I’m back. After a couple of weeks of household projects and family visiting, I’ve returned to my keyboard and to peace and quiet. We had a wonderful visit, but it’s still nice to get back to my quasi-routine.
In that spirit, I thought it would be a wonderful time to talk about isolation in Gothic literature. Because isolation is a two-sided trope. We often speak of it in terms of danger or the protagonist’s inability to connect with others or find help in his or her situation. But of course there’s another aspect to isolation – the ability to take a deeper look at the things that can go unnoticed when we’re surrounded by distractions.
Gothic writing often uses any or all of these.
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The first example is Dracula by Bram Stoker. In the book, Jonathan Harker, an attorney, travels to Transylvania to aid Count Dracula in his acquisition of property in England and, while there, discovers that Dracula and the three women he keeps in his castle are all vampires.
If you’ve read the novel, it may surprise you that I chose that book as an example of isolation. After all, once Jonathan returns home to his beloved Mina and his friends, they band together to battle Dracula’s malevolent purposes. But if you look at the theme, Jonathan’s time alone in Dracula’s castle carries special weight.
Some (including myself) have argued that Stoker’s main purpose in writing this tale was to highlight the West’s fear of the flood of Eastern people who were migrating to England. I see this in the requirement Stoker established that vampires cannot rest apart from their native soil. In order for Dracula to move to England, he has to bring coffins full of soil from Transylvania. It’s easy to see that this “native soil” would be the Eastern culture that would potentially alter England.
To heighten this further, once he arrives in England, the vampire, Dracula, begins to feed off of the blood of the English people. Which could easily represent the danger to and destruction of the West.
Third, to make matters worse, Dracula’s victims of choice are the two females in the novel – the ones whom the English men are most concerned about protecting. In the end, it’s only a band of English men, warring against this Eastern force, that defeats it. And it’s at great cost. They lose the life of one of their one. It’s possible that these women represent England, a nation that can only be preserved unaltered if valiant men rise up and sacrifice themselves to save her.
In order for Jonathan to feel and exemplify this fear, he has to spend the first part of the book alone. Trapped and isolated in Count Dracula’s castle, the reader sees and feels the power of this Eastern force and the reason for the Englishman’s fear. He’s one man surrounded by forces that he cannot stop, against which he has no defenses. Sure, once he’s home with his band of noble allies, they can wage a battle against this foe. But first the readers have to see what they’re up against. Stoker exaggerates this well through the use of isolation.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre is another great example of the use of isolation in Gothic writing. Though she is rarely alone physically, she spends the majority of the book emotionally isolated from the other characters. That’s important to note: isolation doesn’t have to be a physical separation from other characters.
As a child, Jane is at odds with her aunt and cousins who dislike her and resent her presence in their home. When her aunt ships her off to Lowood Hall, Jane finds a temporary friendship with another girl, Helen Burns, and with one of the teachers, Miss Temple. However, overall, the harsh and inhumane conditions at the boarding school leave her largely isolated.
When she takes a position as a governess at Thornfield Hall, she finds herself in close proximity with the strangely captivating Mr. Rochester. He and Jane develop something of a friendship, but Brontë still crafts their encounters in such a way that readers understand that Rochester’s life and Jane’s are worlds apart. This is made abundantly clear when Blanche Ingram and company visit. Though Jane is invited to sit in the drawing room while they play music, sing and visit with one another, she is relegated to the periphery – an observer, not a participant in their circle.
Then comes the heartbreaking plot twist when Jane learns something that she cannot in good conscience disregard. She flees and is, for the first time in the book, truly isolated – emotionally and physically. Shortly afterwards she finds a family, but this time of total isolation is critical.
At that point in the book, Jane has found everything that she finally hoped to have in life: a place and a people where she is at home, where she belongs. But it would cost her everything she stands for and in which she believes. In other words, she would have to sacrifice herself and the things that matter most to her in order to have it.
