Of narpay faculty the department of the english language and literature course paper

Conclusion
Gothic Fiction encompasses a wide period in literature since its birth during the Romantic Movement in the late eighteenth century until its revival in the Victorian epoch. In the Romanticism, the interest of artists in human beings goes beyond human reason. As a result of this change of mentality, emotions and feelings become more significant. Moreover, Gothic literature wants to cause pleasurable terror by the representation of terrible events. The Castle of Otranto by the renowned Horace Walpole is considered the first gothic work. Moreover, it establishes the pattern for following novels on this genre thanks to an innovative mixture of machinery, devices and romantic characters created by him. Generally speaking, a Gothic novel is settled in a distant past and in a exotic location; the main plot usually takes place in a gloomy gothic building, such as a castle or a cathedral, surrounded by a dark forest; the gothic castle is haunted by ghosts or apparitions; the virginal damsel in distress is persecuted by the evil villain throughout the obscure passages of the castle which are only bathed by the moonlight; and the characters are involved in supernatural events. During the late eighteenth century, Ann Radcliffe leads the movement known as Female Gothic thanks to novels such as The Mysteries of Udolpho. These writers depict the fears of women of being enclosed in a domestic atmosphere ruled by dominant villainous men. Furthermore, they mix elements from the old gothic tradition started by Walpole with domestic fiction. The story of Radcliffe’s Isabella St. Aubert serves as a pattern for following female gothic writers during the Victorian period, such as the Brontë sisters. In the Victorian period, the Gothic fiction experiments a revival against the rising of the realist novel. As a result, realistic elements are put together with the romantic spirit. On the one hand, the Brontë sisters write novels which have a visible strong influence from Radcliffe. Their respective heroines are forced to remain inside of the gloomy 34 house under the power of the villain. However, in contraposition to Radcliffe’s heroine, they are strong enough to overcome their problems by themselves. On the other hand, Elizabeth Gaskell takes the example of old gothic tradition to write her short stories which narrate a plot mainly about ghosts, myths, legends or witches. However, she also is influenced by Female Gothic since her female characters lay also under the authoritarian power of men or in the case of Lois the Witch, under the whole population.
Finally, Wuthering Heights is considered a masterpiece of the Victorian Female Gothic. Emily Brontë manages to create an atmosphere of domestic terror for her female characters. However, her major contribution to the tradition of gothic is the figure of her villain Heathcliff who torments the other characters by his evil deeds until his death. To conclude, during the Victorian period, women writers use Gothic fiction as a way of representing women’s fears about being imprisoned and powerless under the power of dominating men.