Victorian Literature: 'the Gothic Has A Viral Tendency To Infect Everything It Touches' (andrew Smit

The publication of Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), which is commonly regarded as the very first novel of its type, resulted in the establishment of an unfamiliar, tenebrous literary genre known as the 'Gothic'. The Gothic's period of efflorescence is generally accepted to be from this point to 'somewhere around 1818', though the traces of this considerably influential genre can be seen everywhere, and in all forms of art, despite arguably being 'dismembered and interred' at a specific point in time. I intend to approach the above question by examining and considering the Victorian period as a whole, but also by analysing Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Anthony Trollope's The Warden specifically. From this, I hope to establish an accurate and informed conclusion as to how far I would endorse Smith's claim with regard to Victorian literature, the Stevenson and Trollope novels in particular. However, the ambiguous nature of the Gothic, which Ernest Baker labels as a 'rather absurd term', essentially means that to endorse - or even consider - Smith's claim, or to enter any form of profitable discussion, it is first necessary to establish a comprehensive definition of the term. Baker, in The History of the English Novel, states that 'the medieval, the archaic, the picturesque, the funereal, ghostly and the macabre were all jumbled together as Gothic attributes', but that the Gothic is principally distinguished from other, perhaps similar, categories by its emphasis on the 'grosser sensations' of terror, fear and brutality. Moreover, Montague Summers, in The Gothic Quest: A History of the Gothic Novel, defines the Gothic as 'the idea of barbarous, tramontane and antique'. The aforementioned adjectives are certainly all themes that would be immediately associated with the Gothic. The word 'tramontane' is particularly significant and alludes to Bram Stoker's fin de siècle masterpiece, Dracula, often regarded as the epitome of the Gothic, in which the protagonist Jonathan Harker finds himself 'in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe'. The idea of an Englishman becoming increasingly isolated in a part of the world largely unfamiliar to Stoker's audience successfully incites fear from the outset. Therefore, among several other definitions, the idea of the 'unknown' is often an intrinsic aspect of the Gothic genre. Finally, the idea of the 'uncanny', used to 'designate a domain of threatening strangeness and uncertainty', is said to have 'coincided with the rise of gothic and recurs in fantastic literature throughout the nineteenth century'. Despite the Gothic often proving problematic to define specifically, Julian Wolfreys suggests that part of its effectiveness is actually down to the genre's multifaceted existence: 'The gothic becomes truly haunting in that it can never be pinned down as a single identity'. Where Victorian literature is concerned, Wolfreys is adamant that there is a presence of the Gothic in near enough everything, which is likewise a view expressed by Devendra Varma, in A History of the Gothic Novel in England, who states that the Gothic 'influenced the main course of English literature in a surprising number of ways'. Not only did the Gothic influence English literature, but it was also a substantial influence on British architecture, most notably during the 'Gothic revival' period of the nineteenth-century, and effectively shaped a significant portion of the character of modern-day London. Sir John Summerson highlights numerous times, in his book The Architecture of Victorian London, the scale to which the Gothic exists in the very soul of London. For instance, he describes the 'Gothic dress' of the Houses of Parliament, which for many are considered as the face of London, to have 'the decorative intricacy which was what the Georgians so admired about medieval architecture'. Additionally, although they were designed in 1835 and could be considered as pre-Victorian, the actual construction commenced in 1840 and lasted for more than twenty years, thus rendering it largely a 'Victorian performance from beginning to end'. Moreover, the 1894 Roman Catholic cathedral at Westminster, designed by Gothic architect John Francis Bentley, is claimed to be an 'extraordinary fusion of Gothic revival themes', so much so that it is 'difficult to think of the building as Victorian'. However, with the pervasive nature of the Gothic in mind and the fact that Smith's claim is a somewhat leading statement, with his use of the negative words 'viral' and 'infect', it is fair to say that the Gothic had its opponents, especially given that it was originally used as a derogatory word. David de Vore recalls how the 'Uomo Universale' - which translates as 'Polymath' or 'Renaissance Man' - considered these buildings barbaric and definitely not in the classical style that they so admired. John Evelyn also famously referred to the 'idle and impertinent Grotesks' who had 'ever infected all our modern architecture'. Furthermore, Coleridge outwardly criticised Walpole's The Castle of Otranto stating that 'it was fit for nothing but the age in which it was written. that required only to be amused'. But whether the Gothic is seen as a beneficial and fundamental part of Victorian society, and modern day society for that matter, or simply, as Andrew Smith would quite pessimistically refer to it, a disease, the fact that it was, and is, an omnipresent influence is