Deep into that darkness peering
Gothic literature and our latest puzzle book
Frankenstein. Dracula. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. You know them.
But have you read them?
It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.
— Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
This scene with its ‘dreary night’ and ‘convulsive motion’ immediately immerses us in the sensory world of the Gothic, a tradition which began in the eighteenth century.
Often, we hear the word gothic and think of haunted castles, vampires, ghosts, and windy, stormy darkness. Lightning splits the sky and Frankenstein rises in the laboratory. In a dark castle, a cape swirls, fangs are revealed, and then…
These images exist on screens and in our minds. We’ve been horrified and enthralled, and the eerie mist lingers in the crevices of our thoughts.
But reading Gothic literature is something different. It haunts the imagination with ruined castles, turbulent moors, and long, dark corridors. But underneath this macabre veneer, there is a fascination with emotion and human experience and that jagged, windy road between beauty and fear. When we read, we see it differently, more closely and with only our imagination.
Reading Gothic fiction feels a bit like walking through a corridor with a single candle to light the way. You know there is something ahead, but the light never quite reaches it. The goose pimples come from not knowing, from that fragile circle of light that is surrounded by darkness.
At its heart, Gothic literature is about fear and desire. It explores what happens when people confront the unknown, and how beauty and terror can sometimes be two sides of the same coin.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
— The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe
Gothic overwhelms, ever so quietly, and often leaves us in awe. We feel it as fright, but it is something deeper, something that reminds us of our fragility, the unknown, and even the sublime. We know that we are confronted with something vast, terrifying, and beyond our human control. In Frankenstein, for example, the sheer scale and isolation of the Alps reflects Victor’s forbidden knowledge, a reminder of humanity’s smallness in the face of nature and the dangers of our own imagination. This is precisely what unhinges the Gothic mind, showing us that terror resides in both interior and exterior landscapes.
And so what’s interesting and arresting about this genre is that it’s about inner turmoil and how it becomes part of the world around us. Physical spaces hold terror, madness, and longing. Voices echo or are absent, and then there are screams. In Gothic, silence leaves you expecting. There is nothing passive or quiet about Gothic literature.
As the genre matured through the 1800s, especially during the Victorian era, the terror moved beyond ancient curses and into modern fears. Works like The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula became vehicles for social anxiety. Hyde represented the horror of moral and scientific degradation – the fear that something brutal and offensive lurked beneath what seems civilized in everyday life. Similarly, Dracula embodied moral decay and foreign influence with the vampire as a force of invasion and corruption.
As is not uncommon in fiction, these stories began to critique society. They became a reflection.
Gothic combines horror, romance, and mystery to explore the darker sides of human emotion and imagination. It all began with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. Many writers followed: Ann Radcliffe with The Mysteries of Udolpho, Emily Brontë with Wuthering Heights, Mary Shelley with Frankenstein, Bram Stoker with Dracula, Edgar Allan Poe with The Fall of the House of Usher, and so on. The list is long.
Gothic writers, like all writers, use a variety of techniques. Unreliable narration is common, and is seen in the unstable mental states of many of Poe’s narrators, the fragmented perspectives of Dracula, and countless other characters. It heightens tension by making the reader question the truth of the narrative, so we go spiraling down with the unstable characters. There is also slow pacing or delay (different than passive), eerie language, repetition, sounds, and settings that are more than mere backdrops.
A Gothic space – a castle, an abbey, a moor, a laboratory – is alive, and sometimes even a character itself. Often these settings hold secrets or memories or hidden desires. In Wuthering Heights, the Yorkshire moors become a mirror for Heathcliff and Catherine’s passion. They are wild and destructive. They are psychological.
She trod as softly as impatience would give her leave, yet frequently stopped and listened to hear if she was followed. In one of those moments she thought she heard a sigh. She shuddered, and recoiled a few paces. In a moment she thought she heard the step of some person. Her blood curdled...
— The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole
As Gothic progressed, the settings went from exterior to interior. Psychological prisons. Decaying mansions reflected the deterioration of the mind. The action began to happen inside.
Another interesting aspect of these stories is that they all cross boundaries: life and death, reason and madness, self and other. Frankenstein is both man and monster. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are two faces of the same being. Vampires are dead and alive. What draws us is that there is something familiar in all that seems strange. It’s unsettling because we recognize some aspect of it. We get duality.
Gothic is a multi-form genre. Novels, stories, poems, plays. Film, photography, video games. It has evolved and continues to do so, but at its core, it remains the same. Ultimately the Gothic endures because it speaks to the paradox that we are drawn to what we fear. We look for meaning in things that are not easy to understand.
Gothic literature is about fear and desire. It explores what happens when people confront the unknown, and how beauty and terror can sometimes be two sides of the same coin.
Which one will you read first?
Our latest literature-inspired puzzle book is chock-full of Gothic. You’ll find familiar tales like Frankenstein, The Phantom of the Opera, and The Picture of Dorian Gray. You’ll also discover some new ones like Carmilla and Rappaccini’s Daughter. Grab a copy today to take a puzzle-lover’s journey through the darkness and mystery of the Gothic.
Our books make great gifts. Check out all of our puzzle books and our other titles at www.modernodysseybooks.com — happy reading.
Very inspiring! I'm starting Wuthering Heights tonight!
What a great analysis of gothic literature. What surprised me when I read Frankenstein was how emotional it was. Reminiscent of Goethe's Young Werter, and then I read afterwards that one book inspired the other. I can't remember which one now. But yes Shelley's story is tragic, and Wuthering Heights is one of my all-time favourite novels. I remember ploughing through Udolpho too and marvelling how early these books were written, how modern they seemed.