the fake lord was retaliated by heaven and the legitimate

heir restituted his throne. Apparently, the value of the aristocracy had been emphasized, but

the honored hero looked like an ordinary person, who had been ranked among the commons.

Accordingly, Walpole suggested that the value of the noble should be ‘inherited’ by the newly

growing group.

In this Gothic romance, in addition to the marvelous and supernatural machinations, the

two prefaces,6eventually shed light on the pretentious feature of the class and the genre.

Interesting enough, the second preface is meant to demystify the first one; that is, the second

preface proves the first one is a lie and the story has imparted a fake origin. As recapitulating

Jerrold Hogle’s notes on the origin of The Castle of Oranto, Fred Botting indicates,

                                                       
6
  In the preface of the first edition, Walpole makes up the source of the story: “The following work was found in
the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. It was printed at Naples, in the black letter, in
the year of 1529” (15). However, in the following year when the novel is published, he prefaces the new
edition with the confession that he is not the translator, but the author himself.

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 The Castle of Otranto is embroiled in various levels of counterfeiting: a fake

translation by a fake translator of a fake medieval story by a fake author, the novel

turns on a false nobleman unlawfully inheriting both title and property through a

false will and attempting to secure a false lineage through nefarious schemes. The

centerpiece of the story, too, is fabricated from a fake Gothic castle.7 ( 4)

“Fake” or “false” origin deliberately schemed and exposed in this novel, to some extent,

reflects the psychology and strategy of the class that favors, and is favored, by this genre, the

bourgeoisie.

Otranto is centered with “usurpation,” or less radically, “fabrication”, which ironically

renders the essence of this literary genre. Walpole has built Strawberry Hill to be the

exhibition of antiquarian styles and collections, which “divorces artifacts from their

foundations” (qtd. Hogle 4). As a zealot of antiquity and romance, Walpole appropriates the

style of ‘history’ to meet the appetites and needs of his contemporary readers. According to

Toni Wein,

Novelistic elements of ‘realism’ enabled Gothic novelists to naturalize and

domesticate members of the aristocracy by subjecting them to the same problems

and granting them the same virtues as the middle class; the romance topos of

disguised noble origins that Walpole imported into the Gothic novel heightened the

illusion of access to the aristocracy, since readers could internalize that romantic

view of themselves as inherently noble. (11)

As is envisaged, the philistine bourgeoisie tended to “fabricate” their origin by imbuing facts

with imaginary episodes because that was the most available access for them to claim their

“legitimacy” in society. Ancient castles or ruins, therefore, as well as Gothic romances

appealed to this rank: “In resorting the ruin, [moreover], the merchant not only displays the

                                                       
  The Gothic castle refers to Walpole’s Strawberry Hill, which was designed as a Gothic edifice. In Diane Ame’s
7

words, the building was composed using ‘artificial materials’, like papier-mache (353).

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supersession of an economy based on land ownership by that of commerce and the mobile

property of credit, but proudly displays it as a sign of his fabricated continuity with the past”

(Botting 5). Appropriating the form of history, Gothic writers attempted to fit this genre and

themselves into the lineage of tradition: “Nobility was the summit of social aspiration” (Doyle

124). However, in Otranto the imposture was sure to be turned out and expelled. Though in

the fiction the imposture was the shameful usurper and the real heir was ‘disguised’ as a

commoner, in reality the common bourgeoisie turned out to be the one who inclined to

“replace” the noble class. As a result, the mercantilist bourgeoisie, wishing for “blue blood,”

opted to fulfill their fantasy in Gothic romance. "Whereas only the nobility could inhabit the

physical remains of the past, the technical reproduction of that past in book form turned it into

a consumer item, available to all" (Wein 7). Clearly enough, by consuming these cheap epics

created by the mercenary writers, the bourgeois group indulged themselves in the dream of

living like the nobility. Pathetically, the dream was cheap and disposable.

Revolution, Nation, and Identity

During the last decades of the eighteenth century, a number of important events affected

the British isles: one was the rapid rise in industrialization and urban growth symbolized and

to a considerable extent caused by the invention of the steam engine (1775); another one was

the American Revolution, which left the British Empire without its American colonies (1776);

and a third one was the French Revolution (1789), which precipitated the antagonism between

France and Britain, making the confrontation between different political parties more drastic.

