“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” C.S. Lewis
Recently, I released a video on Red Riding Hood, in which I talked about the Brothers Grimm story Little Red Cap and the 2011 movie, Red Riding Hood, by Catherine Hardwicke. We dug into the theme and the tropes used and examined why that story is a Gothic one. If you’d like to watch it, you can find it here.
For this post I thought we’d do something similar, but different, and take a look at some of the Gothic tendencies that we see in fairy tales.
Because who doesn’t love fairy tales?
Disclaimer
You’re going to want to set aside all of your Disney references, if you have them, because Disney often strips the stories of their original meaning and white-washes them with a vacuous, Americanized ending. If you’re looking for an example of this, compare the original Hans Christian Andersen version of The Little Mermaid with the Disney version. In the Disney one, Ariel makes a deal with the sea witch, gets to land, eventually wins over the prince (with a few close calls of course) and then lives happily ever after. Lesson: make a deal with a witch and get what you want.
In the original, Ariel makes a deal with the sea witch in return for time on land. And it’s not just to win the prince. What Ariel wants most is an eternal soul (unlike the temporal soul of a mermaid). However, Ariel doesn’t win over the prince and he marries another woman. The witch then offers her sisters another deal – if Ariel kills the prince, she can return to her family in the sea. Otherwise she has to die and become the foam on the surface of the waves. Ariel debates and then decides to sacrifice herself rather than hurting the man she loves. She falls into the sea and dies…But, because of her selflessness, she is turned into a spirit who will one day ascend to heaven. Lesson: self-sacrifice is a model of true love and selflessness is truly rewarded.
I think you can see how the original, with its beautiful and heart-rending ending, is a million times more thought-provoking and is an emotionally evocative picture of love.
All that to say, I’ll be discussing some of the older versions of these fairy tales, so put aside your Disney versions for the duration of this post, or you might be confused.
Examples of Gothic Fairy Tales
It might surprise you to consider some fairy tales as Gothic. And if you google it, most writers do nothing more than ascribe the title “gothic” to the darker elements in some of the Brothers Grimm tales. But there are some Gothic fairy tales, and they do much to speak to those weighty truths that lie beneath the surface.
For instance, in the video on Red Riding Hood, we examined the theme that wolves – people who want to take advantage of others – are everywhere; that they prey on old and young alike; that they often look like those around us – neighbors, friends, family; and that they often use well-meaning or sincere-sounding words to trap us.
How about Bluebeard? In the original French tale by Charles Perrault, a young woman is ensnared by an odd-looking man with a blue beard. At first, she and her sister refuse to entertain his advances, partly because he’s so unattractive, but mostly because he had been married several times and his wives had disappeared without a trace. Bluebeard finally wins over the younger sister by inviting the entire family out to his country estate where he entertains them with fine feasts, hunting excursions and extravagant balls. But after she marries him, she soon discovers what happened to his former wives: Bluebeard chained them to the wall in one of the rooms of his castle and slit their throats. In the end, she is narrowly rescued by her brothers and then ultimately finds a “worthy” man to marry. The obvious lesson here is that character is more important than wealth and to be blinded by money is to make oneself a potential victim.
So why is this Gothic? The story points to the ways in which superficial things – in this case money – can so easily blind us to the truth of who someone is. This is a spiritual theme. It’s something almost everyone can agree is true, and yet why is it the case? The sister knew his wives were missing. The red flags were there. And yet she still couldn’t see past his opulent lifestyle. That’s something we can’t reason our way around. It’s an irrational theme.
You might argue that Hansel and Gretel is also Gothic. It’s a tale about a time of famine and is said to originate in the medieval time period, particularly during the European Famine of 1314 – 1322. The father and stepmother of two children choose to abandon them in the forest in order to have more food for themselves. That’s not the end of the children though. Hansel and Gretel stumble upon a witch’s cottage that is elaborately decorated in candy and other desserts. There they are ensnared by the woman who intends to keep them and feed them well so that they’ll be fatter before she cooks them and eats them. Of course, they outsmart her, kill her instead and escape. Once they make their way home, they find that their stepmother – the source of the plan to abandon the children – has died and their father is overjoyed to see them.
