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Five Beguiling Gateways Into Gothic Horror

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Five Beguiling Gateways Into Gothic Horror

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Five Beguiling Gateways Into Gothic Horror

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Published on August 25, 2023

Illustration from The Hound of the Baskervilles (Richard Gutschmidt, 1905)
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Illustration from The Hound of the Baskervilles (Richard Gutschmidt, 1905)

Gothic horror is not like other horror. Most people tend to think of it as the quieter genre—the subtler horror that creeps in like mould in your walls—and they’re not wrong. Subtlety has long been a key hallmark of the genre, which wends its way through domestic settings and unsettles them, not by crashing through with a battering ram but by picking things up and putting them back in slightly the wrong place. The Gothic comforts us paradoxically with its creeping sense of unease, appealing to our desire to be reassured that, “yes, something is wrong here; no, you’re not imagining it.” On the surface, there’s something almost gentle about it—and yet, this genre can resonate powerfully from one age to the next. It speaks to us about the anxieties of our time, and connects us with the anxieties of the past, many of which are more familiar to us than we may realise at first glance.

Perhaps for this reason, Gothic horror has seen a dramatic resurgence of popularity in the last few years. Last summer, over 200,000 people signed up to the newsletter Dracula Daily, and this year the serialisation of Bram Stoker’s classic has been joined by a spectacular accompanying podcast, Re: Dracula. If you’re new to the genre, or looking to delve in a bit deeper,  you may be uncertain where to start. To help, here are five memorable Gothic classics, ordered by date of publication, which pack a great deal into relatively few pages…

 

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

Everyone knows the tale of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde… or so they think they do. But you may be surprised how often pop culture gets these twisted figures wrong. This is not a novella which explores multiple personalities, as is so often suggested by adaptations, but one which tells the story of how an individual’s behaviour can alter when he is given a disguise that shields him from societal expectations. For this reason, literary scholars have explored numerous queer readings of the text, and its commentary on identity and social performance feels particularly relevant to the digital age, where everyone is wearing a mask. (If you enjoy the premise of this novella and want more like it, you may also enjoy The Glass Scientists by S.H. Cotugno. This webcomic takes a more contemporary, fantasy-oriented approach to the text but nonetheless retains its core themes of identity and secrecy).

 

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)

Of the five books on this list, Wilde’s Gothic tale of beauty and corruption is perhaps the most challenging, due to its author’s briskly paced wit and his penchant for long sentences studded with semicolons… but don’t let that deter you. Woven into the lush and dense description is a tale rich with emotional honesty about the high costs of perfection. Dorian Gray is young, handsome, and wealthy—but fears that the day he loses his good looks will be the day he loses his value. After having his portraited painted by a close friend, Gray is persuaded to enter a pact with the devil, which causes the picture to age and grow ugly with the manifestation of his sins while he remains youthful and apparently unchanged. Inspired by the dark duality evoked in Stevenson’s Jekyll & Hyde, Wilde’s novel holds a mirror up to the self as one relates to the society in which they live. This reflection—on the value of aesthetics and frivolity in times of hardship; on cruelty in the face of desire—becomes unnervingly relevant the longer one considers it. It’s definitely worth a read (or a reread).

 

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)

Though it was written in 1902, this Sherlock Holmes adventure is set in 1889, presented as a flashback to one of the great detective’s earlier cases. Doyle was urged to write this text to sate the public’s thirst for more Holmes stories, but—even as he obliged the—he chose to deviate from expectations, plunging Holmes into a Gothic mystery. Drawing on Doyle’s keen interests in the occult and the spiritual, the tale is wreathed in ghostliness, uncertainty, and gloom. It makes for a delightfully chilling read on a cosy winter night.

 

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962)

Shirley Jackson’s final novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, is a haunting work of twentieth-century Gothic fiction. Sisters Merricat and Constance Blackwood live together in peaceful isolation following the tragic poisoning which killed most of their family. Suspected of committing the murders themselves, the two are shunned by the residents of the nearby village—but that suits them just fine. As the novel progresses, Jackson paints a masterful picture of the sisters’ toxic co-dependency, with Merricat taking increasingly drastic measures to ensure nothing ever comes between them. By the time the novel reaches its climax, your heart will be lodged firmly in your throat.

