Gothic fiction, sometimes called Gothic horror mainly in the 20th century, is a style of writing that focuses on fear and eerie, haunted settings. The name of this genre comes from the Renaissance period, when the word "Gothic" was used as a negative term to describe something medieval or uncivilized. This term originally came from Gothic architecture and the Goths, an ancient group of people.
The first book labeled as Gothic was Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, which was later given the subtitle A Gothic Story. Other writers in the 18th century who contributed to the genre include Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, William Beckford, and Matthew Gregory Lewis. The influence of Gothic themes continued into the early 19th century, appearing in Romantic poetry by writers like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Lord Byron. Novelists such as Mary Shelley, Charles Maturin, Walter Scott, and E. T. A. Hoffmann also used Gothic elements in their stories.
During the Victorian era, Gothic style appeared in works by authors like Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters. American writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne also used Gothic themes. Later in the 19th century, famous Gothic stories included Carmilla (1872) by Sheridan Le Fanu, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde, Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker, and The Beetle (1897) by Richard Marsh. In the 20th century, Gothic fiction remained popular, with writers like Daphne du Maurier, Stephen King, V. C. Andrews, Shirley Jackson, Anne Rice, and Toni Morrison contributing to the genre.
Characteristics
Gothic fiction is marked by a setting filled with fear, the possibility of supernatural events, and the influence of the past on the present. Stories often take place in places that remind people of the past, such as old, broken buildings that show how temporary human achievements and history can be. Common settings in the 18th and 19th centuries include castles and religious buildings like monasteries, convents, and crypts. The atmosphere is usually tight and confined, and stories often involve themes like revenge, imprisonment, and murder. Horrifying events in Gothic fiction often symbolize deeper psychological or social problems. These stories are usually complex, with many layers, such as stories within stories, changing narrators, or documents like old manuscripts. Other common elements include sleep-like or death-like states, being buried alive, doubles, strange sounds or silence, hidden family secrets, unreadable writings, nighttime scenes, remote places, and dreams. In the late 19th century, stories often included demons, ghosts, and other evil spirits.
Gothic fiction is closely connected to Gothic Revival architecture from the same time. English writers often linked medieval buildings to a dark and scary period filled with harsh laws and strange rituals. Gothic stories focus on strong emotions, the thrill of fear and awe, and creating a vivid atmosphere, similar to how Gothic Revival architects avoided the clear, logical style of the Enlightenment. Gothic ruins remind people of how human creations fall apart and decay over time, which is why fake ruins were sometimes added to English parks for visual effect.
Including a Gothic building in a story has several purposes. It suggests the story takes place in the past, creates a feeling of isolation, shows religious connections, and inspires awe. The buildings often reflect the characters and events in the story. For example, in The Castle of Otranto, the castle has hidden tunnels that characters use to move secretly. These tunnels represent the hidden secrets about how Manfred came to own the castle and his family's history.
History
At this moment, the night is darkest, and places like churchyards seem to open wide, while evil forces from the underworld spread harm to the world. If I could drink hot blood, I might carry out terrible acts so shocking that even the day would be afraid to witness them.
By the time Horace Walpole created a fake medieval manuscript called The Castle of Otranto in 1764, the ideas that would later form Gothic literature already had a long and rich history.
The plays of William Shakespeare were an important source of inspiration for early Gothic writers. These writers used Shakespeare’s works to make their stories seem more believable and to show the public that Gothic literature was serious and meaningful. Shakespeare’s tragedies, such as Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, and Richard III, included stories about supernatural events, revenge, murder, ghosts, witchcraft, and signs of future events. These plays, often set in medieval castles and filled with intense emotions, greatly influenced early Gothic authors. Many of these writers often quoted or referenced Shakespeare’s works in their own writing.
Another major influence on Gothic writers was John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), especially his portrayal of the tragic main character Satan. This character became a model for many memorable villains and Byronic heroes in Gothic stories. Milton’s version of the story of the fall and redemption, creation and destruction, is, as seen in Frankenstein, an important example for Gothic story plots.
Alexander Pope also played a key role in shaping Gothic fiction. Pope was the first major poet of the 18th century to write a poem in a true Gothic style. His poem Eloisa to Abelard (1717) tells the story of two lovers separated by fate, one forced to live in a convent and the other in a monastery. The poem is filled with dark descriptions, fear related to religion, and hidden emotions. The influence of Pope’s poem can be seen in many 18th-century Gothic works, including those written by Walpole, Radcliffe, and Lewis.