To English people, this dreadful insurrection triggered the shifting of power relationships and

the way of interpreting the world. The discipline of measured order that characterized the

Augustan age no longer sufficed in dealing with the confusions and agonies of the modern era.

The climate of uncertainty, nonetheless, found its expression in the Gothic. The instability and

controversy of the genre corresponded to the climate of its epoch, especially to the ruptures

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that entrapped and tormented English people. This genre, closely related to the fluctuations of

the popular moods, explored the extremity of the irrational, imaginary, and inexplicable, for

which the Age of Reason failed to provide satisfactory explanations, conciliating the restless

souls at that time. As the commotions afflicted and disturbed the English people, Gothic

romance emerged to pave the route from the past to the present, ushering a new type of ‘hero’

to pacify the upheaval atmosphere. In Wein’s observation, “[T]heir championing of heroes

and heroism is mimetic ‘not by virtue of imitating the externals of some historical situation’

but by imitating a moral attitude which, however moribund at present, may be brought to life

in any age of human history” (19). The nation expected the new type of hero to be able to lead

them out of the excruciating chaos and helped them build up a suitable identity for the age of

uncertainty and faithlessness.

Gothic romance indeed underwent more drastic transformation in essence and technique

as well after the explosion of the French Revolution. The living Terror that stalked in front of

the leisure readers who took pleasure in the counterfeited machinery of horrors threatened to

turn the delusive tales into hard realities. As Ronald Paulson has contended,

. . . the bloody upheavals of the French Revolution had rendered everyday reality too

horrific that contemporary writers necessarily had to invoke the supernatural and

demonic realms for material which could still shock or startle their readers. I do not

think there is any doubt that the popularity of Gothic fiction in the 1790s and well

into the nineteenth century was due in part to the widespread anxieties and fears in

Europe aroused by the turmoil in France finding a kind of sublimation or catharsis in

tales of darkness, confusion, blood, and horror. (536)

The innocent child of imagination in fact turned up to be an uncontrollable Frankenstein-like

monster, especially after the Terror Regime came to reality and the invasion of Napoleon to

Britain took place. To English people, “the standard features that emerged were the rebellion

itself with the enormous possibilities and hopes it opened up; this was followed by a stage of

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delusion, dangerous and unforeseen consequences, and disillusionment” (Paulson 543). As a

herald of darkness, Gothic romance thus became an adequate vehicle for transmitting the

vicissitudes of the times.

To some extent, it was the French Revolution that enriched and deepened the Gothic,

which was otherwise a playful and staid commodity in the market. Just as what Paulson

indicates, “by the time The Mysteries of Udolpho appeared (1794), the castle, prison, tyrant,

and sensitive young girl could no longer be presented naively; they had all been sophisticated

by the events in France” (537). Certainly, after this ultimate event in history, the status and

significance of the Gothic deserved re-evaluation since in the beginning, it was created out of

eccentric whims and regarded as light reading and an easy-selling product. “As the reviewer

indicates, what emerges from the aftermath [of the French Revolution] is dystopic: innocent

enchantments have turned to nightmares. Gothic romances echo the cultural convulsions that

increasingly racked the decade” (Miles, 72). The French Revolution, to some degree, turned

Gothic romance into prediction, into an allegory of the human society at a certain phase.

David Punter has contended,

The individual comes to see himself at the mercy of forces which in fundamental

ways elude his understanding. Under such circumstances, it is hardly surprising to

find the emergence of a literature whose key motifs are paranoia, manipulation and

injustice, and whose central project is understanding the inexplicable, the taboo, and

irrational. . . . These [Gothic] symbols, we may say, were forged as a response to a

period of social trauma; and perhaps that trauma is one which English culture is still

trying, in increasingly sophisticated ways, to understand. (128)

The upheavals not only influence the refashioning of English society but also the redefinition

of individuality, especially after Gothic romance enlightened the dark side of one’s

psychology.

In addition, because of the impact of the French Revolution, the oriental and European

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(exotic) flavors stood for more than a device of novelty or literary trappings; instead, the

Gothic reviewers covered the issue of xenophobia in the British society. Owing to the

appropriation of foreign locations, conventions, and characters, “the Gothic novel had

innumerable branching roots nourished by the whole European literature and tradition. . . .

