Magic or necromancy, ghouls or vampires, werewolves or witches, fairies or elves, or simply Trick-or-Treat…no matter what you deem as your true calling, it is time to get prepared! Brush your capes, sharpen your fangs and claws, dust your ancient manuscripts, and don’t forget to harvest your pumpkins, for All Hallows’ Eve is fast approaching and the witching hour is nigh.
To honour this sacred, one-of-a-kind moment and to – for apparent reasons –
make you quiver, this time we introduce to you the strangely creative or creatively strange minds of four Gothic authors who were modern during their own times, yet deeply rooted in the medieval and the nearly-forgotten past. Their stories are weird, dreamlike, at the same time, frightening and exciting; and most of all, haunting – yes, you can shut the book and run away, thinking ‘thank heavens! I’m now safe’, but deep down you know that, once you’ve looked into those pages, they will forever stay with you. There is no true escape. In other words, what better entertainment can you expect for so fine an occasion as Halloween?
Advertisement
Gothic: The Origin
First, a few words on the origin of the Gothic. As you are probably aware, the word ‘Gothic’ denotes a great number of things: architecture, art, music, culture, literature, fashion…and, of course, one or several ‘barbarian’ tribes that destroyed the last vestiges of Roman civilisation. No doubt, the Renaissance painter and writer Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) was thinking about just that when he harshly criticised those ‘monstrous and barbaric’ edifices built in the Middle Ages and referred to them as ‘Gothic’.
While all these things are indeed Gothic, the Gothic is so much more. In The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction, Nick Groom traces the history of the Goths, how the term evolves as an identity, and what it signifies. The founding myths of the Goths slowly take shape during Ostrogothic sovereignty. One of the major sources is Jordanes’s Getica, which represents the Goths not as destroyers of the Roman Empire, but as an interdependent people who eventually become united with the Romans in Justinian I’s (482–565) victory and incorporation of the Gothic tribes. In other words, it is a matter of translatio imperii, not of destruction and conquest.
Advertisement
With translatio imperii comes translatio studii. For Bede (672/3–735), for instance,
the domination of the Angles signifies the triumph of the Catholic Church. The Gothic tribes’ identity as ‘outsiders’ allows them to jump out of the framework of the Classical, pagan minds; their very existence reveals the limitation of the Graeco-Roman world.
Therefore, in generalising terms, the Gothic stands for the rebellious and the innovative. On the one hand, you can consider the Gothic as something that refuses to fit in, does not quite belong, a bit of a loner; but on the other, you can see it as free of restraints, always allowing room for new, unfamiliar things such as the preternatural. It is this flexibility that makes the idea of the Gothic so appealing to the romanticising, artistic, and creative mind during the Victorian era.
Horace Walpole (1717-1797)
One of the most famous minds that has been captivated by the Gothic was Horace (Horatio) Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, son of Sir Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister of Britain.
Since Walpole made it a point that he wrote The Castle of Otranto in Strawberry Hill House, it comes as no surprise that a house sits in the very centre of the narrative: the ancestral seat of the princes of Otranto, dark, gloomy, imposing. Within its enclosed walls, it harbours an ancient secret; a secret that only begins to be revealed when a gigantic helmet falls from the sky and lands on Conrad on his wedding day, the sole heir to Manfred, Prince of Otranto.
Advertisement
As a result, the line is disrupted, and the glorious legacy of Otranto faces immediate threat. The family may die out, and the castle – will it be deserted, heavy with ivy and fading into oblivion? But no, the castle shall live on with a new master, who is not of Manfred’s lineage: an ancient prophecy rules that the castle and lordship, ‘should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it’. In a desperate attempt to avert this fate, Manfred conspires to divorce his wife Hippolita, and marry Isabella, the noble girl who was (forced) to marry Conrad and whom Manfred takes into the castle in her father’s absence. But in the end, as Manfred’s plot advances and all falls into chaos and violence, Manfred, hiding behind curtains, stabs his own daughter Matilda, thus ending his line once and for all.
Then the rightful heir is revealed to be a young peasant who remarkably resembles Alfonso the Good, the owner of the mysterious helmet and true Prince of Otranto. The new lord marries Isabella, not in a ‘happily-ever-after’ manner, but in a state of sorrow.
