Notesale: Turn your study into money

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Brandon Morris
“Gothic writing is exciting because it allows us to think the unthinkable”
How far do you agree with this view?

Wuthering Heights, Faustus, Frankenstein or Bloody Chamber

Comment [b1]: Ghosts and haunting,
Chapter 3 – Lockwood’s dream

Realistic + supernatural, heaven + hell, social context, transgressions/boundaries

Comment [b2]: Physical manifestations
of devils/demons

Main point – transgressions/boundaries

Comment [b3]: Making life from
corpses and playing God, Chapter 5

Introduction – Gothic allows us to “think the unthinkable”… it crosses boundaries, which can
be seen in……
...


Is it exciting or horrific? All three novels explore the unknown in a horrific way to the reader
by breaking taboos or boundaries of some kind
...
g
...
g
...

Immortality – Heathcliff and Cathy’s love for each other, Monster – idea of bringing the
dead back to life, Faustus – endless boundaries that magic can have
...

Faustus – ‘unthinkable’ is used to create horror or tragedy for Faustus not excitement
...
He tries to gain omnipotent
knowledge and power, by selling his soul to the devil to reach beyond the limitations of
humanity, developing a better understanding of the unknown
...


Comment [b5]: Link each texts to each
other and refer back to the question

The Gothic genre allows writers to explore taboo subjects, by exploring the idea of
transgression and breaking boundaries
...
The ‘unthinkable’ is considered to
be something that is beyond our human understanding; for example, within Wuthering
Heights the appearance of ghosts as well as Heathcliff and Catherine’s love being able to
break the boundaries between the afterlife and life
...
The same themes are seen within Doctor Faustus accept Faustus deals directly with
trying to gain knowledge beyond human understanding, ultimately paying the price for this
by being dragged to hell for eternity
...
The first example of the supernatural
occurs in chapter 3, during Mr
...
Straight away, even before anything has
happened, Brontë uses the dream to create a sense of liminality, as there is a sense of
ambiguity in whether Mr
...
This creates a ‘blur’ between what is
real and what is not, as the branch turning into the “ice-cold hand” and blood ‘soaking the
bed-clothes’, is merged with the frenzied shouting which was “not ideal”
...
Lockwood is
shocked to this as it is beyond his understanding, as well to that of the reader, primarily
because he is from a civilised place, opposed to the Moors, which is more representative of
the uncivilised and of nature
...
Returning to Catherine’s ghost, there is a major theme of breaking boundaries being
used by Brontë, as a ghost is defying the boundaries between life and death
...
Nature is a key theme of the novel since it affects everyone in some way,
e
...
Mr
...
Only the strongest characters are able to overpower
nature, in some way, but Brontë keeps nature as the overpowering force accept when
regarding the supernatural
...
Brontë uses the love between them to portray the
‘unthinkable’ through the supernatural as this is the cause of Catherine wandering the
Moors for “twenty years” waiting for Heathcliff to join her, and his screams for Catherine in
chapter 3 makes the scene become ‘more’ real since Mr
...
Brontë utilised the supernatural as a way of ‘exciting’ the reader

through horror and terror, by having the supernatural cause the ‘unthinkable’ as there is no
explanation to why and how any of this is actually happening
...
One of the repulsing acts that Victor
commits, amongst the many, is his total lack of morality and respect as he collects body
parts from the “charnel houses”, and the quote, “I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of
the grave”, and shows how unaffected he is by such a despicable act
...
Shelley describes the graves as “unhallowed”, which does seem to add
some sense of morality to Victor, since he deliberately chose graves that are not holy,
although saying this he does challenge God by trying to uncover the “secrets of heaven and
earth”
...
In his quest for ‘forbidden knowledge’, we can see
Frankenstein commit all sorts of crimes, and break taboos in order to fulfil his selfish
desires, questioning the ‘unthinkable’ and what is actually possible
...
The first is the use of the embedded narrative, like that in
Wuthering Heights, as multiple accounts of a story is more reliable than one, and the way
the objective of the narrative shifts from Walton’s desire to achieve “some great purpose”,
to Victor’s unjust behaviour towards his own creation and the following recounts from the
Creature gives the novel a better sense of morality, as his rejection by mankind is ironic
since he is too hideous but he is considered to be the most human
...
I think the similarities between Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein are
almost parallel as both authors use similar techniques to achieve the same end, of ‘exciting’
the reader, mainly through the ‘unthinkable’
...
Even though it is a pre-Gothic play, there is a connection to
the previously mentioned novels, of reaching the same ultimate goal of ‘exciting’ the
audience
...
For Faustus this
is to turn towards the dark arts, like Frankenstein, but to actually sign his soul over to the
devil for “twenty and four-years”, and being served by Mephistopheles
...
This is mentioned continuously throughout the play, as Mephistopheles
defines hell as being “separated from God” and that hell is a state of mind not an actual
place
...
We can see an example of
such an entrance in Act 1 scene 3 with the introduction to Mephistopheles, as he is too
hideous for Faustus who asks him to return “dressed as a Francian friar”, acting as both
comedic and scary for the audience, since the majority were Catholic and the appearance of
a demon would be ‘unthinkable’
...
This lack of respect towards the divine is seen is Frankenstein by
Victor’s attitude, and acts as the ‘unthinkable’
...

Mentioned previously is some of the ways in which writers have used the Gothic as a way of
causing ‘excitement’ amongst its audiences by exploring what we have deemed as the
‘unthinkable’; in many cases this was to fulfil the desires many sought out and by reading
these texts, they were able to indulge in these fantasies, which were otherwise
‘unthinkable’ and even impossible to perform
...




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