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Last summer, I attended a writing conference at the home of an author with over 30 books published, most of them through traditional publishing houses. The conference was on crafting deeper characters, which was helpful in itself. However, something else came out of it that I didn’t expect.

At one point in the session we were told to go home that night and do some homework using our current manuscript. The next day, several of us chose (or were volunteered in my case) to sit up front with the author and discuss our novel. She asked us questions which we would answer. Then which she would ask a deeper question which we would answer…etc.

The goal of the storyteller is to take the audience through an emotional and psychological journey that reveals a poignant truth about the human experience.

p. 35

It’s that little word, “truth” that is so often neglected. The author – of films or literature – is supposed to present truth as they understand it to the best of their ability. Yes, we do this while entertaining our audience, but every story should act as a fable or parable. It teaches a lesson to its readers.

…the true fabulist [story teller], therefore, discharges a most important function. He is neither a narrator, nor an allegorist. He is a great teacher, a corrector of morals, a censor of vice, and a commender of virtue.

George Fyler Townsend, as quoted by Williams p. 23

Of course, we strive to do this without preaching at our readers. And there will always be those who staunchly advocate for storytelling without any underlying moral lesson. However, if you’ve followed my blog for a while, you know that I am a firm subscriber of the type of writing that Williams is referring to here.

There’s nothing like a story that touches us at that deep soul level because it says something more about who we are as humans, about the spiritual world around us, or about the meaning of various aspects of our lives. Especially those that are harder to understand or accept. That’s the power of a moral premise.

As a quick note: what I’m referring to here as a moral premise is really a theme. By that I mean that the main character (and the other secondary characters as well!) should be learning something from start to finish. In the case of a positive character arc, the character begins by practicing the opposite of the moral lesson…and reaps the negative outcomes that come with those choices. Over time, he or she learns the story’s lesson and chooses progressively positive moral values and sees the beneficial outcomes that accompany those better choices.

This is more than simply trying to achieve a physical goal (to win over a love interest or take the ring to Mordor). We’re talking about the underlying reason for the story. What is the character learning while seeking to achieve that physical goal? On one level, the character is trying to achieve the physical goal through means that aren’t successful at first, but on a much deeper level, the character is seeking something psychological or spiritual and is also doing this unsuccessfully.

Williams presents quite a few movies or television shows and demonstrates each one’s underlying moral premise. As he does so, he shows how that premise drives the action, which is absolutely essential. Action should always follow the underlying psychological/emotional/spiritual journey of the characters.

If the physical goals of the various characters do not refer implicitly to the Moral Premise then you are writing two different [books]. Stop. Fix it. A successful [book] is about only one thing.

p. 136

The Book’s Layout

The Moral Premise is essentially laid out in the following way:

Beginning

The early portion of the book deals with the whys behind the use of a moral premise: what is it and why we should always have an underlying moral premise. If you’re already a believer, you may wish to skim over this section. I read it thoroughly and found it to be very affirming. I often find myself on the other side of storytelling. Whereas in literary fiction, the characters and the premise/theme are the central purpose of the story, in genre/ commercial fiction, this is often not the case. There are many commercial works of fiction that have only a very loose theme.

As Williams points out though, this shouldn’t be the case. And it undermines the longevity of these stories. They don’t really endure because a surface plot alone – even with the best characters we can possibly craft – isn’t enough to impact people in a way that they remember in the long run.

Middle

The middle of the book addresses how to structure the underlying premise or values of the book. This is the theme that we want to address. My current manuscript has an underlying premise that looks like this:

My book actually has a unique structure in that the main character has a negative character arc and the antagonist has a positive arc. So whereas the MC in most novels will pursue the physical goal and the underlying psychological goal from the negative side of the moral premise during the first half of the book and then will begin to learn the lesson and move towards a more life-affirming pursuit during the latter half, my book is the opposite. At least for the MC. My antagonist moves in a more traditional way because mine is a cautionary tale. The MC is the example of the destruction that ensues when one becomes more and more prideful…and in conjunction, destructive.

Notice also that the moral premise is a universal truth. It’s something that virtually everyone will accept as true. They may not practice it as well as they should in their own lives. (None of us do or the book would be unnecessary.) However, we can look at the premise at face value and agree with it.

The End

The last third (plus or minus) of the book is all application. And it is great. Williams walks the reader through the steps needed to get from a high-level idea of the virtue and vice that we’re seeking to explore, to the dramatic beats (plot points), and even the overarching elements that should drive every scene.

I found it very useful for refining my current story planning.

If you are used to story planning and have read a lot of writing craft books, this book will present many things that you already know. But the way that it focuses on the underlying moral premise was particularly useful for me. I can picture many writers – even veterans in the industry – benefiting from this book.

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In the realm of contemporary Gothic literature, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón comes as a surprise. It isn’t horrifying or even all that terrifying. It doesn’t have a forlorn English setting or a languid Southern Gothic feel. It doesn’t even have that dark of an ambiance, although it certainly has elements of darkness. And yet Zafón manages to create a very unique and well-written Gothic novel.

He chooses a book, reads it, and finds that it touches him deeply. So much so that he longs to find every other book that the author, Julián Carax has written. The only problem is that all of Carax’s novels have been pulled off of the shelves by some unknown person and burned. And Carax is missing.

From that point on, Daniel embarks on a journey to discover Carax’s history and the reason for his missing novels. It isn’t long though before a shadowy figure begins to lurk outside his window and to follow his footsteps through the streets of Barcelona, someone who would prevent Daniel from uncovering the truth.

Theme

This book is part coming-of-age novel, part mystery. But it deals with so much more, all of which is encapsulated in the title, The Shadow of the Wind. Of course, the novel dwells on the beauty of books and their importance in the lives of those they touch. But simultaneously, it also presents the ephemeral role that any author’s work holds in the sands of time. No matter how much his work touches those who read it, it’s bound to be forgotten, lost like the shadow of the wind, an intangible substance that can’t be seen or known.

And yet there’s still a beauty to that moment. Though the books might be forgotten, like those of Carax, the extent to which they impact those who read them and the relationships that are forged because of them – between fathers and sons or between two young lovers – are the lasting legacy that the author leaves.

In addition, the book deals heavily with relationships. Daniel has a beautiful but complex relationship with his father; a charming, comedic friendship with Fermín Romero de Torres, a beggar with a past; a friendship/ childhood crush on the beautiful blind girl, Clara; and a passionate, intimate love for Bea Aguilar, the sister of his closest friend. Each of these relationships is multi-faceted, full of joy and pain, sometimes even hatred.