Development of Gothic aesthetics
Gothic literature is often described using words like "wonder" and "terror." These feelings help readers suspend disbelief, which is important for Gothic stories. Most Gothic fiction is taken seriously, even though it sometimes has dramatic moments. Readers must imagine that there might be things "beyond what is immediately visible." This kind of imagination had been growing before Gothic literature began. As the world became more explored and maps filled in, people needed new ways to imagine the unknown. Clive Bloom suggests that this need for imagination helped create the conditions for Gothic literature to develop.
Many early Gothic stories were set in the medieval past, a theme that was popular long before Horace Walpole wrote The Castle of Otranto in 1764. In Britain, people wanted to connect with their shared history, leading to things like grand buildings and fake medieval events. This interest in the past made society ready to accept Gothic stories when they appeared.
Gothic literature often uses scenes of decay, death, and sadness to create its effects, especially in the Italian Horror school. However, these themes were not new. Images like corpses and churchyards were already popular in earlier works, such as those by the Graveyard poets and Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. Even earlier, poets like Edmund Spenser created somber moods in their poetry. These earlier works helped build the emotional foundation for Gothic fiction.
While many elements of pre-Gothic literature appear in Gothic stories, they are not enough on their own. What was needed was a unifying aesthetic, or style, to tie the elements together. Clive Bloom says this style must include a philosophical or theoretical core to prevent stories from becoming just random or overly dramatic. This style was finally provided by Edmund Burke’s 1757 work, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Burke’s ideas about the "Sublime," "Terror," and "Obscurity" helped shape the emotional tone of Gothic fiction. He argued that the Sublime is the strongest emotion the mind can feel, and that Terror often causes the Sublime. Obscurity, or not knowing everything, is needed to feel Terror, because knowing too much reduces fear. Bloom says Burke’s vocabulary was important for later Romantic and Gothic works.
The start of Gothic literature may have been influenced by political events. Some researchers link its rise to the English Civil War and the Jacobite rising of 1745, which was close in time to The Castle of Otranto (1764). The political memories and fears from these events may have inspired early Gothic villains, who represented defeated Tories or Royalists haunting the pages of Gothic novels.
The subgenre of female Gothic emerged from the works of authors like Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, and Charlotte Brontë. These stories allowed women’s societal and sexual desires to be explored. At the time, women readers often felt they had to pretend not to enjoy these novels. Gothic fiction became a way for women to find support for their mixed feelings about society.
Female Gothic stories often focus on a heroine fleeing from a villainous father and searching for an absent mother. Male writers, however, tend to explore breaking social rules. The rise of ghost stories gave women writers a way to write about topics beyond marriage, allowing them to critique male power and violence. Some authors, like Mary Robinson and Charlotte Dacre, challenged the typical "persecuted heroine" by featuring more assertive female characters. Dacre’s Zofloya; or, The Moor includes a sexually aggressive protagonist, Victoria, who pursues partners on her own terms.
When female Gothic stories use the "explained supernatural," the source of terror is not the supernatural but real issues like female disability, rape, incest, or male control. These stories also address women’s dissatisfaction with patriarchal society, their roles as mothers, and their struggles with marriage, childbirth, and abuse.
After the typical Gothic "Bildungsroman" plot—where a character grows from adolescence to maturity—female Gothic stories allow readers to understand the limits of the supernatural. For example, in The Romance of the Forest, the heroine Adeline learns that her fears are based on real causes rather than magic. This helps readers see that the heroine’s struggles are tied to being female.
The first work labeled as "Gothic" was Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764). Walpole presented it as a translation of a 16th-century manuscript in the first edition. In the second edition, he revealed himself as the author, adding the subtitle A Gothic Story. This caused some readers to criticize him for writing supernatural stories in a rational age. Walpole’s work inspired others, like Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron (1778), which called itself a "literary offspring" of The Castle of Otranto. Other writers in the 1780s, such as Sophia Lee and William Beckford, combined supernatural plots with emotionally realistic characters.
By the 1790s, Gothic novels were closely associated with Ann Radcliffe, whose popular works influenced many other writers.