She rejects it and chooses to honor her values, but of course it’s a painful decision imbued with a sense of great loss. Thus, the heightened isolation that follows this decision parallels her spiritual and psychological state. She believes that she lost every hope that she had. After this brief and intense period, she emerges stronger and better. It’s as if a weaker form of Jane died in order to give birth to a new woman of strength and virtue. And with that, she finally finds the belonging that she desperately wanted.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a strange novel in many ways, but with a thought-provoking message. Because the story is told through a series of letters, the reader has the sense that Dr. Jekyll lives in a perpetual state of isolation. We know that that can’t be the case and yet it’s all that Stevenson gives us. I believe that that is intentional.
This is an intensely spiritual book. In it Dr. Jekyll is warring within himself. Part of him longs to indulge his darkest longings. The other part wants to retain his moral, upstanding nature. For a time he believes that he can have both, that he can be Mr. Hyde (his dark self) by night and still return to his virtuous self as Dr. Jekyll by day. Of course, one of the two prevails in the end, proving out Stevenson’s theory that it’s impossible for a person to pursue both good and evil. I’ll let you guess which one wins.
The point though is that Dr. Jekyll’s isolation is actually a positive and necessary thing. There’s no one who can help a person wade through such an examination. It’s a very personal, introspective journey. The fact that Stevenson portrayed the character in such an isolated state mirrors and enables what’s going on within him. No spiritual deep-dive is a group exercise.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
If you’ve followed my writing for long, you know that this one is my favorite Gothic works of all time. Sadly, it’s only a novella, but it’s chalk full of depth. And isolation is absolutely essential – central even – to the plot and the underlying meaning of this book.
In the story, sisters Merricat and Constance Blackwood live a secluded life with their dying Uncle Julian. Unlike in some Gothic stories, the Blackwood sisters have chosen isolation. This is consistent with the theme which explores the idea that the collective, the village, is and always will be at odds with the individual (those who aren’t part of the collective).
As the story progresses, Merricat takes increasingly desperate measures to seal up their castle against any outside forces. At face value she is a fantastically odd character, but it’s really Merricat who understands the theme and is willing to do whatever it takes to protect herself and her sister from outsiders.
If you agree with Jackson’s theme, you would view isolation as a positive and logical choice for any individual, and would pursue it as she did.
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
My last example may seem to be another surprising choice. After all, Louis de Pointe du Lac is also rarely physically alone. He is converted to a vampire by Lestat early in the book and is with him, in a love-hate relationship for much of the story.
But Rice uses Louis to explore a spiritual theme of redemption. As he navigates his new nature as a being that must kill in order to survive, Louis questions the state of his soul: whether he belongs to God (if He exists, about which Louis is uncertain) or Satan; and whether he is beyond redemption. Thus, it makes sense that Louis feels very emotionally isolated throughout the book.
Lestat is unable to answer his questions and doesn’t care to do so. Instead he treats Louis disdainfully as one who bothers with irrelevant minutiae. In a moment of weakness, Louis brings home a young girl, Claudia, whose mother has died. The two transform her into a vampire and she acts as a destructive force in their lives, albeit one with whom readers sympathize. Claudia is Louis’s attempt to find a counterbalance to his murderous tendencies. He wants to love her. And she loves him in return…for a time.
In the end though, it is Claudia’s effect that drives a wedge between the two of them and sets them at odds in irreparable ways. Ultimately, Louis is still emotionally, and in the end, physically, isolated from all others.
As with We Have Always Lived in the Castle, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, this isolation is crucial to the spiritual and psychological theme that Rice is pursuing. Louis’s journey is an inward one, one that only he can take.
Conclusion
Of course, there are ways in which the use of isolation in each of these cases makes the protagonist’s case more desperate. Jane Eyre has no help in her impoverished state, no way out of the abuse of her relatives or the Lowood School. Louis is pitted against what he perceives as a monster in Lestat and, given his unique, vampiric nature, he has no one to turn to. The same could be said for the Blackwood sisters who are victims of the mean-spirited villagers, Dr. Jekyll who, cannot escape himself, or Jonathan Harker who, for a time, is one solitary man against a castle of unassailable foes.
But simultaneously, the isolation in these books plays the introspective roles that we just discussed. And as with any Gothic trope, this one exists to make a very irrational theme clearer.
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