These relationships, though they may pass away and seem to be gone forever, like Daniel’s mother and his memory of her face, still leave an indelible mark on the lives of those who loved them. Like the mark of an author, or a given book, Zafón explores the extent to which those people whom we know and love – though their time in our life may be nothing but the shadow of the wind – shape us into the person we become.

This is a Gothic theme – an exploration of an irrational, spiritual theme – albeit handled so subtly and deftly that the reader absorbs it without even noticing its presence…much like the shadow of the wind.

Style

Because of the heavy emphasis given to the characters and their relationships with one another, and due to the lyrical, almost poetic way in which Zafón writes, the book reads like literary fiction. Don’t expect the fast pace of Mexican Gothic, with its plot twists and shocking revelations. And don’t look for the classic English-feeling contemporaries like The Thirteenth Tale or The Little Stranger.

If anything, the story is actually extremely poignant. As we follow Daniel’s coming-of-age, we watch the story of a young boy who’s learning to love, to relate to his father as a man rather than a child, and to seek out the answers to the mysteries that surround his life. After all, his search for Carax’s history and his lost novels is really just a search for his memory of his mother. Of course, the answer to both is right before his eyes, but it’s an answer he isn’t prepared to receive until the end of the story.

Tropes

In true Gothic fashion, Zafón uses several tropes to support his theme.

Old Estate

The first is, surprise, surprise, an old, decaying home: the Aldaya mansion. However, his use of the home is unique to the genre. No one currently lives there. It’s boarded up, discarded by the family who have fled Barcelona and the memories that reside there. The home, like the theme itself, represents the fleeting memory of the one person, Penélope Aldaya, whom Julián Carax truly loved, a love that is now nothing but shadows.

Weather

The second is weather. In a couple of recent posts, I wrote about the use of both fog and dark & stormy weather to elucidate a Gothic theme. Weather is powerful. And Zafón uses the weather in The Shadow of the Wind to his advantage. He uses both heavy rain and wind, often separately, but also sometimes together.

In my post on dark and stormy weather, I mentioned Zafón’s use of the weather at the midpoint when Daniel’s and Bea’s relationship takes a very significant turn. At that point he writes,

The storm didn’t wait until nightfall to show its teeth. The first flashes of lightning caught me by surprise shortly after taking a bus on Line 22. (p. 228)

Shortly after these two lines, Daniel meets his young love, Bea in the old abandoned Aldaya house. There he loses his virginity and, though he may have had some adolescent hopes beforehand, it certainly caught him by surprise. Much like the lightning. The lightning is a wonderful parallel to his upcoming experience. Shocking, eye-opening, electric.

But lightning is transitory, there one moment and gone the next. It may scorch upon impact, leaving a permanent burn, but it is otherwise nothing but a memory. Still, its searing heat is memorable. As is Daniel’s experience with Bea. It is something that can never truly be repeated: a first. But it still leaves its mark. Like an artist’s impact or a lost relationship, it changes us but without establishing any permanence in our lives.

The Figure in the Shadows

Earlier I alluded to the shadowy figure who follows Daniel, haunting his journey of discovery. At some point he encounters the figure and finds him to be a terribly scarred man. There’s something of a Gothic monster in this character. In a way he’s an antagonist in that he represents the opposite of all that Daniel seeks to gain.

Whereas Daniel searches to remember his mother, to uncover Carax’s past, and to hold fast to the mark that this unforgettable author left on the world, the shadowy figure would erase all of these. He seeks to burn the past so that that the thin shreds that still remain are lost with all of those things that he can never recover.

He represents the idea that our history is nothing but a passing effect – a true shadow of the wind – that alters us in no way. But he is, of course, wrong. Everything we encounter, every relationship that we hold, though it would be in only the fleeting way or for the briefest span of time, shapes us. Daniel proves that for himself, standing opposed to this figure that lurks in the darkness.

Conclusion

The Shadow of the Wind is a brilliant look at those things that seem lost to us but are not. Zafón understands the heart of Gothic writing and utilizes several Gothic tropes to explore a very Gothic theme in a unique approach to the genre.

I was thoroughly impressed.

If you were to ask one hundred people what should be in a Gothic novel…assuming they know anything about Gothic literature…I would be willing to bet that family secrets would be up there in the top five choices. We all love family secrets. In literature. Not in real life.

Why?

Because they play several different roles in literature, all of which keep readers more interested and more satisfied in the novel. Since that’s the case, let’s talk about some of the ways this trope works to our advantage and how to use it in our writing.

Let’s look at six examples of this. We’ll use the same examples for each way in which family secrets contribute to our writing. That way you can see how these build upon one another.

Pacing

One of the most obvious roles that family secrets play relates to the pacing of the story. As the protagonist seeks for understanding, she usually comes up against secrets in the story that keep the tension high, keep the readers guessing and help to unpack the story at a pleasurable pace.

1. Jane Eyre – on the day of her wedding, Jane discovers Rochester’s secret – one that will change all of her plans. At this point, Jane has come from a low point – as an unwanted and abused relative who’s treated worse than a servant – to a very high point – as the soon-to-be wife of a very wealthy man – only to find herself again unsure of where she belongs. Had she known his secret earlier, she might not have been open to their unfolding relationship. The readers wouldn’t have gotten to know Jane and Rochester and the potential for their future without any encumbrances.
2. Mexican Gothic – Noemí travels to the country house of her brother-in-law to investigate her sister’s claims that she’s being abused and imprisoned. Over time, she discovers her in-laws’ true intentions and these give meaning to everything that has happened to date. But as she uncovers the truth, we learn more about the history of the family and about the depths to which they’ll stoop to accomplish their ends.
3. Flowers in the Attic – four children are held captive in the attic of their grandparents’ home. Eventually the children uncover what’s really happening downstairs and their understanding of their captivity takes an entirely different turn. By then readers are drawn into the story so tightly that the truth is as shocking for them as it is for the children.
4. Rebecca – when the new Mrs. de Winter comes to Manderley as Maxim’s bride, she doesn’t even understand that her knowledge of his first wife Rebecca – or even Maxim himself – may be entirely false. Though she clings to her own lies, the truth slowly breaks through her misconceptions until it forces its way to her attention after the fate-filled masquerade party. All the while, the world of Manderley, with its stormy seascape and treacherous cliffs and legacy of elegance and turbulent secrets unfolds around her, capturing the readers’ sense of wonder.
5. The Gates of Evangeline – Charlie Cates travels to Louisiana to research the truth behind the thirty-year-old cold case of the wealthy old southern Deveau family’s missing child, Gabriel. Her time there, following leads that end up taking her in an entirely different direction, give her the time to finally face all that she has suffered in the loss of her own child. By the time she uncovers the truth about Gabriel, all of her preconceptions about the child himself and the family’s role in his abduction changes. As does her perception of her own loss.
6. We Have Always Lived in the Castle – in Jackson’s novella, it isn’t the protagonist, Merricat, who is seeking to uncover the family secret, but the reader. As the secret unwinds throughout the story, readers are drawn in closer to the two sisters, Constance and Merricat, as if we have been invited into their private castle. By the end of the story, we are fiercely defensive of their private world and are poised to understand why the castle had to be defended with any means, however violent they might seem.