Other media
Literary Gothic themes have appeared in many different types of media. In the 20th century, Gothic horror films became popular, including classic movies like the Universal Monsters films from the 1930s, Hammer Horror films, and Roger Corman’s Poe cycle. In Hindi cinema, Gothic themes were mixed with elements of Indian culture, such as reincarnation, creating a genre called "Indian Gothic." This began with films like Mahal (1949) and Madhumati (1958). The 1960s TV show Dark Shadows used Gothic traditions, including haunted houses, vampires, witches, and tragic love stories. In the early 1970s, comic books like The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love and Haunted Love explored Gothic romance themes.
Rock music in the 20th century also included Gothic influences. Black Sabbath’s 1970 album created a dark, unique sound and is considered the first "goth-rock" record. The word "gothic" was first used to describe music in 1967 for The Doors by critic John Stickney. Other musicians who influenced Gothic rock include Marc Bolan, the Velvet Underground, David Bowie, Brian Eno, and Iggy Pop. Critic Simon Reynolds later described Kate Bush’s 1978 song Wuthering Heights, inspired by Emily Brontë’s novel, as "Gothic romance distilled into four-and-a-half minutes of gaseous rhapsody." Gothic rock as a music genre began in late 1970s England with Bauhaus’s song Bela Lugosi’s Dead (1979). This was followed by Joy Division’s album Unknown Pleasures (1980) and later by bands like The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees, who added more Gothic elements to their music. Gothic rock borrowed themes from writers like H.P. Lovecraft and appeared in genres such as black metal, thrash metal (Metallica’s The Call of Ktulu), death metal, and gothic metal. For example, King Diamond’s music often includes horror, theatricality, and themes like Satanism and anti-Catholicism.
Role-playing games (RPGs) also use Gothic themes. The 1983 Dungeons & Dragons adventure Ravenloft tasks players with defeating a vampire named Strahd von Zarovich, who mourns his lost love. This adventure is highly praised and inspired a fictional world named Ravenloft. The World of Darkness RPG series, set in the real world, includes supernatural creatures like vampires and werewolves. It features games such as Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and Mage: The Ascension, allowing players to create characters in a Gothic-punk setting. The game My Life with Master uses Gothic horror to show abusive relationships, placing players in the role of servants to a powerful, controlling figure.
Video games often include Gothic horror themes. The Castlevania series involves heroes fighting vampires, werewolves, and other Gothic creatures in a castle, with a final battle against Dracula. Games like Ghosts 'n Goblins use a humorous take on Gothic stories. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017) is a Southern Gothic remake of the survival horror series, trapping players in a haunted plantation with terrifying secrets. Its 2021 sequel, Resident Evil Village, follows a hero searching for his kidnapped daughter in a Gothic village filled with vampires, werewolves, and other monsters. The Devil May Cry series blends Gothic horror with action, featuring a character named Dante who battles demons and explores haunted settings. Gothic themes appear in the story, such as the past influencing the present and the struggle between family and personal identity. The game also includes Gothic elements like the character Lady, who seeks revenge against her abusive father. Bloodborne takes place in the Gothic city of Yharnam, where players fight monsters like vampires and witches. The game shifts from Gothic horror to Lovecraftian horror halfway through. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt includes Gothic elements like haunted mansions, ghosts, and cursed creatures in its Hearts of Stone expansion.
The popular card game Magic: The Gathering includes a world called Innistrad, inspired by Gothic horror from northeast Europe. This world features vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural beings.
Film director Tim Burton, influenced by classic Gothic movies like Frankenstein and Hammer Horror, creates films with a Gothic style. Modern Gothic horror films include Sleepy Hollow, Interview with the Vampire, Underworld, The Wolfman, From Hell, Dorian Gray, Let the Right One In, The Woman in Black, Crimson Peak, The Little Stranger, The Love Witch, Nosferatu, and Frankenstein.
The TV series Penny Dreadful (2014–2016) combines classic Gothic characters into a psychological thriller set in Victorian London. The Oscar-winning Korean film Parasite has been described as "Revolutionary Gothic." Recently, Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor have used Gothic themes in modern horror stories.
Scholarship
Teachers who study literature, culture, and architecture value the Gothic as a subject that helps explore how scientific certainty began. As Carol Senf explained, "the Gothic was… a way for writers and thinkers to respond when they felt unsure about a very confident view of the world. They saw that the past, things that don't make sense, and violence still have an influence today." This helps students understand their doubts about the confidence that today's scientists have. Scotland is home to what might be the world's first postgraduate program that focuses only on this genre: the MLitt in the Gothic Imagination at the University of Stirling, first recruited in 1996.