As the first of its kind, The Castle of Otranto is no doubt modern, but it is also profoundly influenced by the distant past, such as Henry VIII’s marriage (and divorce) with Catherine of Aragon, and the succession troubles of the Tudor dynasty. Hamlet is a source of inspiration, too, as one may easily recognise Claudius in Manfred. Both commit the crime of usurpation and (attempted) incest. In this sense, Walpole’s genre-founding masterpiece is itself a bridge between the past and the present; but more than that, it also lights the way for the future.
Advertisement
Another converging point of the past, the present, and the future, is the castle itself. As a stone edifice, it stands through the passage of time. Its walls have witnessed unspeakable crimes and bloodshed, heard and muffled its victims’ scream. It is haunted by the past, while using that past to haunt the present and the future. Just imagine, if those stones deign to yield, what knowledge – horror, secrets – will we learn, if we have the courage to learn at all?
Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818)
Matthew Lewis’s The Monk sees the transformation of the gloomy castle walls into abbeys and monasteries, another enclosed, isolated space intentionally cut off from the outside world. Ruined churches or monasteries (in many cases, thanks to the Reformation) dot the landscape. Ruined abbeys as an artistic theme are lavishly romanticised by famous painters such as W.M.W. Turner and John Ruskin. It is no surprise at all that they also play a celebrated role in Gothic literature.
Matthew Lewis was destined for a career in foreign diplomacy but ended up becoming known as ‘Monk’ Lewis, thanks to the absolutely horrifying, dark, twisted story he wrote at the age of nineteen. (Seriously, what WERE those Victorian teenagers thinking?!) Revolving around two young couples’ difficult romantic relationships, The Monk narrates how Ambrosio, a saintly monk, finds himself unable to restrain corporeal lust, and falls into the trap of the devil. The chaste love for God, and the honest, innocent love, for another human being are twisted in Ambrosio’s lovemaking to Matilda, who reveals herself to be the model of a painting of the Virgin Mary that Ambrosio adores. As Ambrosio gradually succumbs to the darkest desires of his soul, he also darkens and taints the bright love between Don Lorenzo and Antonia (Raymond’s relative), and between Agnes (Lorenzo’s sister) and Don Raymond (Lorenzo’s friend).
Overall, The Monk plays with the idea of imprisonment and escape, with the scenes frequently switched between within and without abbey or castle walls. As an infant, Ambrosio was left at the church door and raised as a monk. Granted, he proves to be good monk material, but he is never given any opportunity to be anything else. The monastery walls are as much a prison to him as to Agnes and Antonia, who are brought into them to be tortured and violated; the repression of the Monk’s passion, desire, and lust, only give rise to abominable horror and crime.
Advertisement
Agnes, on the other hand, is an interesting parallel to Ambrosio: she is promised to the Church as an infant but falls in love with Raymond. She first tries to escape her fate by escaping the confining walls of her parents’ castle, a place long haunted by a spectre known as the Bleeding Nun. Agnes pretends to be the Bleeding Nun to leave the castle, but Raymond ends up taking away the real Bleeding Nun, who is eternally punished for having yielded to her sexual desires. After the Nun is vanquished, Agnes is transferred to the convent and falls into the cruel hands of Mother St. Agatha.
But while Agnes is eventually rescued and returned to her lover, Ambrosio rapes Antonia and seals his own fate. The dungeon of the monastery – black, concealed, reeking of death and decay – becomes one with Ambrosio’s mind where we find atrocity and monstrosity as we descend.
M.R. James (1862-1936)
A lifelong scholar and medievalist, the ghost stories that Montague Rhodes James is so famous for today are just something he did on the side. He never intended
to publish them, and wouldn’t have done so if not for a tragedy. Being a super productive scholar and prolific writer, M. R. James mainly wrote ghost stories for his own pleasure and to entertain friends. One of them, James McBryde, used to be M. R. James’s student and illustrated some of the stories. Unfortunately, McBryde died young, and M. R. James decided to publish his tales to honour his beloved friend. The result is a compilation under the title Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary (1904), soon to be followed by a few other volumes.