 

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter (1979)

This last book is a little different from the others, being a collection of thematically-linked short stories. Set across locations familiar and strange, from great Gothic castles in which vampires stalk to mysterious forests to an isolated island manor, Carter’s tales reinvent and comment on the nature of fairytales, exploring their sinister underbellies in a decidedly Gothic fashion. These stories offer incisive insights into the dichotomy of masculine and feminine fairytale archetypes and are utterly immersive. (Be advised, however, that some of these stories depict sexual assault and misogyny in explicit ways, which some readers may prefer to avoid.) With some of these tales occupying as many as forty pages—and others, only two—it’s easy to dip in and out of, and entirely up to you which order you want to read the book in.

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There are many, many other fantastic Gothic texts out there, which you may find yourself emboldened to go out and try, especially if you’ve already read a few of the books above. I hope so. But whether you decide the Gothic is your cup of tea or not, exploring a new genre is always worth the while. If you’re already a lover of the Gothic, please feel free to share your own recommendations in the comments below—and your thoughts on the five books listed here! If you’ve read all five, which is your favourite, and why?

Holly Kybett Smith is a writer based in the south of England, where she is currently studying for her MA in Victorian Gothic. A keen lover of historical and speculative fiction, she specialises in all things dark, whimsical and weird. Her work has been featured in Issue #2 of the New Gothic Review.

About the Author

Holly Kybett Smith

Author

Holly Kybett Smith is a writer and a recent graduate in MA in Victorian Gothic. A keen lover of historical and speculative fiction, she specialises in all things dark, whimsical and weird. Her work has been featured in Issue #2 of the New Gothic Review.
Learn More About Holly
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1 year ago

Wow, Holly, you sure write well!

Alas, my interests exclude horror and dark and gothic, so this is the first of your Tor posts I have read. Your prose makes me wish it was otherwise.

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mcannon
1 year ago

I’ve occasionally wondered what it must have been like to read “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” when it was first released. Now of course it’s pretty much impossible to approach it without knowing the basic plot and its Big Reveal, but I wonder whether many contemporary readers managed to solve the mystery before the end, or whether the most common reaction was a startled “I’d never have guessed that!”

 

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Aonghus Fallon
1 year ago

‘…..one which tells the story of how an individual’s behaviour can alter when he is given a disguise that shields him from societal expectations.’

Rather than their Gothic vibe, what struck me about your examples was that they all revolve around a murder or murders* and in all five, the murderer has a socially acceptable front (doctor, wealthy industrialist, beautiful young man or innocent onlooker) that conceals their ugly disposition.

* I’m confining myself to the title story in Carter’s collection.

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charlie
1 year ago

The subtlety of Dorian Gray’s pact with…..something, his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty, is an aspect of Wilde’s work which particularly impresses me.  No contract signed in blood, just Dorian’s wish and the response carried on a sudden breeze that wafts through Basil’s studio.  A marvellous moment in a marvellous book.

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Ajay
1 year ago

“Subtlety has long been a key hallmark of the genre”

This is an odd take to have about a list that includes Dracula and The Hound of the Baskervilles!

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WeirdChristmas
1 year ago

I’m in the minority here, but since you put Wilde on this list, I’ll slap J-K Huysmans on there as well. His book A rebours (Against the Grain) is the little yellow book that Dorian reads that he finds so “poisonous.” In it, almost literally nothing happens, but it’s a long experiment in decadence about a minor aristocrat who stashes himself away in a country house with weird art, weird books, weird food, and tries to create an entirely unique sensory life for himself. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it categorized as “gothic,” before, but the sensibility behind it, of seeking the strange at the expense of the common or everyday, is absolutely part of the atmosphere the gothic tried to capture.

Mel-EpicReading
1 year ago

I think starting with classics for gothic horror does it a disservice to a certain degree. While A Picture of Dorian Grey is brilliant; the writing is a slogfest because it was written serially for a pulp magazine. So the introduction is way too many words just to get us into the story (as that word count would have been set by the zine at the time). 
Sticking with classic gothic horror as an introduction also takes away the creep factor that Mexican Gothic instills wherein it’s (more) modern day and technology is disrupted by the ‘horror’ quietly but in an impactful way. 
Reading these classics is great; but I think starting here might turn some off of this amazing genre 

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DBinCanada
1 year ago

Typo: “if you’ve already a few of the books above.”

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