If Your World Goes a Bit Gothic – Here’s How to Survive

In Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland, spurred on by reading Ann Radcliffe’s book The Mysteries of Udolpho, becomes convinced she is living out her own Gothic fantasy. Ever get that feeling you’re stuck in a work of Gothic Literature? Here are 7 tips to help you negotiate the many hazards and pitfalls you’ll likely face.

Huge, gloomy, ancient buildings are a major liability for Gothic novel protagonists. Entry into one will almost certainly result in you being imprisoned by an Italian count, robbed by bandits or drained of all your blood.

The promethean quest for knowledge doesn’t ever end well in a Gothic novel. You might find yourself pursued by a hulking patchwork of human body parts (see Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) or an embodiment of the dark recesses of your own ID (as in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde).

All that pathetic fallacy is going to mean endless dark and stormy nights.

You're likely to experience some seriously overwrought emotions. This may lead you to see women creeping around in your wallpaper, hear hearts beating beneath your floorboards or feel partial to a bit of homicidal pyromania. See Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

Gothic storylines are rife with scandalous familial revelations. Plotting out your family tree may reveal that you are actually of noble birth (like Matilda in Eliza Parsons’ The Castle of Wolfenbach). It also might prevent you from unwittingly sleeping with your sister (like poor Ambrosio in Matthew Gregory Lewis’ The Monk).

If you’re a youthful female protagonist then you’d better get yourself a good solicitor. An overbearing male transgressor, in the form of a scheming uncle, dastardly Marquis or exotic vampire, is bound to try to force you into marriage, steal your inheritance or unleash on you the forces of darkness.

You may find yourself the subject of unwanted attention from beyond the grave. A ghoul may decide to grapple you through a window (like in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights) or crush you with a massive helmet on your wedding day (see Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto). Alternatively, if you’re trapped in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, a bit of healthy scepticism may lead you to discover that a ghostly apparition may not be quite as spirited as it seems…