The protagonists of these stories are very much in M. R. James’s own image – namely, scholars with intense interests in ancient, half-abandoned sites. An old church, for instance, may house the murderous Lamia, and a painting of an evil-looking Swedish count found in his ancestral castle may bring horrible death.
Again, the stones and the walls become the bridge between the past and the present, but this time they are more guardians than compliance, for M.R. James never aims at the scary, and certainly not any (unnecessary) blood or gore. Our world and the supernatural simply co-exist, but the latter is silently hidden under the weather-worn stones, or behind the whispering branches of ageless trees.
Grave anger only comes when there is intrusion. In, ‘A Warning to the Curious’,
for instance, an archaeologist discovers the last of the three crowns of Anglia at a seaside resort. His intention, though purely academic, wakens the spirit of the last descendant of the family charged with the crowns’ safety. The lonely guardian stalks the intruder and leads him to a lonely death. Undeserving, you might think, but the ghostly watcher does not kill out of murderous intent. He is simply doing what he is supposed to do: whatever duty he was charged with in life, he keeps beyond the grave.
But it is precisely curiosity that gets things going: without the impulse to inquire, there will be no action; without action, there will be no story. The same goes for scholarship. Perhaps, M. R. James is merely asking the questions that every historian faces: to what extent can we find an answer? How far should we go? When should we stop, content with what we have found? Perhaps, as a manuscript scholar, he knows better than anyone else that inevitability of lacunae: there is always a limit as to how far one can go. But this is also where the charm of his writing lies. He never reveals the puzzle, but allows the mysterious to remain mysterious. What he gives are clues, little hints here and there to encourage the readers to form their own theories. His ghosts haunt not only the fictional landscape, but also the readers’ minds. Thousands of new tales begin exactly where M. R. James’ pen stops.
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965)
Perhaps best known as the author of The Lottery, Shirley Jackson, at first sight, is not as medieval as the three authors mentioned above. Instead of haunted castles and ruined churches, Shirley Jackson’s protagonists wander around in perfectly ordinary American towns. Upon closer inspection, however, you will soon realise that these peaceful towns and bright townhouses harbour as much darkness as the Castle of Otranto and Ambrosio’s dungeon. The form may differ, but deep down they are just the same. Shirley Jackson’s stories indicate a special bond to houses, like Walpole but perhaps even more so than him, since Jackson, as a housewife and mother to four, was probably more intimate to and more familiar with her house in a way that Walpole never was with Strawberry Hill.
At the centre of her six novels and over 200 short stories, there always stands
a house, sometimes as a shelter, sometimes as a prison, sometimes as both. I
will not be referring to The Haunting of the Hill House, for that will be stating the obvious, but take for example, The Sundial (1958). It opens with a Hamlet-inspired scene, when Miss Francis Halloran sees a vision near the sundial in the garden and hears her long-dead father’s voice. The world will end soon, the spectre warns, but the children shall be safe in the house. Like the House of Otranto, the (male) Halloran line at this time also faces extinction: the son has just died a mysterious death, allegedly murdered by his own mother, who is desperate to possess the house. The little world of the Halloran house is collapsing apart, echoing the approaching end of the big world outside.
In We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962), Jackson’s last novel, everything
is brought into a summation. The Blackwood house is a murder house, but at
the same time a sanctuary for the murderess. It falls in flames in a final burst of violence, but only to rise again, fortified, taller, stronger than ever. As the once glorious part of the house crumbles, Mary-Katherine ‘Merrycat’ Blackwood realises that she no longer needs it, for the real house is her mind, her world, her dark secrets. We have always lived in the Castle.
The Castle has always lived in us. From the Castle of Otranto, to Blackwood Manor, our journey has reached full circle. What makes these houses so fascinating perhaps lies in the fact that they are not just physical surroundings but mirrors of our own mind.
But which one is truly haunted?