Notice that each of these is slightly different, but that all relate to the pacing. Sometimes the family secret gives the author time to draw the readers in enough to truly understand and care about the characters. Other times it sets up the expected so strongly that it gives a plot twist much greater weight. At times writers use these to prepare us from what is to come, as in Jane Eyre, in which Charlotte Brontë wanted readers to see what Jane and Rochester could be…and then to truly understand all that they risk losing. And all of them enhance the world of the story, giving us time to savor the characters’ world while still holding our attention until the end.

They Reveal the Characters

But family secrets do more than that. They also show us the characters’ true selves in stark light.

1. Jane Eyre – when Jane is faced with Rochester’s secret, she has to choose between what she wants most and doing the right thing. And it’s a hard choice, one that the reader feels as visceral anguish. But when she makes her choice, we learn more about who Jane really is and the degree to which she can love selflessly in the end.
2. Mexican Gothic – what Noemí discovers changes her for the better. Whereas, at the beginning of the book, she is a careless socialite, by the end she has a great respect for her national heritage and the evil of those who believe that they are better than other human beings.
3. Flowers in the Attic – the plot twist in this book is earth shattering. At least it was for me when I read it as a youth. Throughout the entire book, the children and the readers believe that they know who the other characters really are…only to have the rug swept out from under them. In the end, the children must change their beliefs about who will save them and how they can be free from the prison they’re in.
4. Rebecca – when the truth comes to light, though other characters’ true natures come into light, it’s really the new Mrs. de Winter who sees herself anew. The truth shows her the extent to which she has built a world of lies in her own mind and has overlooked every sign that might have pointed her to the reality lying right before her.
5. The Gates of Evangeline – the reality of little Gabriel’s abduction shows Charlie her own grief and her inability to move on after the loss of her own child. She sees motherhood in a new light and comes to a new understanding of what a mother will do for the child she loves. The investigation gives her the ability to heal.
6. We Have Always Lived in the Castle – as usual, Jackson’s ability to work with any Gothic (or literary) element is slightly different – and much better in my opinion – than that of any other author. Thus, it’s not surprising that her use of a family secret shows us several things. It rounds out the girls’ characters, making them so full and rich that we see the story anew. But it also shows Uncle Julian’s love in a way that readers don’t expect: that he would suppress the truth out of an inability to face what might change his loyalty to those he loves.

Can you see how these things are building upon one another?

To Enhance the Theme

Lastly, though the pacing, with all of its corresponding tension and unputdownableness (that must be a real word), and the deep character perspective are critical, what family secrets really do is set up the theme so that readers are ready to receive it and so that they retain it.

1. Jane Eyre – Jane’s choices show her to be a young woman who refuses to sacrifice what she believes even when it means great personal gain. In the end, her response to Rochester’s secret places her in a position to be able to love him most sacrificially at whatever cost to herself.
2. Mexican Gothic – the family secret in this book is directly related to the theme. Moreno-Garcia tells a chilling tale of the dark lengths to which one family’s obsession with eugenics and the purity of their own line will drive them. No outsider is beyond their attempts to use, control and destroy them.
3. Flowers in the Attic – this book deals very strongly with the theme of greed and how destructive that sin is on everyone else. The family secret – the children in the attic and the reason they are there – is a symbol of all that others, particularly their mother, will sacrifice to gain money.
4. Rebecca – in the wake of her discovery of Maxim’s secret, the new Mrs. de Winter learns the theme: that her comparison to Rebecca and the false world that she built around her own insecurity were her prison.
5. The Gates of Evangeline – in this story, as I said before, Charlie learns how to heal from her past. However, what really stands out in the book is the pervasive ability that her own trauma gives her to be a help to others. At the beginning of the book, she can’t see that her prophetic dreams of children needing help, an offshoot of her loss, will be the very thing to give her life meaning again. We also see one of the dominant themes in Southern Gothic writing: the disparity between the idyllic-seeming Old South and the harsh reality.
6. We Have Always Lived in the Castle – and last, but not least, Jackson’s novella, with its languid pacing and constant stream of subtext, unravels a story about two individuals – Constance and Merricat – and the lengths that they must take to protect themselves from the community at large. In their story we see the danger that the “village” can be to an individual who stands apart from the collective whole.

Conclusion

As you can see, all of these things are enabled and strengthened through the use of a family secret. From pacing to character depth to thematic truth, the family secret. That’s a lot for one trope to accomplish!

It’s no wonder that this is such a frequently-employed Gothic trope. Let me know if you’ve seen other great uses of this element, or if you’re planning on using it in your writing!

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With one bound she was at the bookcase reaching for the heaviest book she could find to halt her attacker, a thesaurus of indeterminate, inconclusive, or unstipulated weight, ponderosity, or heftiness, with which she intended to pummel, lapidate or belabor her assailant’s skull, cranium or brainpan.

Stu Duval, Auckland, New Zealand (from the 2021 Bulwer Lytton Purple Prose submissions)

If you’ve ever heard of the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest, otherwise known as the “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night Contest,” you know that dark and stormy weather has gotten something of a bad rap, sometimes for good reason. Historically, authors often opened their stories with some variation of “It was a dark and stormy night,” so much so that it has become something of a joke and the contest is a perfect example of that.

But that’s not to say that dark and stormy weather doesn’t still have a very important role to play in our writing. Weather is a wonderful way to say more about what is going on in our stories, in our themes and within our characters.

A few weeks ago, we talked about using fog to enhance a theme and how fog often mirrors the inner confusion of the character(s), especially at pivotal points when the author wants to point to a prior confusion that will soon dissipate in the light of truth.