If you read into the story carefully (in any number of versions), it’s easy to come away with the understanding that the witch in the woods is a proxy for the stepmother. And that the children had to kill her in self-defense. She is the proverbial witch.
Why might this be Gothic? Leaving aside the superficial – the tropes of abandonment, cannibalism and the like – the theme deals with the stepmother’s inability to put the care of the children above her own preservation. I don’t think it’s an accident that the original storytellers cast her as the stepmother. Not that stepmothers are always like this, but it’s harder for readers to comprehend a biological mother doing such a thing.
I believe that the intention was to say that those who cannot love their children to the point of sacrifice are evil witches, deserving death and that a true mother would never do this. This certainly parallels the historical context of the story. And it makes the theme that much more resonant in that it pits the moral against a context in which self-sacrifice was so much more costly than at many other times in history.
The Magic Behind It All
If you look into these and many other older fairy tales, it is readily apparent that these are not necessarily meant for children. Some of the tales are morbid to the point of horror by today’s adult literary standards. Then, why the fairy tale?
If the fairy tale isn’t for children, why not couch the story in plain language and call it what it is: Dark Fiction, or even Horror?
If you’ve read some of my other writing, particularly the post What is Gothic Literature? you know that Gothic literature features those irrational themes – often spiritual or psychological – that can’t be reasoned. They’re less tangible than themes in other genres. There’s a complexity to the questions within the theme that is often mind-boggling.
And that’s where fairy tales play a magical role, because the fairy tale has a way of doing two things:
It often introduces supernatural elements – like the witch as proxy for the stepmother in Hansel and Gretel – in order to make the lesson more tangible. This is something I talked about in my article How Gothic Writing Makes the B-Plot Tangible. We don’t just see the stepmother convincing the children’s father to abandon them. We see her reincarnated as a witch in the forest, willing to cook and eat them to save herself. And we see Bluebeard’s blue beard, not as an unnatural physical trait but as a reflection of his ugly character and the dead [and blue] bodies of his former wives.
And second, fairy tales boil complex themes down to a child-like story that, beneath the surface, is anything but simple. When the theme is so inherently challenging to understand, the simplicity of the story can make it more digestible to readers.
So, in reality, the fairy tale, is a wonderful medium for Gothic writing. And as C.S. Lewis indicated, once we are mature enough, we will see the truth and value in fairy tales.
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If I had to pick a favorite work of Gothic writing, it would be Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Her use of an unreliable narrator, a constant stream of subtext and an immersive setting make this novella one that I could read over and over, never tiring of its complexity and beauty.
So what’s the story about? (Beware! Plot Spoilers Ahead)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson is a story about a young woman, Mary Katherine “Merricat” who lives a very isolated life with her agoraphobic sister Constance and her dying Uncle Julian. (And of course, Jonas, her cat.) Six years prior, the rest of the family died of arsenic poisoning. Everyone suspected Connie, who had prepared dinner that day, of having murdered them, but the court found her innocent.
Regardless, the villagers still suspect the two girls of murder and use this as rationale for hating and mistreating the two. Merricat, in return, despises all of them. The three live a whimsically odd life until their cousin Charles arrives and threatens to take over the household, control Constance and banish Merricat.
Merricat, who, despite her seeming disassociation from reality, is actually very wise to his schemes, determines to undermine every external threat, including that of Charles.
Merricat: Part Devil, Part Elf
We see a glimpse of our protagonist, Merricat, and her role as an unreliable narrator in the book’s opening statement:
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.
Nothing Merricat says, regardless of how it seems, is ever random. Here Jackson is telling us a great deal about this character. First, she has a great deal of anger. Her desire to have been born a werewolf – a creature that hunts and kills others with a great degree of invincibility – isn’t strictly an issue of the length of her fingers.
Second, Jackson portrays Merricat as borderline autistic. An eighteen-year-old who hates washing herself and noise is generally on the spectrum, albeit very high-functioning in Merricat’s case. Jackson gives us more evidence of this throughout the book. Merricat rarely makes eye contact with anyone, although she’s able to. She doesn’t like anyone touching her except her sister, and only when she initiates. And she is driven by routine and self-imposed rules and does not like deviating from these.
