Gothic Genre conventions

used in a number of ways and forms, some of these being: Mist – This convention in Gothic Literature is often used to obscure objects (this can be related to the sublime) by reducing visibility or to prelude the insertion of a terrifying person or thing; Storms – These frequently accompany important events. Flashes of lightening accompany revelation; thunder and downpours prefigure the appearance of a character or the beginning of a significant event; Sunlight – represents goodness and pleasure; it also has the power to bestow these upon characters.

The definition of this key term has long been a contested term, but the idea of the sublime is essential to an understanding of Gothic poetics and, especially, the attempt to defend or justify the literature of terror.
Put basically (and this really is basic – a fuller understanding of the Sublime would be useful to students of Wordsworth or any Gothic Literature), the Sublime is an overpowering sense of the greatness and power of nature, which can be uplifting, awe-inspiring and terrifying, caused by experience of vastness or grandeur.

Sublime moments lead us to consider the place of humanity in the universe, and the power exhibited in the world.
We see an example of Gothic usurpation of a Romantically sublime space in the monster’s interruption of Victor’s Alpine reveries in Frankenstein.

Perhaps the most famous Gothic example occurs in Shelley’s Frankenstein after Frankenstein ‘awakes’ his creature: he falls into a dream state that begins with his kissing of Elizabeth, his love.

However, this kiss changes her in the most drastic way as she transforms into the rotting corpse of Caroline, Victor’s dead mother. Upon awakening from this horrifying dream, Victor finds himself staring into the face of the monster he has created. Interpretations of this dream lead to explorations of Frankenstein’s psyche, relational ability and love.

These serve to captivate the reader and encourage further reading. They may also be seen acting upon the protagonists in texts, influencing them by exciting their curiosity or fear. Frankenstein himself is occupied with penetrating the mystery that surrounds life, but this leads for him to months of dread. The reader (and Walton) are intrigued by the mystery of Frankenstein’s methods.

This is generally in the form of some kind of supernatural being or object, such as a vampire or ghost, which is frightening due to its refusal to adhere to the laws of nature, God or man. In Frankenstein, it could be argued that there is no element of the supernatural, or alternatively that the creature is supernatural by virtue of its being a composition of dead parts then re-animated by ‘ungodly’ means.

Generally speaking, gothic literature delves into the macabre nature of humanity in its quest to satiate mankind’s intrinsic desire to plumb the depths of terror.

The one theme that cuts through virtually all Gothic is that of the “outsider,” embodied in wanderers like Frankenstein’s creature. The outsider, like Cain, moves along the edges of society, in caves, on lonely seacoasts, or in monasteries and convents. While the society at large always appears bourgeois in its culture and morality, the Gothic outsider is a counterforce driven by strange longings and destructive needs. While everyone else appears sane, he is insane; while everyone else appears bound by legalities, he is trying to snap the pitiless constrictions of the law; while everyone else seems to lack any peculiarities of taste or behaviour, he feels only estrangement, sick longings, terrible surges of power and devastation. He is truly countercultural, an alternate force, almost mythical in his embodiment of the burdens and sins of society.
Gothic fiction, as we have observed, is concerned with the outsider, whether the stationary figure who represses his difference, or the wandering figure who seeks for some kind of salvation, or else the individual who for whatever reason- moves entirely outside the norm. In any event, he is beyond the moderating impulses in society, and he must be punished for his transgression.
Frankenstein’s monster obviously straddles these categories. He wanders through mountain areas of the far North, lurks in caves and caverns, in places no one else dare go. He seeks a mate, a complement to his own loneliness. He is gloomy and melancholy, full of self-pity and self-hatred. Like Cain, he is the perpetual outsider, marked by his appearance, doomed to wander the four corners of the earth, alone and reviled.
It may be argued that Frankenstein himself becomes an outsider as he grows more and more like his creation.