Dark and stormy weather may seem similar however, it’s often used in different ways. Thus, we’re going to talk about dark and stormy weather separately.

There are a number of different ways that stormy weather has been (and can be) used in writing. Here are a few examples.

To Mirror a Stormy Plot

This one is the most straightforward. As tensions escalate in a plot, writers will often use the symbols of an oncoming storm – brooding clouds, the wind picking up ahead of a storm, darkness falling over the land – to foreshadow the brewing trouble in the story.

The same can be said of other dark and stormy elements, such as lightning. Carlos Ruiz Zafón did just this at different points in his novel, The Shadow of the Wind. For example, right around the midpoint, when Daniel and Bea’s relationship takes a very significant turn, he writes,

The storm didn’t wait until nightfall to show its teeth. The first flashes of lightning caught me by surprise shortly after taking a bus on Line 22. (p. 228)

Of course, this is no accident. Shortly after these two lines, Daniel, a young boy, meets his young love, Bea in an old abandoned house. There he loses his virginity and, though he may have had some adolescent hopes beforehand, it certainly caught him by surprise. Much like the lightning.

The lightning is a wonderful parallel to his upcoming experience. Shocking, eye-opening, electric.

To Reflect the Character’s Emotions or Character

If you like historical Gothic novels, I recommend Laura Purcell’s book, The House of Whispers. In a house on the Cornwall coast, an elderly woman sits surrounded by her extensive collection of bone china and the memories of her childhood as her father’s medical assistant. Together, they gave their lives to try to find a cure for consumption, but never succeeded.

A young girl, Hester Why who’s running from her own past, comes to the remote house to care for the elderly woman. But the more she learns about the history of the family, the more she comes to understand the truth about her own nature – a woman who needs to be needed, to the extent that she’ll destroy anyone who slights her love.

It fits that she describes the setting by the sea in such volatile and violent terms:

My stomach churns along with the waters below. One of the few consolations I had cherished before this night was that I should behold the ocean at last. I had imagined it blue, serene. What seethes beneath me is dark, frighteningly powerful: a cauldron of demons. (p. 13)

This suits Hester (or Esther, her true name) perfectly because what seethes beneath (or within) her is a dark and vindictive nature. She tries to bury her awareness of her capacity for evil in her love for gin, but eventually nothing will drown out her awareness of her true self. In the end, she makes the only truly loving, selfless choice she has remaining.

To Elucidate the Theme

Recently, we discussed Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God, but what we didn’t discuss is the weather. There’s one point in the book at which McCarthy uses weather in really big way. Shortly before the climax, the Sheriff, Fate Turner, comes out of the courthouse and looks out over the town which is entirely flooded.

In a town that almost never floods, such an event stands out as a matter of Biblical proportions. Which is the point. As the sheriff and his deputy row down the street, an old-timer catches a ride with them. Along their watery route, he tells them:

Old woman told me today, said: It’s a judgment. Wages of sin and all that. I told her everbody (sic) in Sevier County would have to be rotten to the core to warrant this. She may think they are, I don’t know…” p. 164

The flood demonstrates the theme, which is stated here, very clearly. In the main character, Lester Ballard, we see an example of each child of God – a creature capable of immeasurable evil. Thus, the flood, the book’s most memorable reference to the weather, points to the greatest act of judgement against man in all of history: the Great Flood in which God destroyed most of humanity because of their evil natures.

Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Genesis 6:5 (NKJV)

The flood in McCarthy’s novel points to the very thing he is saying to readers: that humans are “rotten to the core” and deserve the same destruction.

To Point to the Supernatural

Last but not least, who can forget the lightning in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In her novel, the plot depends on lightning as the means by which Dr. Frankenstein reanimates dead tissue. But it isn’t simply a plot contrivance.

Consider the theme that she’s exploring: the terrible destruction that can occur when man plays God. The lightning then functions as an additional means by which she reminds readers of what is happening in Dr. Frankenstein’s experiments. Every time he uses lightning to try to bring the dead back to life, he is in effect attempting to be God. That element of nature is simply a symbol of the theme.

How You Can Use Dark & Stormy Weather

When I’m deciding what to use weather-wise, I begin by considering first, the theme of my book; second, the purpose of the specific scene I’m working on; and third, the state of the characters at different points in the book.

If my character’s psychological and spiritual state are dark, the weather will also be at those times when I’m pointing to such things more overtly. If he or she is about to commit an act of great violence, I bring in the storm clouds, or lightning, something that foreshadows what is coming. If the theme is one of self-destruction or vengeance, pull out all of the stops, whatever that means for your setting.

The trick is to keep from being too cliché. There’s no magic solution to that other than to seek for deep meaning (at the thematic level) and to marry the weather to that. And to be as original as possible. McCarthy’s use of a flood was both of these.

But I would also recommend reading Shirley Jackson. And it’s not because she uses much in the way of weather in her novels. Just the opposite. She understands Gothic writing so well that she manages to infuse her books with profundity, a constant stream of subtext, and a dark mood from start to finish…without any dark and stormy weather.

What I strive for in my writing is to be able to do likewise so that when I add in weather that accomplishes the types of purposes we described above, it avoids being gimmicky. The last thing I want is for my Gothic book to only read as Gothic because I’ve slapped in some dark and stormy weather.

But I still want to use weather when it fits. Because dark and stormy weather can mirror our stormy plots, make our characters’ inner darkness visible, bring our themes to life and/or point to the supernatural. That’s a lot for one trope to accomplish!

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If you caught last week’s blog – a book review of Child of God by Cormac McCarthy – you may have noticed that the one element I didn’t touch on was McCarthy’s use of Gothic tropes. I explained why his themes are Gothic, but left his tropes unmentioned.

That was intentional.

In the Southern Gothic genre, old decaying plantations and ghosts and other traditionally Gothic tropes may be employed, but not always. And except for isolation, traditional Gothic tropes weren’t used in the case of Child of God. Rather, the one trope that McCarthy uses most of all is the grotesque. This is a largely Southern Gothic trope and one that may seem confusing to readers of traditional English Gothic works.

This week, I’d like to take a look at what the grotesque really means and some ways in which it has been used.

The Grotesque – Origin

I owe The Gothic Library thanks for shedding light on the origins of this word. It turns out that the word grotesque stems from the Italian word for grotto (cave). When in the sixteenth century, underground rooms, covered with artwork, were uncovered, the public began to refer to this style of art as grotesque – referring to its source.