Dr. Minjie Su studies Old Norse (and some other old things), and researches werewolves in medieval Icelandic literature. She is a self-labelled artist of the Post-Pre-Raphaelites and is also a knower of cats. You can follow Minjie on Twitter @Aethelcat_su
By Minjie Su
Magic or necromancy, ghouls or vampires, werewolves or witches, fairies or elves, or simply Trick-or-Treat…no matter what you deem as your true calling, it is time to get prepared! Brush your capes, sharpen your fangs and claws, dust your ancient manuscripts, and don’t forget to harvest your pumpkins, for All Hallows’ Eve is fast approaching and the witching hour is nigh.
To honour this sacred, one-of-a-kind moment and to – for apparent reasons –
make you quiver, this time we introduce to you the strangely creative or creatively strange minds of four Gothic authors who were modern during their own times, yet deeply rooted in the medieval and the nearly-forgotten past. Their stories are weird, dreamlike, at the same time, frightening and exciting; and most of all, haunting – yes, you can shut the book and run away, thinking ‘thank heavens! I’m now safe’, but deep down you know that, once you’ve looked into those pages, they will forever stay with you. There is no true escape. In other words, what better entertainment can you expect for so fine an occasion as Halloween?
Gothic: The Origin
First, a few words on the origin of the Gothic. As you are probably aware, the word ‘Gothic’ denotes a great number of things: architecture, art, music, culture, literature, fashion…and, of course, one or several ‘barbarian’ tribes that destroyed the last vestiges of Roman civilisation. No doubt, the Renaissance painter and writer Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) was thinking about just that when he harshly criticised those ‘monstrous and barbaric’ edifices built in the Middle Ages and referred to them as ‘Gothic’.
While all these things are indeed Gothic, the Gothic is so much more. In The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction, Nick Groom traces the history of the Goths, how the term evolves as an identity, and what it signifies. The founding myths of the Goths slowly take shape during Ostrogothic sovereignty. One of the major sources is Jordanes’s Getica, which represents the Goths not as destroyers of the Roman Empire, but as an interdependent people who eventually become united with the Romans in Justinian I’s (482–565) victory and incorporation of the Gothic tribes. In other words, it is a matter of translatio imperii, not of destruction and conquest.
With translatio imperii comes translatio studii. For Bede (672/3–735), for instance,
the domination of the Angles signifies the triumph of the Catholic Church. The Gothic tribes’ identity as ‘outsiders’ allows them to jump out of the framework of the Classical, pagan minds; their very existence reveals the limitation of the Graeco-Roman world.
Therefore, in generalising terms, the Gothic stands for the rebellious and the innovative. On the one hand, you can consider the Gothic as something that refuses to fit in, does not quite belong, a bit of a loner; but on the other, you can see it as free of restraints, always allowing room for new, unfamiliar things such as the preternatural. It is this flexibility that makes the idea of the Gothic so appealing to the romanticising, artistic, and creative mind during the Victorian era.
Horace Walpole (1717-1797)
One of the most famous minds that has been captivated by the Gothic was Horace (Horatio) Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, son of Sir Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister of Britain.
Since Walpole made it a point that he wrote The Castle of Otranto in Strawberry Hill House, it comes as no surprise that a house sits in the very centre of the narrative: the ancestral seat of the princes of Otranto, dark, gloomy, imposing. Within its enclosed walls, it harbours an ancient secret; a secret that only begins to be revealed when a gigantic helmet falls from the sky and lands on Conrad on his wedding day, the sole heir to Manfred, Prince of Otranto.
As a result, the line is disrupted, and the glorious legacy of Otranto faces immediate threat. The family may die out, and the castle – will it be deserted, heavy with ivy and fading into oblivion? But no, the castle shall live on with a new master, who is not of Manfred’s lineage: an ancient prophecy rules that the castle and lordship, ‘should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it’. In a desperate attempt to avert this fate, Manfred conspires to divorce his wife Hippolita, and marry Isabella, the noble girl who was (forced) to marry Conrad and whom Manfred takes into the castle in her father’s absence. But in the end, as Manfred’s plot advances and all falls into chaos and violence, Manfred, hiding behind curtains, stabs his own daughter Matilda, thus ending his line once and for all.
Then the rightful heir is revealed to be a young peasant who remarkably resembles Alfonso the Good, the owner of the mysterious helmet and true Prince of Otranto. The new lord marries Isabella, not in a ‘happily-ever-after’ manner, but in a state of sorrow.