The spell of Italy, her poets and story-tellers, her dark romantic history exerted a singular

fascination on individual novelists” (Varma 31). Moreover, “frequent translations of French

and German works undoubtedly stimulated the development of the Gothic novel in England”

(Varma 31). According to Maggie Kilgour, Rousseau, author of The Confessions, inspires the

English Gothic writers tremendously:

Like Milton’s Satan, Rousseau provides a link between the gothic villain and the

Romantic artist as revolutionary, the outsider and outcast, who rejects all

conventions, social and literary, and seeks freedom form determining traditions that

are seen as inhibiting individualism. (41)

As is described, Rousseau as well as the spirits of the French Revolution inspired the English

radical thinkers and writers to claim the natural rights of mankind and explore the potentials

of every individual. The radicals’ ideal was the conservatives’ bugbear. In fear of the

growing foreign influences, the conservatives stigmatized the Gothic novel--in a sense,

“gothic in each standing as a cultural other and being identified with foreign, ‘immoral’

literary traditions” (Gamer 78).

For sure, the strain of European in the Gothic enhanced the obscene and impure image

that some conservative reviewers imposed on the Gothic. However, the choice and censure of

the foreign cultures mirrored the ambivalent attitude of English people and the problematic

definition of Gothic genre. The exotic locales and customs were appropriated because they

made up one of the methods to distinguish the gruesome and superstitious flavor that made

the marvelous and extreme credible. Besides, the foreign and remote background allowed the

writer to exert excessive imagination, which was labeled as one of typical charms of Gothic

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genre. Furthermore, the foreign customs and landscapes served to satisfy the curiosity of

English people, who took it as a proud experience traveling to the continent and learning the

manners, which was regarded as the intrinsic quality of entertaining in the Gothic genre.

However, the English people’s admiration was tinged with contempt and disgust, which was

strengthened during the wake of the French Revolution. For instance, “there was the sudden

release into British circulation of translations from the German, which irresistibly connected a

new phase of terror fiction with ideas of foreignness and invasion” (Clery 140). Gamer gives

a similar example: “For the accounts of Monthly Review and the Dramatic Censor do more

than deport the enemies of British literary culture to Germany; they define any such

importation as a forgery of legitimate drama—as a translated, ‘vile production. . . . ’” (129).

The reason that the Gothic was accused for corrupting the young and women readers was

partially because of the illegitimate and erotic modes that the Gothic adopted from the foreign

cultures. The xenophobia inherent in the Gothic could be enlarged as the fears of the

Other—anything foreign to the contemporary, for instance, the growing of the women writers,

the upsurge of political reform, and the emergence of the working classes.

After the outbreak of the American and French Revolutions, the radical and conservative

parties in England attempted to benefit from the renovation the revolutions had launched. The

revival of Medievalism and chivalry in Gothic romance provided the intellectuals with

materials and theaters to argue about the continuity and discontinuity of history. Maggie

Kilgour, for instance, has contended: “While the term gothic could thus be used to demonise

the past as a dark of feudal tyrant, it could also be used equally to idealise it as a golden age of

innocent liberty” (14). The past, represented by the British monarchy, received opposite

reactions: glorification as worthwhile and accountable for posterity, or denunciation as an icon

of evil oppression, hindrance of human right and freedom. Influenced by the French

Revolution, the controversy of ‘the past’ along with the concept of ‘revolution’ has undergone

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dramatic changes then.8 For the Burkean proponents of the Glorious Revolution in 1688, “the

French Revolution was very different from the compromise between varying functions that

had led in England to the Glorious Revolution, . . . arguing that France would produce the

antithesis to the settlement of 1688 rather than the fulfillment of it as Price assumed”

(Woodcock 21-2).9 In contrast, for those English radicals inspired and encouraged by the

French Revolution,

The influence of the French Revolution, passing though it may have been, had

turned the direction of radicalism in England towards the future, towards the

progressivism that was characteristic of the nineteenth century; its aims were now to

meet Tom Paine’s revolutionary requirement that each age must find its own

political forms without being bound by the dead hand of past traditions, institutions,

or constitutions. (Woodcock 29)

To the Burkean proponents, history was a continuum, and the consequences of the Glorious

Revolution contributed to the greatness of the country. But, the radical group expected a clear

cut from the suppressive sovereignty, in hope of heading for a different and brighter future.

