The first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto , written by Horace Walpole in 1764, contained all of the elements of this kind of novel. Jane Eyre , written in 1847, has both the characteristics of the Gothic novel and the characteristics of the romance.
Gothic elements include the following:
• setting in a castle the action takes place in and around an old castle, sometimes seemingly abandoned, sometimes occupied.
• an atmosphere of mystery and suspense the work is pervaded by a threatening feeling, a fear enhanced by the unknown
• dreaming and nightmares dreams often invoke strong emotions within the dreamer, such as ecstasy, joy, terror
• entrapment and imprisonment a favorite device of the Gothic finds a person confined or trapped, such as being shackled to a floor or hidden away in some dark cell or cloister
• ghosts and other supernatural occurrences the haunted castle is usually visited regularly by a ghost or other supernatural being
• mist objects are often obscured by reducing visibility
• pursuit of the heroine by a villain/hero the pursuit represents a threat to the young lady's ideals and morals
• villain/hero in Jane Eyre , the Byronic hero: aristocratic, suave, moody, handsome, solitary, secretive, brilliant, cynical, and nursing a secret wound
• revenant the return of the dead upon the living
• revenge the act of repaying someone for a harm the person has caused
• sonnambulism during sleepwalking characters often reveal hidden sources of stress and replay acts of guilt
• metonomies of doom and gloom wind, especially howling doors grating on rusty hinges footsteps approaching lights in abandoned rooms characters trapped in a room ruins of buildings thunder and lightning rain, especially blowing sighs, moans, howls, eerie sounds clanking chains gusts of wind blowing out lights doors suddenly slamming shut baying of distant dogs or wolves crazed laughter

Elements of Romance
With Jane Eyre , we move from the medieval romance, which recounted the marvelous adventures of a heroic knight who goes on a quest and defeats an enemy winning the favor of a lady to a more modern definition of romantic fiction whose episodes focus on a courtship that ends in marriage. Here are some of the characteristics of this genre:
1. Powerful love: Heart-stirring emotions create a life or death commitment
2. Uncertainty of reciprocation: What is the lover thinking? Is the love returned or not?
3. Unreturned love: Someone loves someone in vain (at least temporarily)
4. Lovers part: Some obstacle arises and separates the lovers
5. Illicit love: The young woman becomes a target of some evil man's desires and schemes.
The Byronic Hero
One of the most prominent literary types of the Romantic period of the 19th century was the Byronic hero––so named because it evolved primarily due to Lord
Byron's writing. The characteristics of this type of hero include
• considered a rebel--isolated from society as a wanderer or is in exile of some kind.
He has many dark qualities and often rejects the values and moral codes of society; he is often unrepentant by society's standards
• has emotional and intellectual capacities, which are superior to the average man; because of these abilities, he is arrogant, confident, abnormally sensitive, and extremely conscious of himself
• often he is characterized by a guilty memory of some unnamed crime; as a result often a figure of repulsion as well as fascination
• moody by nature or passionate about a particular issue