The art itself included a number of elements, including fanciful human and animal forms. As time progressed, the word grotesque shifted and was used to reflect only these strangely formed humans and animals.

Gothic architecture used some of these – such as gargoyles and other fanciful creatures – to adorn its cathedrals. Gothic literature then borrowed this understanding of the grotesque to refer to “… the monstrous, the malformed, the frightening, and the outright strange.”¹

Uses of the Grotesque

As I said before, the grotesque is most often employed in the Southern Gothic genre. But not exclusively. The monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is certainly grotesque, as is the Gothic use of creatures such as vampires and werewolves. All of these feature some human-like entity that is monstrous, malformed, frightening, or strange.

Note that this is also a means of blending reality with unreality. In that sense, it is similar to the uncanny which we’ll discuss in a future post. However, for now, note that the uncanny refers to incidents in which the expected acts in very unexpected ways. So, for instance, if a mirror were to suddenly speak or swallow those who gaze into it for too long, that would be uncanny. If static objects were to suddenly gain the capacity for movement, that would be uncanny. The uncanny blends what we know with what is unexpected creating an eerie sense of unease in the reader (for very intentional purposes which we’ll cover in the future.) For now, my purpose in mentioning the uncanny is simply to point out that the grotesque plays a similar role in distorting our perception of reality.

In Southern Gothic writing, the grotesque is sometimes a very specific physical malformity and sometimes a symbolic deformity. For example, in McCarthy’s Child of God, he describes Lester Ballard as “small, unclean and unshaven.” (p 4) As the book progresses, he gives Lester an almost animal-like nature. He cannot resist his physical and sexual urges. He speaks without a filter or any adherence to social niceties. He’s crass, vulgar, brutal. In this way, McCarthy portrays Lester as grotesque partly physically, as an unkempt man, but primarily as a social and psychological abnormality.

In Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find, she portrays the grandmother in ways that we would refer to as grotesque, but which are neither physical nor interpersonal (although she is certainly abrasive). Rather, it’s the grandmother’s outdated way of dress, her “big black valise that looked like the head of a hippopotamus” (p 353), and her constant attempts in general to cling to an Old South that is long dead that makes her grotesque.

The Grotesque Married to Theme

Of course, as in all Gothic writing, the tropes are used to make Gothic themes clear to the reader. The grotesque is no exception.

In Child of God, McCarthy uses Lester as an exaggerated character to point out his theme: that all people (children of God) have a dark and evil nature. He uses many characters to say as much, but I particularly enjoyed the deputy’s conversation with an old-timer in Sevier County:

You think people was meaner then than they are now? The deputy said.

The old man was looking out at the flooded town. No, he said. I don’t. I think people are the same from the day God first made one. (p 168)

Likewise in O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find. One of the dominant themes used in Southern Gothic writing is a focus on the idyllic South versus the reality. Here, O’Connor shows the ugly nature of the grandmother with her Old Southern ways as a means of pointing to the ugliness – racism being one of the dominant examples – that lies under much of the history of the South. The grotesque serves as a symbol of that history.

How to Use the Grotesque

If you are a writer, how do you go about using the grotesque in your writing? Especially if you’re not writing in the Southern Gothic tradition?

Remember that the grotesque is always employed to point to a larger truth – some ugliness whether it is in a specific region or in humanity as a whole. To work with the grotesque, you will need a theme that speaks to something along those lines.

For example, let’s say that you want to work with vampires or werewolves, which are generally more modern applications of the grotesque. You could use a werewolf to represent the inner rage and capacity for violence that all (or some specific group of) people have. You could use a vampire to represent the human tendency to use other people as nothing but tools to serve ourselves. Notice that, in either of these examples, both of these monstrous forms of humanity are used to represent an inner truth. The tropes make the themes more tangible to the reader.

Conclusion

We could spend a lifetime picking apart the works of other Southern writers such as Faulkner, Welty, Capote and McCullers and analyzing the use of the grotesque. It is a brilliantly employed symbol of the wide division between perceived truth and reality. That what on the surface appears to be a picturesque ideal may in fact hide an ugly character.

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¹ Gothic Vocab: The Grotesque. The Gothic Library. https://www.thegothiclibrary.com/gothic-vocab-the-grotesque/. Accessed January 2022

Summary

The story follows the tragic descent of Lester Ballard, a man who lives in the mountains of eastern Tennessee in the middle of the twentieth century. Lester is falsely accused of rape early in the story and many commentators point to that as the catalyst for all that follows. However, it’s actually earlier in the tale, on page one in fact, when Lester’s demise is sealed.

The first scene in the story depicts an auction at which Lester loses his home and land, which are sold to another man. This is a striking foreshadowing of what McCarthy intends to do throughout the remainder of the book in which he documents Lester’s progressive alienation from and hostility towards society.

From that point on, Lester stands on the outside looking in – spying on people at first, attempting to maintain contact with some of them and then, ultimately, resorting to murder and necrophilia.

Theme

The theme is, of course, in the title, Child of God. And his point could not be any more jarring as we watch Lester, a despicable and disgusting man prone to violence, voyeurism, rape and murder descend to an irredeemable point. McCarthy tells us that Lester is “a child of God much like yourself perhaps.”

The two most prominent applications of these in the book are first, that we are all capable of the evils that Lester, a fellow child of God, commits; and second, that Lester’s isolation from society cuts him off from his own humanity, leaving to an unavoidable, monstrous fate. Both of these are Gothic themes – those that are irrational, steeped in the spiritual and psychological state of the protagonist.

It may seem that McCarthy is placing part of the blame on society for not trying harder to retain one of its members, but I don’t believe that this is the case. Rather, while he portrays the lesser monstrosity of most of the characters, he makes it abundantly clear that Lester’s alienation and evil inclinations are his own doing.

I particularly enjoy the words of Sheriff Fate Turner – a fitting name – when he tells Lester, “You are either going to have to find some other way to live or some other place in the world to do it in.”

Style

I don’t always comment on the author’s writing style in a book review, but when it comes to McCarthy, his style is both unique and effective in conveying his intent. Thus, it deserves mention.

As I said before, he eschews punctuation such as quotation marks. I doubt that this is simply a matter of preference. Because there are no breaks that delineate the action from the commentary, this has the effect of immersing the reader very deeply into the story.

It also fits the voice as well. McCarthy alternates between following Lester on his journey and watching seemingly disparate scenes (which aren’t) between other individuals who are discussing their experiences with Lester. He writes all of these in mountain Tennessee slang.

