Transformations of the Gothic in Victorian Ghost Stories

• Thesis title in Czech: Proměny gotického žánru ve viktoriánských duchařských povídkách
• Thesis title in English: Transformations of the Gothic in Victorian Ghost Stories
• Key words: Proměny gotického žánru,Viktoriánské duchařské povídky, Duch, Protagonista, Percepce, Psychologie, Medicína, Materialismus, Zrak, Realita
• English key words: Transformations of the Gothic, Victorian ghost stories, The ghost, The protagonist, Perception, Psychology, Medicine, Materialism, Vision, Reality
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2014/2015
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: doc. Clare Wallace, M.A., Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 24.03.2015
• Date of assignment: 24.03.2015
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 25.03.2015
• Date and time of defence: 01.02.2017 09:00
• Date of electronic submission: 03.01.2017
• Date of proceeded defence: 01.02.2017
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: PhDr. Zdeněk Beran, Ph.D.

Guidelines

This dissertation will focus on the ways in which the transformations in the nineteenth century Gothic mirror the gradual changes in the Victorian society’s notions about perception and about the metaphysical. The nineteenth century marks a time when the advances in science made it clear that not seeing something does not mean that it does not exist, and when psychologists made it clear that seeing something does not necessarily mean it does exist. Moreover, the nineteenth century was a time when religious notions that were previously accepted without question started to be doubted. When people lost their faith in the unseen and at the same time became aware that their eyes are not sufficient to see everything and that their mind may play tricks on them, the notion of reality was increasingly problematized, which is made especially clear in the genre of the Gothic.
It could be argued that while the basic tropes of the Gothic remain more or less the same, the way they are used, the reactions of the protagonists as well as the general outlook of the story is problematized by the newly introduced ideas about vision and human mind. It could be said that in many cases there is no longer a clear boundary between the protagonist and the “other” of the story, which can often be interpreted as an aspect of the protagonist himself, a part of his mind that comes to haunt him. Therefore in many stories the main protagonist may not be the innocent victim and the “other” is not necessarily an outside threat but the evil within the character of the protagonist himself. Moreover, the confusion of the protagonists who witness something supernatural reflects the conflict of the dominant Victorian notions of “seeing is believing”[1]on the one hand and the concept of “fundamentally subjective character of human vision”[2]on the other. The social and cultural context is thus reflected not only in the depiction and role of the ghost, but, perhaps most importantly, in the behaviour of the character who encounters it. It is therefore worth considering that the main conflict of the story may no longer be between objectively perceived supernatural evil and the characters, but rather between warring notions about vision and reality in the mind itself, the uncertainty of how to react often resulting in attempts to incorporate the unexplainable and the supernatural into the well-known rational framework of medicine or psychology.

[1]Srdjan Smajic, “The Trouble with Ghost-Seeing: Vision, Ideology and Genre in the Victorian Ghost Story”, ELH 70.4 (Winter, 2003): 1109.
[2]Smajic, 1110.

References

Primary Sources
Cox, Michael and R. A. Gilbert. The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Dalby, Richard. The Virago Book of Victorian Ghost Stories. London: Virago Press Limited, 1988.
Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan. Best Ghost Stories of J.S. Le Fanu. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1964.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson. London: The Camelot Press Ltd., 1928.
Secondary Sources
Bann, Jennifer. “Ghostly Hands and Ghostly Agency: The Changing Figure of the Nineteenth-Century Specter.” Victorian Studies 51.4. Summer 2009: 663-685.
Cavallaro, Dani. Gothic Vision: Three Centuries of Horror, Terror and Fear. London: Continuum International Publishing, 2002.
Harris, Jason Marc. Nineteenth-Century British Supernatural Fiction: Folklore and the Fantastic. Abingdon: Ashgate Publishing Group, 2008.
Punter, David. Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture: New Companion to the Gothic. Summerset, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2012.
Psiropoulos, Brian. Victorian Gothic Materialism: Realizing the Gothic in Nineteenth Century Fiction (Oregon: Graduate School of the University of Oregon, 2013).
Smajic, Srdjan. “The Trouble with Ghost-Seeing: Vision, Ideology, and Genre in the Victorian Ghost Story.” ELH 70.4. Winter, 2003: 1107-1135.
Smith, Andrew. Ghost Story, 1840-1920: A Cultural History. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010.
Smith, Andrew. Victorian Demons: Medicine, Masculinity and the Gothic at the Fin-de-Siècle. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004.
Stern, Rebecca. “Gothic Light: Vision and Visibility in the Victorian Novel.” South Central Review 11.4. Winter 1994: 26-39.
Tomaiulo, Saverio. In Lady Audley’s Shadow: Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Victorian Literary Genres. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010.
Williams, Anne. Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Willis, Martin. “Le Fanu’s “Carmilla”, Ireland, and Diseased Vision” Essays and Studies 2008: Literature and Science (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008): 111- 130.
Wolfreys, Julian. Victorian Hauntings: Spectrality, Gothic, the Uncanny and Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.