Gothic Elements in Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens...

The Gothic was born out of the romanticism genre in the late Eighteenth Century, combining romance and horror in an attempt to thrill and terrify the reader, yet in the Victorian era ceased to become a dominant literary genre. However themes of the Gothic still survived such as psychological and physical terror, mystery, supernatural and madness. The melancholy atmosphere and persistent melodrama in novels such as ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens are examples of Gothic elements in later novels as the ‘Victorian gothic’ moves away from traditional themes (ruined castles, helpless heroines, evil villains) and exchanges them for the supernatural and uncanny within a recognisable environment, bringing a sense of familiarity to the†¦show more content†¦We see the narrator becoming lost in the maze of his own mind as the story continues another gothic trait as he descends into madness, as he is tormented illogically by the black cat. With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would crouch beneath my chair, or spring upon my knees, covering me with its loathsome caresses. If I arose to walk it would get between my feet and thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening its long and sharp claws in my dress, clamber, in this manner, to my breast. At such times, although I longed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld from so doing, partly by a memory of my former crime, but chiefly - let me confess it at once - by absolute dread of the beast. The gothic themes of this story help the reader to follow the narrator’s decent to madness and the heinous acts he commits on the way, such as blinding and hanging his first cat and killing his wife, but also the superstitions surrounding black cats in the Victorian era. The idea that black cats are Witches incarnate adds a sense of eerie superstition to the story. Was it just a cat, or was the narrator right and it was something more? The reader will never know the truth, the lines between the supernatural and reality have been blurred with no obvious answers, and ending that offers moreShow MoreRelatedCharles Dickens Great Expectations2277 Words   |  10 PagesAlthough Charles Dickens’ classic novel Great Expectations was published in 1861, modern-day playwrights, authors, and directors go to great lengths to preserve its timelessness. Many of these writers feel that the best way to keep the novel relevant to society is to alter the original novel to make it cultur ally relevant or acceptable. 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