When you put these together – the lack of punctuation and the regional authenticity – readers come away with a sense that they’ve been transported to the place and time and are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the boys in the general store discussing Lester’s pawned watches or rowing up the flooded streets to the county courthouse. The action is very close. The dialogue closer.

McCarthy also has a brilliant ability to portray a people and a place with only the sparsest of language – using only the most pertinent details to marry setting and theme with razor sharp precision. Every sentence does double duty. For example, at one point in the book, spring has arrived. Lester is walking along the face of the mountain “to review the country he’d once inhabited.” (p.169) He makes the following observation:

He watched the diminutive progress of all things in the valley, the gray fields coming up black and corded under the plow, the slow green occlusion that the trees were spreading. Squatting there he let his head drop between his knees and began to cry. (p. 170)

In that one paragraph, we feel Lester bound to his fate with cords like the black rows of earth in the fields. We feel his isolation and exclusion from society like the occlusion that the trees were spreading. McCarthy causes us to both see the theme and to feel Lester’s sorrow all while presenting a vivid picture of his surroundings.

Whether our own writing style is like McCarthy’s or not, this linguistic precision is a lesson in quality writing.

Conclusion

This is a dark book. Not McCarthy’s darkest, but dark nonetheless. It’s not necessarily a book that any of us would love. Though we feel for Lester on one level, we hate him on another. He’s a repulsive, evil man. And yet, we can take much away from watching how easily Lester, a fellow child of God, falls from one state to another until his end is a foregone conclusion.

Furthermore, Child of God is a book that most of us can respect. And as a writer, it’s a book from which we can learn a great deal. The language is precise. Cold and blunt when it needs to cut the reader. Fluid and languid when McCarthy asks us to empathize with Lester or to feel the weight of his choices building to his doom. And always imbued with meaning.

It’s a book worth reading.

One of the most commonly cited Gothic tropes is fog. And for good reason. Gothic writers use this trope because it can elucidate a Gothic theme so adeptly.

But other writers, outside of the Gothic sphere – whether in literature or film – also use this trope to tie into the theme. Who can forget the iconic moment at the end of Joe Wright’s 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice when Mr. Darcy presses out of the dense fog over the English moors and into Elizabeth Bennet’s arms?

Weather reflects the plot, but more importantly the theme, in deeply impactful ways. In particular, fog can be used to symbolize many things, but here are some examples of how it can tie into the theme.

Fog & Theme

Fog usually represents confusion, disordered thinking or just a lack of clarity on an issue. Some form of veiled inability to see the truth. This was the case in Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. The second Mrs. de Winter spends the majority of the book preoccupied with her preconceived notion of who Rebecca, her husband’s first wife, was. She has determined that Maxim is comparing her to his first wife, that Rebecca was a paragon of perfection, and that he finds her, his second wife, disappointing or inferior.

During the pivotal scene after the ball, a heavy fog descends on the land and sea, obscuring the coastline and the local lighthouse. As a result, a ship runs aground. In the ensuing investigation, the divers find Rebecca’s long-lost sailboat and her body. As the facts unfolds around her, the second Mrs. de Winter comes out of her false beliefs and into a clear knowledge of the truth.

Fog is a perfect means of demonstrating this theme. It provides a physical, tangible means of portraying the character’s inability to understand and then, when the fog clears, her ascension from darkness into the light.

Sometimes this isn’t something that the character will overcome but rather a symbol of the character’s warped perspective and how that perspective destroyed him. That was true for Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Throughout much of the novel, Emily Brontë highlights the fog and heavy wind that constantly sweeps over the moors.

In this case, the fog parallels Heathcliff’s warped perspective of his life and of his obsession with Catherine. He can’t see any of the benefits of his life, can’t move on from his loss of Catherine. For him, she is the only consolation he’ll accept and thus his idolatry of her leads him to a life of revenge. In the end, he not only destroys his enemies but also himself. For him, the fog never rises. But for the second Catherine and Hareton it does. Notice the end of the book with its sunny disposition, so different from the remainder of the tale.

And in Pride and Prejudice, it’s when Darcy and Elizabeth finally see their own pride and prejudice and manage to set them aside so that they can love one another that they emerge from the fog.

How to Use Fog

The key to knowing how to use fog is to consider what fog, as a natural element, does. It obscures our sight. This can tie into many themes very easily. Whenever your character’s perspective is clouded or confused or he can’t see the truth, fog can be an effective means of paralleling that reality. This is especially the case when the inability to see the truth is an integral component of the theme.

Sometimes, as in Rebecca, the fog has more impact when it accompanies only one critical scene – a scene in which the truth breaks through the character’s disordered thinking. Other times the fog plays an ongoing role in the book. This is especially true when the character’s perspective won’t improve or when the theme is a cautionary tale or tragedy. It is also the case when the author wants to use fog to exaggerate a terrible situation that must change.

This is the case in much of Dickens’s works. He used a great deal of his writing to protest the conditions of the poor in Victorian England. It’s not surprising that he uses fog often – not just as an accurate representation of the smog in urban London, but also as a symbol of the abominable conditions that hung over the city and the thinking of that place and time.

Conclusion

As you can see, the fog in these works isn’t there as a cheap Gothic trick. The authors don’t imbue scenes with fog simply as a gimmick to make a book feel “Gothic.” Rather, the fog is used to make the Gothic theme more tangible. To parallel the character’s inner mindset, her way of thinking, or even an entire nation’s inability to see the truth and to right what is wrong.

When used in this way, fog is a powerful trope that can make Gothic themes resonate in deeply impactful ways.

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“The Byronic hero, incapable of love, or capable only of an impossible love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive action.”

Albert Camus

The Byronic hero is a surprisingly common feature in literature and is particularly suited to Gothic writing. Let’s look at what it is, why this type of hero is so appealing and how you can incorporate it in your writing.

The Byronic Character – Definition

The phrase, Byronic hero, comes from the writing of Lord Byron, a man whose personal character and that of his fictional characters was known to be moody and rebellious. “Historian and critic Lord Macaulay described the character as ‘a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection.’”¹

If you’re familiar with the character of Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, he is the quintessential Byronic hero. Even as a child, he is given to mood swings, which only become more exaggerated as an adult. He is a character with an unwavering commitment to vengeance, known for his brooding and sullen personality. And yet his passion for and tenderness with Cathy has been enough to win over the hearts of readers for the last two hundred years.

Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre is another example of a Byronic hero. He’s often short-tempered with Jane, is easily irritable, and at best is merely civil…until we see more of him. Later on, Charlotte Brontë gives us a glimpse of a man with a profound depth of feeling.