Third, Merricat lists her fondness for Richard Plantagenet, a man Shakespeare portrayed as having killed several of his family members and a poisonous mushroom (the amanita phalloides death cap mushroom). In these Jackson is both foreshadowing Merricat’s role in her family’s deaths and alluding to Merricat’s sociopathic tendencies. Of course, she is the one who killed the family and has absolutely no remorse for having done so. And she hates everyone other than Connie and maybe her Uncle Julian.
Despite all that, Jackson makes us love her.
Merricat’s voice is hilarious, her perspective is consistently and delightfully off, and she has a fanciful, childlike sense of wonder. She’s obsessed with sympathetic magic – burying items and smashing mirrors in order to try to control the world around her.
In summary, she’s one of the most unique and fascinating characters I’ve ever read. And she’s my favorite protagonist ever. Hands down.
The Opposing Forces
But in the book, there are two principle forces that act against Merricat and Constance: the village (greater and lesser) and their cousin Charles.
Readers are introduced to the greater village – the residents of their New England town – in the very beginning of the story when Merricat goes into the village for groceries and books. Some people are openly mocking, like Jim Donell and the children who taunt her with rhymes about her sister poisoning people. Others are standoffish and quietly hostile, like the grocers and their other customers. Jackson presents a village full of people who have always hated the Blackwood family and who now have a reason – the suspected murder – for openly persecuting Merricat.
Other families – the more affluent ones, like the Clarkes – are sympathetic towards Constance and Mary Katherine. But Jackson presents them as antagonists as well in that they try to persuade the two girls to rejoin society. Merricat, who wants nothing more than to live forever cloistered away in her privacy with only her cat and her sister, views these attempts as a hostile invasion of her fortress.
The second antagonist is their cousin Charles. He comes to visit around the one-third point in the book, and everything goes wrong from that point on. Charles is a greedy man who wants to take their money, take over their home and all of the family’s possessions, and take Constance away from Merricat. He also wants to get rid of Merricat. Whereas Connie is submissive and malleable to his domineering influence, Merricat is not. She is wild, uncontrollable, and likely to thwart everything he does. And he knows it.
Charles makes his intentions clear through several comments. For example, he says to Merricat, “…come a month from now, I wonder who will still be here [living in the house]? You…or me?” Another time he tells her, indirectly, that he knows how to get even with people.
What’s particularly interesting is that Jackson also uses Charles to represents the girls’ dead family, especially their parents. In that respect, Charles is both an antagonist in and of himself, and a representation of the lesser village – the family – as a [former] antagonistic force in the girls’ lives. We’ll get into the lesser village in detail when we discuss the Gothic tropes of repressed memories and ghosts/demons below.
First though, what is Jackson trying to say throughout this story?
The Theme
This story, like others Jackson wrote, features what some have called a “village vs. the individual” theme. It’s a story about the evil of groups of people and their tendency to shun and even persecute those who are not part of their group. This stems from Jackson’s experiences as an outsider living in a small town in New England. She saw this mentality first-hand. Those who were the established families in the town were part of the group. Those who moved into the area, as she did with her husband, were disliked and excluded from the group, the village.
Jackson takes this a step further and presents what we sometimes refer to as mob mentality – the tendency that groups sometimes have to act in ways that the individuals in that group never would on their own. So whereas fifty individuals wouldn’t dream of burning down someone’s house, the collective whole sometimes will. The village becomes something other – and in Jackson’s opinion, vastly more evil – than the individuals themselves.
We see this through Merricat as she senses danger around other people and safety only when she’s alone or with one or two of her preferred family members. The idea is that the village is unsafe and inhospitable. That the individual must separate herself from and, when necessary, act against the village in order to survive.
This is a particularly Gothic theme – an irrational one that’s focused on a psychological and even sociological situation that we can’t explain or even understand. And yet it’s a phenomenon that we can point to and often do witness in human history.
Gothic Tropes
Jackson uses several Gothic tropes to support this theme, and yet she does so in a uniquely subtle way that only she could manage so effectively. We’ll talk about four of them: Isolation, Psychological Instability (Merricat), Repressed Memories (Uncle Julian), and Ghosts/ Demons (Personified in Charles).