Those polemic views, however, opposed each other in the discussions of Gothic writings.

Thus, Gothic romance served as a social forum, and this genre “in fact serve[d] as a metaphor

with which some contemporaries in England tried to come to terms with what was happening

across the Channel in the 1790s” (Paulson 534). The writers with opposite standpoints gave

“Gothic” extreme meanings. For example, in the eye of the opponents of Edmund Burke, the

ideal Constitution construed by Burke, “was a ‘gothic idol’, (my italic) a verbal Bastille, one

concealing the oppressive realities of English life” (Miles, 67). The idealized chivalric
                                                       
8
  In Woodcock’s interpretation of the impact of the French Revolution on Britain: “one can fairly say that among
the many things which the French Revolution changed drastically was the political meaning of the word of
‘revolution’ itself. . . . A political revolution in the seventeenth century meant usually not merely the overthrow
of an usurpatory government but also the restoration of what contemporaries regarded as a desirable past state of
affairs. . . . The cyclic view of revolution, as a swinging back towards a better and more innocent past, has never
been entirely eliminated from radical thinking” (2-3).
9
  Here, “Price” refers to Richard Price (1723-1791). As a liberal theologian, Price preaches a sermon which
praises the French Revolution in November, 1789.

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ancestor in a Burkean term was labeled as “feudal despotism” by radicals (Miles, 165). On the

other hand, the new ‘monster’ of the French Revolution was condemned by the conservative,

but Mary Wollstonecraft, who was labeled as sympathizer of the French rabble, “[does]did not

deny that elements of the Parisian crowd deserve to be regarded as monstrous, but these

[are]were, in the first place, ‘a set of monsters, distinct from the people’, and moreover, their

bloody actions [are]were engendered by despotism, as retaliation” (Baldick, IFS 22). C.

Baldick elaborates Wollstonecraft’s viewpoint, saying,

The apparently monstrous actions of the French people show not the evils of

change, but the reflected evils of government tyrant, the retaliation of slaves. It is

provocation rather than innate wickedness that engenders them: “People are

rendered ferocious by misery; and misanthropy is ever the offspring of discontent.”

(IFS 22)

Thus, writers with different attitudes toward the dreadful catastrophe produce different Gothic

modes. That is why the term “Gothic” carries subversive and reactionary meanings

simultaneously.

The debates on the past and the French Revolution stimulated the English people to

speculate on their status quo. In James Watt’s terms, “writers continued to appeal to the

ancient—and sometimes Gothic—constitution as an alternative, genuine source of political

authority,” (45) which corresponded to the celebration of the centenary of the Glorious

Revolution. He continues, “toward the end of the century, as I suggested at the outset, the

category of Gothic was increasingly invoked as part of the urgent project to re-imagine

national identity” (47). Echoing a recurrent British argument that “a better future is to be

found by the recovering of the past” throughout the eighteenth century (Kilgour 15), the

contemporary people endeavored to seek the ancient glory to enlighten the dim present. As is

envisaged, the uncertainty of the era provoked some people’s anxiety, while it enflamed the

others’ enthusiasm. The anxious patriots recovered confidence and prowess in the chivalric

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and loyal legacy that composed the main body of Gothic romance. To make up for the loss of

the American colonies and to arm the country for the protracted conflict with France, “the

drive to refashion the self-image of Britain led to the ‘historical’ category of Gothic being

purged of its associations with either democracy or frivolity and defined increasingly in terms

of a proud military heritage” (Watt 44). Kilgour has remarked on this tendency,

What was new about this nostalgia for the past, compared to the earlier Renaissance

revival of the classical and foreign dead, was its focus on recovering a native

English literary tradition. The g[G]othic revival thus played an important part in the

development of both political and literary nationalism. (13)

Like the peasant youth Theodore in The Castle of Otranto, who finally revealed his real

identity and recovered the throne by expelling the illegitimate usurper, the class that had been

grasping the dominating power expected to define “Englishness” in their own terms.