The Origins – Byron’s Cult of Personality

If you’ve seen the movie Mary Shelley (not to be confused with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein), or just happen to know much about her life, you know that Mary Shelley’s husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, was a close friend of Lord Byron. Before seeing the movie, I knew little about Byron. I knew of his writing, but little about the writer himself. Thus, I was shocked to see him portrayed as a reprobate and a lascivious man with few (if any) morals.

Until I researched him more and discovered that the movie’s portrayal was startlingly accurate.

Which then leads to the question: what is it about Byron, this amoral and controversial figure, that inspired so many authors to base their lead characters after him – from The Phantom in Phantom of the Opera to Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo to Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, just to name a few?

Byron was a man known for deliberately seeking sensationalism and controversy. He kept a bear as a pet. He was moody, sullen, and unpredictable. He admitted to having many lovers, both male and female. And he was attractive. So much so that the poet Coleridge said that his face was “so beautiful, a countenance I scarcely ever saw” and “his eyes the open portals of the sun – things of light, and for light.”²

Byron was a man one couldn’t overlook. A person might love him or hate him, but he would never go unnoticed. For many, like Coleridge and the Lady Caroline Lamb who described him as “mad, bad and dangerous to know,” Byron inspired something like awe. He didn’t conform to society. He protested technology in the textile industry because it was creating unemployment for the workers. He bucked traditional values and Christian morals. And he made no attempt to please those around him – from criticizing fellow writers to spurning social niceties and withdrawing into a moody and sullen isolation.³

Some of us – myself included – would dislike such a person in real life. But he certainly garnered attention. And there’s something about that hard exterior that motivates people to find the tender interior. Especially when he writes a letter in which he says, “I cannot exist without some object of Love.”

The Byronic Hero’s Appeal

That’s the first reason for the appeal of this type of character. Passion. Readers see that seed of passion, something that doesn’t come through in most characters, and they’re drawn to it. Passion is magnetic.

Heathcliff is a wonderful example. He’s mean, ruthless, cruel. He tries to destroy Isabella and attempts to kill her dog. He kidnaps Catherine II and forces her to marry his son. He swindles Hindley out of his fortune. He’s a bad person. But readers love him because we see in him a capacity to love Cathy that is largely unrivaled – in literature and in our own lives.

He’s real. And he feels strongly. We find ourselves, like Isabella Linton, wondering whether we can break through that hard exterior and find an intensely passionate man as Catherine did. To be the only person to gain the favor and attention of someone who gives favor and attention to no one else.

And second, that rough exterior is an enigma that asks to be solved. There’s something very curious about a person who doesn’t try to adhere to societal norms, who doesn’t try to people please, who says what he thinks and doesn’t worry about appearing to be emotionally stable or happy or positive. We want to know why. What is so different about this person that he runs contrary to everything we know.

In addition, much of him is a secret. Heathcliff returns home educated and wealthy, most likely through questionable means, but we never know what they are.

We see that he has an agenda. He’s out for revenge – a common tendency of Byronic heroes – but we don’t know how far he means to take that. Despite his avowed commitment to destroy Hindley and the Lintons, with each move he surprises us. His actions are so heinous that we don’t anticipate them. But he does them out of his obsession with Catherine and his grief at having lost her, so we forgive him.

There’s something of a challenge to the Byronic hero. A call to try to crack the riddle, to win over the beast. To be the only chosen one. It’s irresistible to many.

Writing the Byronic Hero

But how do we write him?

1. One thing you’ll notice is that writers generally imbue this type of character with some type of external appeal. He may be attractive (like Lord Byron himself), or educated (like Heathcliff), or wealthy (like Mr. Rochester), or gifted in a mysterious way (like the Phantom), or some combination of these. There’s something that holds readers.

This isn’t a hard rule. However, when working with a very disagreeable character, we want readers to have some reason to stick it out and wait to see if there’s a hidden redeemable trait. Frankly, giving them something somewhat superficial is often useful.

If you don’t want to use any of these, I would have the character do something that implies a capacity for strength or depth of character early on. Even just a singular moment with a child or pet or ailing grandparent in which we see a glimpse of something deeper – some compassion or capacity for self-sacrifice – is essential.

2. Make your character disagreeable. He’s sullen, moody, angry about something. Give him a reason. He has a past of great difficulty or trial. He lost someone or something that meant everything to him. Or he’s had to suffer with a terrible situation for decades (Mr. Rochester, I’m looking at you).

He’s not responding well to this. The Byronic hero won’t. He’ll brood. He’ll lash out. He might be critical, prone to drinking or fighting or gambling. But the readers need to see his behavior in light of this loss. It builds in them an empathy that they’ll need for this type of character.

3. Later…not at first…show this character as one with a profound depth of feeling. But not for everyone. Heathcliff only loved Catherine. Mr. Rochester only loved Jane. Erik (the Phantom) only loved Christine. They have this well of excessive passion, but it’s singularly focused.

The other characters will not gain from this or receive any benefit of it for themselves. That creates this situation that I referred to earlier in which readers begin to envy the character who is on the receiving end of such a rare love. That rarity gives the hero’s love more desirability. It overrules much of what is disagreeable about him, creating a strangely appealing juxtaposition that readers crave.

4. Let me know about the book. I want to read it!

The Byronic hero is so complex that we could spend all day discussing the different reasons for his appeal. I’d like to see more versions of him in contemporary literature.

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¹ “Byronic Hero.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byronic_hero#cite_ref-2. Accessed January 2022

² “Lord Byron, 19th-Century Bad Boy.” Drummond, C. British Library. https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/lord-byron-19thcentury-bad-boy. Accessed January 2022

³ ibid.

Photo: Detail – Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, Casper David Friedrich, c.1817. Courtesy of Kotomi_. Used with no changes. https://www.flickr.com/photos/kotomi-jewelry/40944007734

Romance was always part of the Gothic genre, dating from Walpole’s 1764 work, The Castle of Otranto. There’s a strong thread of romance in works such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and even an element of romance in works like Dracula. However, whereas the romantic component is often present in Gothic works, it now plays more of a central role in a large subsection of the genre.

Hence why Gothic Romance has become its own subcategory.

What is it? Well, the short answer is that it’s romance wrapped in a Gothic-style story. But the long answer is more complex than that.