As the first of its kind, The Castle of Otranto is no doubt modern, but it is also profoundly influenced by the distant past, such as Henry VIII’s marriage (and divorce) with Catherine of Aragon, and the succession troubles of the Tudor dynasty. Hamlet is a source of inspiration, too, as one may easily recognise Claudius in Manfred. Both commit the crime of usurpation and (attempted) incest. In this sense, Walpole’s genre-founding masterpiece is itself a bridge between the past and the present; but more than that, it also lights the way for the future.
Another converging point of the past, the present, and the future, is the castle itself. As a stone edifice, it stands through the passage of time. Its walls have witnessed unspeakable crimes and bloodshed, heard and muffled its victims’ scream. It is haunted by the past, while using that past to haunt the present and the future. Just imagine, if those stones deign to yield, what knowledge – horror, secrets – will we learn, if we have the courage to learn at all?
Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818)
Matthew Lewis’s The Monk sees the transformation of the gloomy castle walls into abbeys and monasteries, another enclosed, isolated space intentionally cut off from the outside world. Ruined churches or monasteries (in many cases, thanks to the Reformation) dot the landscape. Ruined abbeys as an artistic theme are lavishly romanticised by famous painters such as W.M.W. Turner and John Ruskin. It is no surprise at all that they also play a celebrated role in Gothic literature.
Matthew Lewis was destined for a career in foreign diplomacy but ended up becoming known as ‘Monk’ Lewis, thanks to the absolutely horrifying, dark, twisted story he wrote at the age of nineteen. (Seriously, what WERE those Victorian teenagers thinking?!) Revolving around two young couples’ difficult romantic relationships, The Monk narrates how Ambrosio, a saintly monk, finds himself unable to restrain corporeal lust, and falls into the trap of the devil. The chaste love for God, and the honest, innocent love, for another human being are twisted in Ambrosio’s lovemaking to Matilda, who reveals herself to be the model of a painting of the Virgin Mary that Ambrosio adores. As Ambrosio gradually succumbs to the darkest desires of his soul, he also darkens and taints the bright love between Don Lorenzo and Antonia (Raymond’s relative), and between Agnes (Lorenzo’s sister) and Don Raymond (Lorenzo’s friend).
Overall, The Monk plays with the idea of imprisonment and escape, with the scenes frequently switched between within and without abbey or castle walls. As an infant, Ambrosio was left at the church door and raised as a monk. Granted, he proves to be good monk material, but he is never given any opportunity to be anything else. The monastery walls are as much a prison to him as to Agnes and Antonia, who are brought into them to be tortured and violated; the repression of the Monk’s passion, desire, and lust, only give rise to abominable horror and crime.
Agnes, on the other hand, is an interesting parallel to Ambrosio: she is promised to the Church as an infant but falls in love with Raymond. She first tries to escape her fate by escaping the confining walls of her parents’ castle, a place long haunted by a spectre known as the Bleeding Nun. Agnes pretends to be the Bleeding Nun to leave the castle, but Raymond ends up taking away the real Bleeding Nun, who is eternally punished for having yielded to her sexual desires. After the Nun is vanquished, Agnes is transferred to the convent and falls into the cruel hands of Mother St. Agatha.
But while Agnes is eventually rescued and returned to her lover, Ambrosio rapes Antonia and seals his own fate. The dungeon of the monastery – black, concealed, reeking of death and decay – becomes one with Ambrosio’s mind where we find atrocity and monstrosity as we descend.
M.R. James (1862-1936)
A lifelong scholar and medievalist, the ghost stories that Montague Rhodes James is so famous for today are just something he did on the side. He never intended
to publish them, and wouldn’t have done so if not for a tragedy. Being a super productive scholar and prolific writer, M. R. James mainly wrote ghost stories for his own pleasure and to entertain friends. One of them, James McBryde, used to be M. R. James’s student and illustrated some of the stories. Unfortunately, McBryde died young, and M. R. James decided to publish his tales to honour his beloved friend. The result is a compilation under the title Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary (1904), soon to be followed by a few other volumes.
