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Defining the Gothic Tale

Natural and Supernatural explanation
in 19th Century Gothic tales

Ambiguity is a constant element of gothic tales of the 19th century. The author offers the reader two explanations, from which the reader will choose freely.
The narrator is often isolated and his tale not completely believable - but not UNbelievable. It questions, in fact, the fabric of the world in which we live.

Related writers
HP Lovecraft
Maupassant

Related reviews
Le Horla
The Black Cat
La Vénus d'Ille
The turn of the screw
The Shining
The Portrait of Dorian Grey
The Others

Ambiguity is a constant element of gothic tales of the 19th century. The hero of the classic "gothic tale" - a close neighbour of the traditional ghost story - is isolated.

Guy de Maupassant, Edgar Allan Poe and Lovecraft became masters in the telling of stories where the story can be understood with two explanations, one rational, and one irrational. This matched the 19th Century, when opinions were split between the religious and scientific views of the world ; paradoxically the supernatural tales often strenghten the role of God and religious beliefs in general, and the role of man in a world that he does not and cannot fully explain or understand. This will be disappear for good in the 20th Century.

He who tells a ghost tale runs the risk not to be believed. And the hero of the gothic tale is also often the only witness involved. In "La femme au collier de velours" by Alexandre Dumas, "Le Horla" by Maupassant, "La Vénus d'Ille" by Prosper Mérimée or "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe Lovecraft's characters admit that they are under stress, that their story is not easy to believe, or that they are patients of a madhouse. In "The Crawling Chaos", the narrator admits he smoked opium.

This gives their voice less weight - the author will usually make sure they never sound like liars, though.

It is then possible for the reader to chose either: a rational explanation which may involve the narrator's madness or a supernatural one, although it questions some well-established assumptions.

Tzvetan Todorov, the greatest reference in gothic literature, tried to define the category. For him, the world described must be hyperrealistic so that the reader sees it as his own (discard here science-fiction and heroic fantasy) in which non-acceptable events take place - often involving horror, and most important, disrupt the established truth. Disturbing the established truth and order reveals the underlying fight between good and evil.

According to Todorov, it is important to maintain doubt as to what happened in reality - otherwise the isolation of the leading character cannot be transmitted to the reader. At the end of the tale, the reader should still be left with the subjective choice of what has indeed happened, with no clear path imposed by the writer.

It is also important to make sure that the gothic tale does not drift into a metaphoric tale, in which a symbolic interpretation is at hand. The purpose of the gothic tale is not to give lessons, just to disturb with the knowledge or the doubt that the accepted truth is wrong.

According to Ferreras, the gothic tale cannot afford either a complex style, and requires a realistic descriptive style, in which the link between words and their meaning is straightforward.

The hero - often the narrator - is also usually speaking in his own name, as an outside eye would be able to shed a light on what happened in reality.

A great film by Alejandro Almenabar : "The Others", starring Nicole Kidman. This film was inspired by another great classic : The turn of the screw. In many cases children are the first to witness supernatural events. It is only a way to increase the subjectivity of the narrator, as children's imagination is often very prolific.

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