Key Issue Three : The Use and Effect of Setting in Gothic Writing (Pierre / Johanna / Philo / Elie)

    

The Use and Effect of Setting in Gothic Writing (Pierre / Johanna / Philo / Elie)

The setting in gothic literature is aimed at creating fear and an anxious atmosphere.

The main components would be a lonely castle at night, the building would be abandoned and near a cemetery, with wild nature menacing visitors. 

The gothic film director uses hallways, closed and open doors, windows and curtains to accentuate the division between worlds; the industrialized London and a place where everything is unsure. 

The best example of a window creating fear would be in Wuthering Heights, with the mysterious and creepy hand that appears and freezes the heart of the characters. Shadows conceal things that cannot be seen, therefore emphasising the fear of the unknown.

    Setting also happens to be an indicator of a character’s power. For instance, Dracula owns a castle, which makes him a powerful owner of a sinister place. Thorns are indicators of a threat, and can dissuade a character from entering the place, either for their sake of the sake of the owner.

    This fits with the general feeling of the industralised Victorian period: in a mechanical life, men and women are losing their roles and feeling dehumanized. Gothic literature comes from a need for change and magic, to distract people from their life. Old castles remind us of the Middle-Ages, maybe a time that people are missing. 
    
    Overall, the effect of setting in every gothic piece of art is to build tension and to cultivate mystery. The characters are unsure about what hides behind doors and windows, and are eager to explore abandoned castles. All of this contributes to creating a sinister atmosphere.


    But what about the setting in Dorian Gray?

  •     The setting is not typically gothic:
  •      At the beginning of the novel, nature is described in a beautiful way (with flowers, insects, and birds), it is not something dark and mysterious
  •      Again, at the beginning, the curtains do not hide something dreadful but birds.
  •     Dorian Gray does not live in a remote place but in a city, however he tends to be alone in his own house
  •      He doesn’t travel (maybe because of a fear of the unknown?) so the only landscapes that are described are from London. They however are diverse: some scenes are set next to places linked with pleasures of the flesh and others in the aristocratic world with a strong sense of opulence.

RResources used during our research :

 

In In order to complete our research, we had to use a variety of resources. The most useful, without a doubt, was ashort article written by the British author Robert Harris.

 

OOther sources used were “The Top 10Elements of Gothic Literature”, available at , which defines the term “Gothic Literature” and its key components, including atmosphere and setting and “Howto study Gothic literature: setting and theme” , which served as guides to complete our work.


ClBlog Entry #2: Key Issue 3 “the use and effect of setting” ELIE JOHANNA PHILO PIERRE

The symbolism of colours in Dorian Gray: the association between the yellow of the book and the green of the music room where Dorian spends most of his time in chapter 11 evokes madness and insanity. The red of the theatre where Sybil plays as well as Basil’s blood creates a hellish atmosphere. The purple colour of the cloth that covers the painting was at the time associated with femineity.  In chapter 11, two pages are dedicated to the colours of gems, which to the reader feels like an explosion of colours. It feels like a rainbow, and it was believed at the tile that there were seven colours in a rainbow. Coincidentally, the number seven had a magic connotation. Lastly, there is a contrast between the white of Sybil Vane and the black of the clothes that Dorian Gray wears. “At another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long latticed room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of olive-green lacquer”
The beginning of the novel presents an atypical setting: the reader meets the main characters in beautiful nature, sunlight and singing birds, which is surprising if the reader had anticipated a whole other atmosphere, one that would have been typical of the gothic setting. The setting keeps degrading. If the characters appear in a splendid garden, the character of Dorian Gray later appears in brothels and overall bad neighbourhoods. 
As the reader reads along, the general atmosphere of the book gets darker and darker. The sunlight of the beginning transforms into an artificial lamp at the very end. Dorian Gray appears during the day and then during the night because it is easier for him to hide. He appears less and less in broad daylight and would rather live during night-time. 
However there are typical gothic aspects, that are shown thanks to the quote “Gradually with fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, damp shadows crawl into the corners of the room and crouch there”. 

Commentaires

Enregistrer un commentaire

Posts les plus consultés de ce blog

Key Issue Eight: Melodrama and Realism in Gothic Writing (Milla and Madeleine)

Melodrama and realism in Gothic writing Melodrama and Realism are two main concepts that Gothic authors used and explored to bring the readers into the atmosphere they created.  Melodrama The Melodrama movement was born in France, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as part of the Romantic literary period. The romantics wanted to express their emotions through art, inspired by imagination, individuality, and nature.  The word Melodrama is made from two different Greek words: Melos meaning music and drama meaning action.  A melodrama is the foundation of every American movie of our time, as it contains a story with conflict coupled with music .  This dramatic form also shows a battle between Good and Evil in three major plot elements:  1. provocation, whatever provokes the villain to act devilishly to the hero;  2.pangs, the pains that the hero suffers through because of the villain’s evil;  3. and the penalty, the denouement, the last part of the...
Lire la suite

Key Issue Seven: Power and menace in Gothic writing (Alexis / Liam / Malo)

Key Issue Seven: Power and menace in Gothic writing (Alexis / Liam / Malo) Closely linked together, power and menace are both fundamental for Gothic Literature . Even though they are not the first criteria someone would think about after watching a Gothic movie or reading Gothic literature, power and menace are nearly always presented in Gothic art. I. Power Looking at power portrayed through Gothic writing, we can already declare that power can come in different forms: fear, torture (violence), psycological aspects (mental), etc.  Power is dependent on a constraint, someone or something that needs to feel or be submissive to this powerful character. In Gothic writing, we can see this through vulnerable characters being driven by fear, for example Lucy Westerna in Dracula.  In Gothic literature, villains (humans or creatures) usually always hold the power, and they use this power over the other characters through violence and fear, for example, Dracula, or Frankenstein....
Lire la suite

Key Issue Six : Heroes and villains in Gothic writing (Daniel / Lilas / Eléonore)

Heroes and  Villains In Gothic writing, a specific atmosphere prevails in which heroes and villains are easily distinguishable from other literature genres.  The hero-villain relationship is often ambiguous, and in a number of works of Gothic writing, attraction and love between the two characters might even occur.  Within heroes, boundaries opposing morality and immorality tend to be vague.  In fact, heroes of Gothic writing—oftentimes characters of high social ranking—could be described as morally “grey,” as it is their own goodness—the hero’s tragic flaw—that brings them, through decadence, to villainy. On the other hand, the antagonist is, from his very outset, portrayed as a flawed, lonesome, or outcast figure who must overcome obstacles in order to re-join society.  Generally, Gothic Villains represent one of two archetypes: the Evil Father or the Dangerous Lover. Villains who embody these figures include, respectively, Victor Frankenstein and Heathcliff...
Lire la suite