19th Century Horror Stories - Essay

During the Victorian period, the industrial revolution was in full flow, and the gothic styles of writing used in the stories of this period were extremely popular – featuring in many magazines of the time. Horror stories became almost an obsession for many people, who were drawn in by the unique styles of the writers such as Dickens, Poe, and Wilkie Collins. They were cheap, and widely available, with many of them being published in magazines. The availability of them meant that the obsession continued, as the people of that time were always able to obtain a new story.

One of the stories, “The Signalman” by Dickens, is a fine example of the horror stories of that day:

It begins by setting a gloomy scene, with the Signalman situated in a ‘deep cutting’, his figure ‘foreshortened and shadowed’. Using description such as this, the author can immediately let the reader understand the mood of the story – in this case, dark and depressing. This technique is also used in “Captain Rogers”, with the words ‘feeble’, ’painful’, and ‘forced’ being used in the first paragraph.

The ‘deep cutting’ in which the story is set, is later described as a ‘dungeon’, and at the end of the cutting was the entrance to a black tunnel, in which there was a ‘barbarous, depressing, and forbidding air’ this alos shows that the story is going to be filled with horror and gore, one of the most scariest stories ive ever read to be honest. i dont know what im writing here, its hard, i just need help with my coursework lol really stuck at this very moment in