As for the literary climate, against the rising demand for reform and liberty, which “by

shaking the foundations of society, had engendered an atmosphere of insecurity and

excitement that quickened the nerves of literature,” Ann Redcliffe, for instance, “stood

scrupulously aloof from the liberal speculations that accompanied it [the French Revolution],

and found occasion, undeterred by the antique setting of her tales, to testify a disapproval of

them and a loyalty to ancient values which must have conciliated many readers” (Tompkins

251). On the other side of the literary spectrum, reformers such as Godwin, Holcroft, Bage,

and Inchbald, who felt sympathy with the French Revolution, “call their works ‘Things as

they Are’, ‘Man as he Is’ or ‘Man as he is Not’”, and “they have a sometimes dismaying

singleness of purpose,” illustrating “Arthur Young’s insistence that ‘The true judgement to be

formed of the French Revolution, must surely be gained, from an attentive consideration of

the evils of the old government’” (Paulson 537-8). In those social reformers’ eyes, the morbid

and suppressing power represented by the monarchy and feudal class in Gothic romance

turned the genre to become propaganda of speculating and evaluating the existing institutions,

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such as family, church, government from the past to the present even to the future. In terms of

culture and politics, the popularity of Gothic romance, as Toni Wein suggests, unveiled the

fact “[T]hat the need for an organic vision was felt by British society at the time, and that the

hopes for satisfying such a need centered on a new definition of heroism, speaks through the

periodical literature running concurrent with the production of Gothic novels” (12). As the

dark power of terror deepened by the French Revolution then was overwhelming, Gothic

romance was employed to depict the dialects of fears and desires of the modern minds. Like

its target readership, the class hovering between the lower and the noble, the Gothic was

versatile when manipulated by people of different interests. It was a period when “a

population suddenly obsessed with sanguinary dreams, contemporary critics, professional and

amateur, found in the Gothic novel their own dreams of a nation, past, present, and future”

(Wein 25).

Conclusion

Gothic romance prevailed in the eighteenth century, but lasted for merely a short period

of time. However, it provided fertile soil for the flourishing of Romanticism in the nineteenth

century.10And unsurprisingly, capitalism dominated the taste of literature and precipitated the

birth of wealthy celebrities in the literal circle—such as Charles Dickens in the coming

century. As a relatively free style, Gothic romance was conceived as a proper tool to reform

the social ills. For the multifarious and protean character of Gothic romance, this genre was

destined to appear controversial. Toni Wein, an advocator of Gothic novels, expounds that

“[I]nevitably, the substantive and formal imbrication of the Gothic with matters economic,

political, and social means that we cannot automatically brand the intention or the fruit of

these authors' imaginings as conservative or subversive” (17). So heterogeneous and rooted

into the populace’s life as Gothic romance appeared, it kept adjusting itself into different

milieu and media and remained a popular category in the mass culture.
                                                       
10
  In 1798-1801 William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge published their famous Lyrical Ballads.

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 However, to the reviewers of the eighteenth century, the love of poetry should be kind of

taste, but curiosity was a kind of appetite. Therefore, Gothic romance favored by the mass

populace contributed nothing but vitiating and dulling their appetite when it hit the market. In

terms of politics, devotees of Gothic fiction were more or less compared to “literary mobs,”

who bothered the canonmakers and artists with the association of the French Revolution and

the Reign of Terror. James Watt illuminates the anxiety by referring to William Wordsworth

concerns,

As Wordsworth famously complained, in a similarly apocalyptic vein, the canon of

English literature was being superseded and its place taken by works designed to

meet the ‘degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation’ of desensitized city

dwellers—the rhetoric of genius was becoming debased, and members of a

discriminating cultural elite were being threatened by the workings of mere fashion.

(82)

Obviously, “the desensitized city dwellers” became the object on which artists and writers

projected their ambivalence. On the one hand, they favored them as suppliers of income and

subject matter; on the other hand, they complained of their vulgarity and lack of

sophistication. As capitalism prevailed in British society, the rupture and confrontation of

popular tastes and reviewers’ favors grew more and more drastic. What appealed to the

public tended to be despised by the elite minority. And what agitated the latter most was that

any literary mode, once selling well, tended to incite a school of imitators, overspreading the

market like a flood. Though the genre Gothic romance was cast into the past as an outmoded

fashion of literature, it provides a portal where modernity begins and cultural studies prosper.

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