Guilt and Ghosts and The Gothic.
The past comes back to haunt a person. The old saying brings to mind memories of guilt that some would rather leave buried under time. The Gothic writes allows for the manifestation of how past guilt will affect the future of people’s lives. In three different examples it can be shown how the past haunts or transforms the presents: in La Fanu’s In a Glass Darkly , we have ghosts or familiars that come to haunt characters with secrets from the past. Those secrets and the characters that have the knowledge torture the main characters physically and psychologically during the story. For the second example of hauntings one can look at A Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. In this story a young man is haunted by a specter of sorts, his own picture that grows more ugly and tainted for every sin that he commits. He leaves it in the attic, an antiquated space, away from society to hide his shame. Then in The Gathering it will be shown that Veronica was at war with herself. She blamed herself for what had happened with Liam and had buried those memories in the past which are now haunting her in the present.
In a Glass Darkly has two stories in it, the first is Green Tea and the second is The
Familiar. Green Tea is about a man, Mr. Jennings, who is being haunted by a devil monkey.
The reason for this is because he studied the religious occult and other things that he should have refrained from. When Dr. Hesselius asks him why he was studying such a subject Mr.
Jennings said “Paganism is all bound together in essential unity, and, with evil sympathy, their religion involves their art, and both their manners, and the subject is a degrading fascination and the nemesis sure. God forgive me!
” (Le Fanu 21) This quote shows that Jennings regrets what he did in the past and that his actions are not only haunting his memories but haunting him physically with the monkey ghost. (Le Fanu 23) The monkey delights in torturing him and this shows the Gothic theme of haunting a character during the story. (Le Fanu 27) The monkey would not let Mr. Jennings sleep and when he found out that Jennings had talked to Hesselius about the problem the monkey tortured Jennings till he killed himself. (Le Fanu 34)
For the second short story The Familiar, that is about a man seeking revenge for what had been done to him in the past by Capt. Barton. Barton had formed a relationship with the man’s daughter and then broke her heart so badly she died from it. (Le Fanu 81) When her father confronted him about it Barton had him beaten and thought that the man had died from the beating. Years later Barton is being followed by the man who wants revenge. This carries the gothic theme of the secrets from Barton’s past that he wanted to have remained hidden but kept coming back to haunt him throughout the story. No matter where Barton could run or hide, for example London, the figure was already there waiting for him. (Le Fanu 68) Then in the end of Barton’s life he died terrified of the memories of what he had done just screaming. He had been broken down and tortured mentally by his follower, which is a major theme of the Gothic.
(Le Fanu 78)
Dorian Gray is the story of a young man struggling with his own personal demons. He can see the sins of his past literally on the painting. (Wilde Ch 7) Everything that he is is up there for everyone to see, and he hates that. Dorian hates being reminded of what he is or what he is becoming. The picture was a specter in Dorian’s life that he tried to keep hidden from the rest of the world, by putting it in the attic. (Wilde Ch 8) However it would figuratively rise up

whenever he would go and look at it at night. (Wilde 8) When he stared at it and contemplated what it meant that was the painting haunting him because it was in his head. It never really left his conscious. The painting resolves conflict, which is a major theme in the gothic, several times in the novel. The first time was after Sybil Vane died, Dorian saw the mark and realized he had made a horrible mistake and regretted his actions.(Wilde 7) Another time that the painting resolves conflict is with Dorian’s death. When Dorian stabs the painting he ends up killing himself and restoring the painting to its beauty thus resolving everything.
In The Gathering we see Veronica dealing the death of her brother, Liam, who has just committed suicide. The book mainly deals with the grief and how the family deals with the pain.
Veronica deals with a far more Gothic theme which is the war with the self on burying memories. Veronica remembers how she once saw a family friend, Nugent, molesting her brother and is convinced that that is the cause of the suicide. (Enright 143) Veronica slowly uncovers these memories over the course of the novel, remembering her childhood and young adulthood with Liam. Veronica blames different people for a variety of things over the course of the novel: her mother for how her brothers and sisters had been raised calling her parents breeders. (Enright 25) Veronica blames things on Ada, her grandmother, saying that she just allowed those awful things to happen to Liam and he should have been protected. (Enright 236)
Veronica also blames her husband for cheating however I believe Veronica blames her husband when she has some kind of unconscious guilt about her own ex-boyfriend Michal.
In conclusion, the past can influence the Gothic in several different ways. In La Fanu ’s In a Glass Darkly secrets from the past which normally would be hidden are now exposed and character are haunted by their own secrets. They can be tortured by the information that they remember so much that they kill themselves like Mr. Jennings did or they may die shriveled in fear like Capt. Barton. In A Picture of Dorian Gray Dorian is haunted by his painting which represents his sins and helps to resolve actions and conflict. Finally in The Gathering memories of the past resurge and confront the main c haracter “haunting” her and making her deal with the fact that she may have been partially responsible for her brother’s death.