The protagonists of these stories are very much in M. R. James’s own image – namely, scholars with intense interests in ancient, half-abandoned sites. An old church, for instance, may house the murderous Lamia, and a painting of an evil-looking Swedish count found in his ancestral castle may bring horrible death.
Again, the stones and the walls become the bridge between the past and the present, but this time they are more guardians than compliance, for M.R. James never aims at the scary, and certainly not any (unnecessary) blood or gore. Our world and the supernatural simply co-exist, but the latter is silently hidden under the weather-worn stones, or behind the whispering branches of ageless trees.
Grave anger only comes when there is intrusion. In, ‘A Warning to the Curious’,
for instance, an archaeologist discovers the last of the three crowns of Anglia at a seaside resort. His intention, though purely academic, wakens the spirit of the last descendant of the family charged with the crowns’ safety. The lonely guardian stalks the intruder and leads him to a lonely death. Undeserving, you might think, but the ghostly watcher does not kill out of murderous intent. He is simply doing what he is supposed to do: whatever duty he was charged with in life, he keeps beyond the grave.
But it is precisely curiosity that gets things going: without the impulse to inquire, there will be no action; without action, there will be no story. The same goes for scholarship. Perhaps, M. R. James is merely asking the questions that every historian faces: to what extent can we find an answer? How far should we go? When should we stop, content with what we have found? Perhaps, as a manuscript scholar, he knows better than anyone else that inevitability of lacunae: there is always a limit as to how far one can go. But this is also where the charm of his writing lies. He never reveals the puzzle, but allows the mysterious to remain mysterious. What he gives are clues, little hints here and there to encourage the readers to form their own theories. His ghosts haunt not only the fictional landscape, but also the readers’ minds. Thousands of new tales begin exactly where M. R. James’ pen stops.
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965)
Perhaps best known as the author of The Lottery, Shirley Jackson, at first sight, is not as medieval as the three authors mentioned above. Instead of haunted castles and ruined churches, Shirley Jackson’s protagonists wander around in perfectly ordinary American towns. Upon closer inspection, however, you will soon realise that these peaceful towns and bright townhouses harbour as much darkness as the Castle of Otranto and Ambrosio’s dungeon. The form may differ, but deep down they are just the same. Shirley Jackson’s stories indicate a special bond to houses, like Walpole but perhaps even more so than him, since Jackson, as a housewife and mother to four, was probably more intimate to and more familiar with her house in a way that Walpole never was with Strawberry Hill.
At the centre of her six novels and over 200 short stories, there always stands
a house, sometimes as a shelter, sometimes as a prison, sometimes as both. I
will not be referring to The Haunting of the Hill House, for that will be stating the obvious, but take for example, The Sundial (1958). It opens with a Hamlet-inspired scene, when Miss Francis Halloran sees a vision near the sundial in the garden and hears her long-dead father’s voice. The world will end soon, the spectre warns, but the children shall be safe in the house. Like the House of Otranto, the (male) Halloran line at this time also faces extinction: the son has just died a mysterious death, allegedly murdered by his own mother, who is desperate to possess the house. The little world of the Halloran house is collapsing apart, echoing the approaching end of the big world outside.
In We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962), Jackson’s last novel, everything
is brought into a summation. The Blackwood house is a murder house, but at
the same time a sanctuary for the murderess. It falls in flames in a final burst of violence, but only to rise again, fortified, taller, stronger than ever. As the once glorious part of the house crumbles, Mary-Katherine ‘Merrycat’ Blackwood realises that she no longer needs it, for the real house is her mind, her world, her dark secrets. We have always lived in the Castle.
The Castle has always lived in us. From the Castle of Otranto, to Blackwood Manor, our journey has reached full circle. What makes these houses so fascinating perhaps lies in the fact that they are not just physical surroundings but mirrors of our own mind.
But which one is truly haunted?
Dr. Minjie Su studies Old Norse (and some other old things), and researches werewolves in medieval Icelandic literature. She is a self-labelled artist of the Post-Pre-Raphaelites and is also a knower of cats. You can follow Minjie on Twitter @Aethelcat_su
Click here to read more from Minjie Su
Top Image: Photo by Clive Varley / Flickr
Related Posts
Subscribe to Medievalverse