Romance – Graphic or Otherwise

These stories come in two basic types: love stories, with or without some sexual content, or those that adhere more closely to the “romance” genre (ie. heavily and explicitly sexual). So though the term “Gothic Romance” might automatically conjure up certain ideas out the explicit content contained therein, that’s not necessarily the case.

There are even “clean” Gothic Romance stories – those that are really just love stories with a Gothic ambiance, but without any sexually explicit material. If you’re interested in only one or the other, you can usually tell which books fall in which category fairly easily.

Of course there are others in the middle. I consider these to be like most novels – Gothic or otherwise. They often have some sexual content, but it’s not the main entreé. It’s just a side dish that appears on occasion and may or may not be terribly graphic. What makes them part of the Gothic Romance subgenre though is that the romance – the love story – is the main point of the book.

Gothic Tropes

This is the Gothic in Gothic Romance and it’s almost exclusively focused on the traditional (or more contemporary) versions of Gothic tropes. Haunted houses, family secrets, the paranormal. Without these, we would call these books simply Romance novels.

But Are They Gothic??

They’re love stories. And they use Gothic tropes. But does that make them Gothic novels. As a disclaimer, I can’t say that I’ve read many Gothic Romances (I’m not usually a Romance person), but I suspect that the answer is sometimes yes, but more-often-than-not, no.

From the number of books I’ve seen that are labelled as Gothic Romance, few seem to suggest any sort of irrational theme, the types of themes that contradict the dominant line of thinking developed during the Age of Reason. Instead, I see a lot of love stories with Gothic tropes.

Of course, that’s not to say that these aren’t still enjoyable, well-written books. If you like romance and you like Gothic tropes, especially a darker ambiance, a dose of intrigue, or the paranormal, give some of these a try. Just don’t dig too deeply for the Gothic themes, which may or may not be there.

And, as always, let me know what you find. I’d love to hear about Gothic Romance novels that do have underlying Gothic themes, or those that are simply so well-constructed that we should check them out!

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Here we are at our fourth Gothic literary subgenre. We looked at what makes Southern Gothic, English Gothic and German Gothic writing so unique. Today, I’d like to talk about the Modern Gothic subgenre.

This one is different in its own way. Or, as I should say, in several ways.

Gothic Horror

As I’ve mentioned in separate posts, these days I see a fair number of Gothic-Horror crossover novels. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a good example of this. The book tells the story of Noemí, a young woman who receives a desperate letter from her cousin claiming that her husband is trying to kill her. Noemí leaves for her cousin’s house, set in a remote part of the Mexican countryside, in order to try to uncover the truth. Once there, she comes face-to-face with an ancient evil that intends to carry out its designs through Noemí.

The book is not Gothic in the traditional sense. It doesn’t use the same type of irrational theme that underscores the Gothic genre. However, it does employ Gothic tropes – a crumbling estate, dark family secrets, inclement weather – with a strong dash of horror (to an extent that could be considered gruesome).

Another example is The Meaning Night: A Confession by Michael Cox. The story begins with a brutal and remorseless murder. We know from the day one that our protagonist is an almost entirely amoral man who will stop at nothing to have what he believes is his. The true horror in this book is his character and the complete lack of sympathy that Cox creates for this very unlikable character.

Traditional Gothic

Then there are authors who churn out contemporary versions of what feel like very old-school, traditional Gothic novels. Sarah Waters managed this brilliantly with her novel, The Little Stranger. This book is also a study in the uncanny. So much so that I’d like to save most of what want to say about it for another post. But if you’re looking for a good contemporary example of an author who knows how to pull together a classic Gothic work, check this one out.

Another example would be The House of Whispers by Laura Purcell. I wasn’t sure if I would like this book and was very pleasantly surprised. Ms. Purcell manages to write a very traditional Gothic story with a very fresh feel. When a young maid arrives at Morvoren House on the coast of England, she thinks that she’s hiding from her past. Instead, she finds a family with a past that casts all of her own in a new light. Soon she realizes that she’s in more danger than she ever was but it’s too late to run.

More of the Supernatural and/or Paranormal

Whether its more werewolves, vampires (always vampires, please), or some other form of the undead, Modern Gothic majors in the supernatural. This is especially true in the young adult category, but not exclusively. Within the category of adult Gothic literature, ghosts reign supreme (and always have).

With respect to the former, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is a wonderful blend of a Modern Gothic story written in the traditional style mixed with the supernatural. A young woman sets out to uncover the mystery of her father’s recent disappearance and her mother’s unknown fate. Her research sets her on a path to uncover the history of Vlad the Impaler, the man behind the legend of Dracula, a being who may be more reality than myth.

One of many [often wonderful] Modern Gothic ghost stories, is Paraic O’Donnell’s The House on Vesper Sands. I questioned whether to include this under Gothic Horror. It begins on a darker note than traditional Gothic stories typically do, as a seamstress jumps to her death with a cryptic message stitched in her skin. It’s a Gothic story in which the supernatural elements – spiritualism in this case – are central to the story from start to finish.

Gothic Incognito

There are also a fair number of books with strongly Gothic themes that aren’t marketed as such. I often cite Dan Simmons’ book Carrion Comfort as one of the best examples of this. The story follows, Saul Laski, an extermination camp survivor, who’s hunting one of the senior Nazi officer who survived the aftermath of the war and is hiding out in America. The book uses the concept of mind vampires – those who can enter into the minds of others and control them – as a tangible example of the kind of control that so many evil leaders throughout history have been able to exert on others.

It’s a brilliant Gothic work, with a strong mixture of both horror and the paranormal. And yet it’s simply categorized as Horror.

Other Crossovers

In addition, modern writers have utilized the framework of Gothic writing – albeit often only the tropes themselves – and taken them it every direction imaginable. Urban Gothic, Midwestern Gothic, Gothic romance (both love stories – like Twilight – and the harlequin sort), Gothic detective stories and Gothic-Dark Fantasy (Jay Kristoff’s Nevernight trilogy).

Whatever writers can imagine, they are setting out to mix with the Gothic. However, these other crossovers are still a vastly smaller proportion of Gothic writing than the types I’ve outlined above.

The long and the short of it is that Modern Gothic is essentially a mixture of every other type of novel – new and old. Traditional stories mixed with modern themes. Modern takes on traditional tropes. And a blend of Gothic with every other genre.

That makes it very hard to define what makes Modern Gothic unique, but hopefully this gives you some understanding of what’s going on in the Gothic genre. If you know of other trends, or good examples of any of the above, please share it below! I love to hear about what you’re reading and what other writers are exploring.

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