Bissett 1
Crystal Bissett
English 602: Reading the Gothic
Prof. Cheryl Nixon
Notes and Quotes
Gothic: New Critical Idiom
By Fred Botting
Introduction: Negative Aesthetics:
1. Darkness (p. 1-7)
a. “Darkness - an absence of the light associated with sense, security, and
knowledge – characterizes the looks, moods, atmospheres and connotations of the
genre” (Botting 2)
b. In Gothic texts: No harmony or proportion, and register abhorrence, fear, disgust,
terror
c. Light and dark/positive and negative
d. Physical locations/settings promote disturbances (i.e. weather, nature)
e. Use of obscurity, shadows, partial visibility of objects, etc. = scary sense of
mystery and unknown to the imagination
2. Negativity (p. 7-12)
a. Idea of the “sublime” (or a disrupted sense of order and reason) emerged in the
18th century
b. Sigmund Freud – notes a negative aspect to pleasure (experience of loss and
negativity is reconfigured through an active imagination)
c. Monsters – make negative attributes apparent
d. Crossing boundaries – “Supposedly unchanging laws are opened up: life and
death, for Victor Frankenstein, are sites of scientific transformation… “ (Botting
9).
e. Female vs. male roles
3. Transformations (p. 12-15)
a. Gothic texts = not realistic
b. The Gothic – attempt to combine romance and the novel in the eighteenth century
c. The Victorian era: growth of imperialism  regression, threats, issues of sexual
and moral degeneration saw a return to gothic monsters
d. WWI pushed gothic style terrors aside
e. New media, through cinemas and animations, brought Gothic fiction back, but
called it “horror”
f. Postmodernism (end of 1970s) = Gothic forms are reinvented, but negative
aesthetics alter
4. Criticism (p. 16-19)
a. In 18th century - Gothic, as a word, was a “footnote” to understanding the style of
Romanticism
b. “Female Gothic” – drew out specifics of women’s experiences, suffering, and
oppression
c. Marxist criticism
Bissett 2
d. Psychoanalysis – movement from oppression to repression (Freud)
e. Colonization – gothic treatment, movement from one land/culture to the next
(banishment, slavery, genocide, etc.)
f. Gothic forms are different across cultures
Frankenstein
By Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Relevant Quotes
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“No: from that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and, more than all,
against him who had formed me, and sent me froth to this insupportable misery” (Shelley
104)
o This idea of good vs. evil
o Terror and hatred at the surface
“Darkness then came over me, and troubled me; but hardly had I felt this, when opening
my eyes, as I now suppose, the light poured in upon me again” (Shelley 75)
o Light and darkness playing together
o Demonstrates feeling of positive and negative
“From you only could I hope for succor, although towards you I felt no sentiment but that
of hatred. Unfeeling, heartless creator! ...But on you only had I any claim for pity and
redress, and from you I determined to seek that justice which I vainly attempted to gain
from any other being that wore the human form” (Shelley 107)
o The past coming back to haunt others
o Frankenstein’s family will suffer because of what he has created
o Seeking justice and revenge