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To what extent do you agree with the view that, in Gothic writing, death is the punishment for sin?

I agree to a certain extent that, in Gothic writing, death is the punishment for sin
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This could be why death is so rife within this proto-Gothic revenge tragedy – those who are killed are
slain as a form of revenge, and those who commit the killings are punished with death themselves
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Despite this, it
can be argued that death is not always a punishment, as some of those who die are innocent, such as the
young girl within Carter’s The Snow Child, who is defiled whilst her abuser walks free
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Within Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, the title story resonates as a key example of karma
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This undertone of sado-machoism is carried through various symbols within the story, such as ‘’a choker
of rubies,’’ presented to the narrator by the Marquis
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It is this ‘’choker of rubies’’ – a
symbol of pain and dominance - that the narrator is forced to wear upon losing her virginity, interlinking
the themes of sex and violence prevalent in other Gothic texts such as the rape of Antonia in Lewis’ The
Monk
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’’ The counteraction between the
Marquis’ ‘’orgasm’’ – a feeling of pleasure – and the narrator’s own physical bleeding again hints at his
pleasure in pain, and tortuous nature
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The semantic field of death (‘’urns,’’ ‘’death,’’ ‘’red,’’) supports the implied sense of
torment and agony that the narrator’s predecessors must have ensued at the hands of the vicious
Marquis; one was crowned with a ‘’wreath of white roses’’ perhaps to preserve her purity and innocence,
one was brutally encased within an ‘’Iron Maiden’’ used to impale and mutilate, and another’s ‘’dead lips
smiled,’’ evoking a chilling image of pleasure in pain
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His death occurs when the
narrator’s mother ‘’put a single, irreproachable bullet through my husband’s head
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This is inferable as the lexis ‘’irreproachable’’ suggests that the mother is free from blame
for committing murder, implying that the death of the Marquis is akin to capital punishment – when the
executer commits the murder, the executer is then not killed for killing
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It is fitting that the Marquis’
crimes against women were ended by another woman
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Death is plentiful within the text, and resonates as a commonplace feature of Jacobean
literature, with a large portion of the main cast having perished in or by the last scene, and the

implication that three more shall face their death as punishment after the play’s end; every instance of a
death within the play is induced by another person, usually as an act of revenge or convenience
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This moral ambivalence particularly
surrounds the character of Monticelso, a Cardinal who later becomes Pope, and so a deeply religious
man
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’’ This presents a sense of moral ambivalence as he is condemning murder, but is
known to possess a ‘’black book’’ of his own, a list with the details of criminals who could help him
commit his own revenge – he knows what is right and what is wrong, but what he chooses to do is based
upon convenience as opposed to morality
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The orthodox Christian perspective of death is that it marks the
point in which an individual faces God’s judgement
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This is the belief that Monticelso alludes to when
he condemns Lodovico’s desire for revenge as ‘’damnable
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The deaths of Isabella and
Camillo, for instance, are acted out through a dumb show, in which Isabella kisses a poisoned picture of
Bracciano and is ‘’conveyed out solemnly,’’ and in which Camillo’s neck is broken
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In turn, Bracciano himself is murdered on account of
strangulation after Gasparo suggests that Lodovico ‘’strangle him in private’’ as revenge for his killing of
Isabella
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’’ The notion of ‘an
eye for an eye’ is a point of which is enforced in the Bible, and considering Webster was writing in an era
by which both the death penalty and the treatment of religiously deemed ‘sin’ was prominent, this could
account for the sheer amount of death and punishment inflicted by others as well as the law within the
play
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First and foremost, though, The Snow Child reinforces male
dominance over the female identity
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The concept of male domination is further alluded to through the
girl’s physical description using colourful imagery: ‘’white skin, red mouth, black hair
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Evocative of Poe’s The Raven, the aforementioned ‘’raven perched on a bare bough’’
serves as a traditional Gothic symbol of consumption and impending death embroiled within a
modernised story of shocking carnal sexuality
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’’ This
abuse and domination over the female identity, especially through the forceful verb of ‘’thrust’’
suggesting the vigorous extent of the Count’s defiling of the child, would be deemed incredibly sinful in
any era
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This shows that death is
not always the punishment for sin – in The Snow Child it is the innocent young girl who dies, whilst the
Count is able to prosper and carry on with his life
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An example of a child who is mercilessly killed at the

hands of the Monster is William, Victor Frankenstein’s younger brother
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’’ However, as he fights to
escape the Monster’s grip, he ‘’grasped his throat to silence him,’’ thus killing an innocent child
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Whilst the act of murder is a sin, no matter what era it was written in, a
lack of remorse could also be accounted as a sin, especially in a religious context
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Though the Monster unforgivably killed, he equally did not appear
to feel any remorse over his grotesque acts through his ‘’jeer[ing]’’ response
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Through the lexical choice of ‘’triumphantly,’’ it can be inferred that he relishes his chance to die
when he pleases, as opposed to receive any form of punishment for his crimes
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This demeanour
contrasts Victor’s own demise as he ‘’shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me,’’
suggesting that he feels guilty for unleashing the Monster upon the world
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Just as the
epitaph of the novel, an allusion to Milton’s Paradise Lost surmises – ‘Did I request thee maker, from
my clay to mould me man?’ – the Monster did not ask to be created, it happened at the hands of
Victor, who was playing God
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From Prometheus’
creation of man, he was thus punished by the God’s through means of torture – his liver would be
pecked out by a bird, but since he was immortal, it would recur every day
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Like the Monster, Victor is
not directly punished as a result of his sins, so it can be said that his death is, instead, a form of
liberation and release
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In
Webster’s The White Devil, akin to Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, the value of karma is reinstated; in the
latter, the Marquis died at the hands of a woman for his own torture and maltreatment of women, and in
the former, those who kill are eventually killed themselves
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Within Shelley’s Frankenstein, also, the majority of the Monster’s
victims are innocent people, whilst it can be argued that the death of both Victor and the Monster is not
necessarily the punishment for their sins, more than it is a form of freedom

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