Humanity, Monstrosity, Gothic Literature & Death
Humanity, Monstrosity, Gothic Literature & Death by J. Williams
The Gothic genre delves into the depths of humanity, where the presence of the horrible and the macabre represent ‘the dark side’ of human nature. Indeed, according to M. H. Abrams, Gothic novelists invited “fiction to the realm of the irrational and of the perverse impulses and nightmarish terrors that lie beneath the orderly surface of the civilized mind” (111). In such works, unnatural desires and forbidden excesses that are buried and secret in the functioning self, become the monsters lurching around in Gothic lore. Eve Sedgwick expands upon these themes by identifying how the fictional self is “massively blocked off from something to which it ought normally have access. This something can be its own past, the details of its family history; it can be the free air, when the self has been literally buried alive; it can be a lover; it can be just all the circumambient life, when the self is pinned in a death-like sleep.” (13). Through “three main sides” – the inside, the outside and what separated them, the monstrous in this context takes on a particularly interesting aspect as it can lead to a type of “doubleness” in a character where a singleness should be. Sedgwick identifies that when a barrier is created between a self and “what should belong to it”, only violence or magic can bring about their rejoining or emancipation. Bertha Mason, in “Jane Eyre”, functions as the repressed, dark side of the obedient and docile protagonist Jane, while the southern spinster Emily Grierson, in “A Rose for Emily”, a victim of her time and circumstance, succumbs to the influence of inner duality when denied a more appropriate expression in society, causing the manifestation of the monstrous to occur within herself. By examining Jane, Bertha, and Emily, it is evident there exists a type of confinement that shuts them off from the outside world, while serving to hide the reality of their monstrosity
The Gothic genre delves into the depths of humanity, where the presence of the horrible and the macabre represent ‘the dark side’ of human nature. Indeed, according to M. H. Abrams, Gothic novelists invited “fiction to the realm of the irrational and of the perverse impulses and nightmarish terrors that lie beneath the orderly surface of the civilized mind” (111). In such works, unnatural desires and forbidden excesses that are buried and secret in the functioning self, become the monsters lurching around in Gothic lore. Eve Sedgwick expands upon these themes by identifying how the fictional self is “massively blocked off from something to which it ought normally have access. This something can be its own past, the details of its family history; it can be the free air, when the self has been literally buried alive; it can be a lover; it can be just all the circumambient life, when the self is pinned in a death-like sleep.” (13). Through “three main sides” – the inside, the outside and what separated them, the monstrous in this context takes on a particularly interesting aspect as it can lead to a type of “doubleness” in a character where a singleness should be. Sedgwick identifies that when a barrier is created between a self and “what should belong to it”, only violence or magic can bring about their rejoining or emancipation. Bertha Mason, in “Jane Eyre”, functions as the repressed, dark side of the obedient and docile protagonist Jane, while the southern spinster Emily Grierson, in “A Rose for Emily”, a victim of her time and circumstance, succumbs to the influence of inner duality when denied a more appropriate expression in society, causing the manifestation of the monstrous to occur within herself. By examining Jane, Bertha, and Emily, it is evident there exists a type of confinement that shuts them off from the outside world, while serving to hide the reality of their monstrosity
Cited: Abrams, A.H. “A Glossary of Literary Terms/Seventh Edition”. Heinle & Heinle USA, Thomson Learning Inc. 1999. Bronte, Charlotte. “Jane Eyre” Signet Classic USA, Penguin Books Ltd. 1960 Falkner, William. “A Rose for Emily”. In W. Kalaidjian, J. Roof & S.Watt (Eds.), Understanding Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing (pp.373-380). New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company. Sedgwick, Eve, Kosofsky. “The Coherence of Gothic Conventions”. Rev. ed. New York : Arno Press, 1980, c1976.