Isolation: Clearly isolation ties into the theme – with its idea that the individual must separate herself from the village in order to be safe – the most easily. Both Merricat and Constance self-isolate, Merricat out of disdain for the village and Constance out of fear. But their isolation is often threatened. Well-meaning neighbors and their cousin Charles attempt to, and nearly do, persuade Connie to leave the house and rejoin society. What Merricat sees that Connie doesn’t, is that to do so would open themselves up to danger. She understands that the villagers and Charles cannot be trusted.
Jackson juxtaposes the character of the two girls as if they are two opposing types of individuals. Constance is the submissive, gentle, selfless, serving sister. She’s always cleaning, cooking, and caring for someone else. And she’s the one who is the most vulnerable to attack. She’s the one who is almost taken in by Charles’s schemes. Constance is the example of an individual who doesn’t fight against the village and is nearly destroyed by it.
In contrast, Merricat is the wild, vindictive, remorseless sister. She’s the one who sees people most truly, calls things like they are, and is the most capable at defending their fortress. Though her final actions in the story seem destructive on the surface, it’s actually Merricat who seals up their castle and eliminates all external threats from their lives. It’s Merricat who secures the perpetual service of the villagers. She is the example of the individual who fights against the village and prevails.
Psychological Instability: Merricat is unstable. She’s an unreliable narrator, and Jackson uses her brilliantly. This is the kind of story you can read over and over again and still delight in the nuance or even catch something new. Every word in the book means something. So if you see Merricat saying something that seems random, or nonsensical, I would recommend that you stop and question it. For example, consider the following brief conversation between Merricat and Constance:
“…Today my winged horse is coming and I am carrying you off to the moon and on the moon we will eat rose petals.”
“Some rose petals are poisonous.”
“Not on the moon. Is it true that you can plant a leaf?”
“Some leaves. Furred leaves. You can put them in water and they grow roots and then you plant them and they grow into a plant. The kind of plant they were when they started, of course, not just any plant.”
“I’m sorry about that…I like a leaf that grows into a different plant…”
It would be really easy to grace over this section, chalk it up to nothing more than Merricat’s very fanciful imagination, and move on. With a lesser writer, that might be just as well. With Jackson, we would be missing something.
So what is she telling us here?
Well, for one, we see foreshadowing. Here Merricat alludes to something that might be poisonous to eat – rose petals – but that where she wants to take Constance, they will be safe to eat. So Merricat is subtly saying that she very carefully poisoned the family in such a way that ensured Constance would be safe. This comes to light later, but here it is foreshadowed.
For another, in her comments about planting leaves, Merricat (and Jackson) tells us something about people. When a leaf is cut off from its plant, it can sometimes grow into another plant. But Constance says it’ll be the same kind of plant it was originally. Merricat is sad about that.
What she’s saying here is that you can cut someone off from their plant (their group) and they can still grow and thrive, but they’ll never be any different. They’ll still be like the group they were once a part of. The idea is that those who belong to the village – even if they’re removed from it – will at some point re-form a new village like the prior one. And that village will always oppose the individual.
This is just one example among many in which Jackson uses Merricat’s very unstable and strange psychological state to slip in a constant stream of subtext that gives meaning to the book. And, more to our point here, she uses Merricat as an example of someone who seems most culpable of evil, to point to those who, though they appear to be socially acceptable, are in fact more evil than she is.
Repressed Memories: Uncle Julian is an interesting character study. Jackson uses his shaky mental state – a result of having consumed a small amount of the arsenic – to point to the truth of the Blackwood family and to give Merricat a motive.
Uncle Julian spends the entire novella compiling his notes on what happened six years ago, the day the rest of the family died. He pores over minute details like what each person wore, where they sat at the table, what they had said or done earlier in the day, and yet, even though he was there and withnessed it all, he can’t discover what has happened.
Why?
Jackson tells us on page 93. Uncle Julian states that Mary Katherine died during the trial after that fateful day. It’s only in retrospect that we realize that he has never spoken to Merricat, or looked at her, throughout the entire story. This is crucial to the theme. Julian’s mind is not sound, but he’s present enough to communicate on a seemingly rational level. He must have known that she poisoned the family. However, Julian has repressed this memory by convincing himself that she died and that “she did not survive the loss of her family.”
Was Merricat bereaved after their deaths? No, of course not. She’s anything but.