seemingly inescapable. If we are to refer back to Wolfreys's initial argument that 'the Gothic keeps on returning even as it dies, or appears to be decaying', then his view certainly becomes clear when considering the number of sub-genres that came into existence in the wake of its 'death'. For instance, early Victorian novels such as Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre are good examples of Gothic novels that employ contemporary rural settings. Conversely, where the traditional Gothic novel primarily sought to bring the events away from the security and civility of the city in order to unsettle the reader, this process was eventually reversed and gave rise to the 'urban Gothic' sub-genre which was associated with Victorian industrialisation, science and the human mind. This sub-genre can still be seen today in films such as American Psycho (dir. Mary Harron; Lions Gate Films, 2000) and Fight Club (dir. David Fincher; Fox 2000 Pictures, 1999), which generally explore darker, Freudian themes relating to the human psyche, but which are situated in urban landscapes. Yet frequently regarded as one of the very first 'urban Gothic' works is in fact Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde. The use of the word 'case' in the novel's full title, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and its distinctive multi-narrative structure, immediately submerges the reader into the role of the detective, alongside the level-headed Mr. Utterson, who is described by the narrator to have 'something eminently human' about him (1). The idea of the reader being permitted to read into a 'case' instantly gives the idea that they are being allowed access to something forbidden and to unmask and expose what was previously hidden to public view. The notion of unmasking hidden terrors is resonant of some of the very earliest gothic works, such as Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk, in which the character Raymond describes his terror as he comes face to face with the Bleeding Nun: 'My nerves were bound up in impotence, and I remained in the same attitude inanimate as a Statue'. In this novel, Raymond expects to find his beloved behind the veil, but instead finds an animated corpse. Eve Sedgewick explains how Gothic novels often include similar structural shifts, 'from something expected with a fascinated demand to something else that, simply because it is a substitute, voids and exposes the fascination'. In Stevenson's novel, there is a similar shift as Mr. Utterson explores several rational explanations for the strange events but is eventually revealed the true horror within Lanyon's letter in chapter nine: '"O God!" I screamed, and "O God!" again and again' (80). In addition to the distinctive structure, the setting is an intrinsic and core Gothic aspect to Stevenson's novel as it provides the reader with a growing sense of unsettlement as the course of the novel unfolds. As I have already established, the Gothic was clearly an ever-present influence in Victorian architecture. With this in mind, then, it can be argued that whenever Stevenson was describing London, he was indirectly describing the Gothic: 'Even the city of London, with its dark passages and labyrinthine streets, is constructed. in a knowingly gothic fashion'. Set in urban London, the first chapter introduces the 'story of the door' and Stevenson describes a dingy by-street, and one building in particular that 'bore in every feature, the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence' (3). Wolfreys describes how, by nature, the 'promise' of the Gothic is that 'there is always one more sepulchral door to open, and, with that, one more uncanny tale to tell', suggesting again that it is often just the sense of something 'unknown' that is more effective in building suspense, compared to the events unfolding too quickly and thus losing the attention of the reader. The urban Gothic setting is particularly emphasised in the fourth chapter, written in the aftermath of the Carew murder, in which Stevenson makes several references to the 'first fog of the season' (31). According to Mighall, Dickens's Bleak House is said to have first introduced the concept of urban fog, which is now a frequent characteristic of urban-Gothic literature and film. Furthermore, Stevenson's persistent allusion to the gloominess of London's streets, and the 'dismal quarter of Soho', in the wake of the Carew murder, further emphasises the Gothic aura of his novel (32). For example he describes the 'glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration' (31). His general descri ptions of the streets of London and 'the mournful re-invasion of darkness', a 'dingy street' and a 'gin palace' are all aspects emulous of William Hogarth's famous 1751 painting 'Gin Lane', which also illustrates a number of urban Gothic concepts (32). Hogarth's painting depicts numerous gruesome and Gothic themes all on the streets of London, and is said to be an artistic reaction to the lack of control of consumption of gin and also to an unprecedented 'increase in infant mortality'. For example there is a half-naked woman in the foreground failing to notice that her infant child is falling to certain death. Moreover, there are also other Gothic themes depicted such as; starvation, dilapidated buildings, decay, madness, desperation and suicide. The fact that some of Stevenson's descri ptions of the streets of London are so similar to those represented by Hogarth reminds the reader of the impending disaster that pervades the novel until the end.