By using Julian’s repressed memories, Jackson makes a subtle connection with the readers. Essentially, Julian shows us that though Merricat is guilty, her actions were justified. Some part of Julian knows what she did and yet, no matter how he examines the evidence, he can’t find her guilty. Why?
We find the answer if we examine all of Julian’s comments. There we see a picture of the Blackwood family.
Julian says that his brother John, Merricat’s father, never begrudged them their food as long as they ate very sparingly. And Uncle Julian, who confuses Charles with his dead brother, John, tells us that Charles, like John, is greedy, consumed with money and material goods, and dishonest. This is how Jackson gives readers a glimpse into Merricat’s motive for murdering them. The entire family was cold and cruel to her, to Uncle Julian and most likely also to Constance. In return, Merricat poisoned them.
Uncle Julian, who knows how terrible his brother was, and how cruel the family could be, understands why Merricat did so. He understands the theme even though he refuses to admit it.
Ghosts/Demons: The ghost in this story is Charles. Merricat says that he looks like her father, that he’s a ghost, a demon. Even Uncle Julian – who confuses Charles with his brother – begins calling him “John.”
Through Charles as the demon or ghost of the family, Jackson gives us a first-hand view of the lesser village – the Blackwood family – and how it acted against Merricat. When Charles comes, it’s as if the family is resurrected from the dead. Through him, the manipulative and selfish abusiveness of their family returns to the house. If Charles had been left to his devices, he would have ensnared Constance, taken all of their material possessions and thrown Merricat and Uncle Julian out of the house.
But, Merricat won’t tolerate it. Her actions escalate as she attempts to exorcise him from her house and her life. Through Charles, we see why the village is a threat to the individual and why the individual must both separate herself from and act against it.
Is The Book Gothic?
I’d definitely call this book Gothic. Jackson’s theme is a psychological one that can’t be reasoned. We know that the tendencies groups have towards exclusion or even a mob mentality is true. And yet, it can’t be studied empirically, or proven in any way. That makes it a Gothic theme.
And Jackson uses her tropes very effectively to exemplify this theme. She does this better than almost any writer. What’s so interesting about Jackson is that her tropes tend to be very subtle. She doesn’t use vampires or stormy weather or some of the more overt gothic tropes. Rather, she uses Gothic tropes more symbolically – like the ghost of the family, represented by Charles – and with a light hand.
Lastly, Jackson brings a distinctly unsettling mood to her books through characters and/or environments that are off just enough as to be disorienting to the reader. We’ll talk about The Haunting of Hill House at some point, because that’s another deep dive into a character’s psychological underpinnings. In that case, she uses the environment – the house – to create this impression. But this unsettling mood has the effect of leaving the reader off balance just enough to be impressionable and open to the theme.
We could go on for hours about this little novella and look at things like why Constance repeatedly says that everything that Merricat does is her fault, but I’ll leave that for you to think about as you read or re-read the book. Let me know what you think about this and anything else we’ve discussed in the comments below!
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I wrote the title of this post and cringed a little because, for much of history, people have held to the legend of vampires. So much so that they’ve become part of our narrative. To say that vampires are a myth is almost to sever a piece of our own identity. But, when did this happen, this merger of man and other? And what is the appeal?
That’s what we’re going to touch on today.
Last Friday I released a video on my YouTube channel, in which we talked about the ways that vampires are used to enhance Gothic themes. We looked at a couple of examples: Dracula by Bram Stoker and The Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. And then we talked about other ways that vampires could mirror the types of irrational themes that we work with in Gothic literature. If you’re looking for it, you can find it here.
In keeping with this week’s theme of vampires, I thought I’d dig into some of the history of vampires. Not just the one we all know, but the stories from around the world in which blood-thirsty creatures – man or demon – came to life in Egypt, Greece or India.
Most vampire lovers know that much of the modern perspective of vampires stems from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a book which many attribute to the historical figure of Count Vlad Tepeš, a man referred to as Vlad the Impaler. He was a hero of the Romanian people, waging war on the Ottomans. The nickname came from his tendency to impale those he took captive.
But vampire legends began long before Count Vlad or Bram Stoker.
Ancient Evidence of Vampire Lore
Some think that the vampire originated in ancient Egypt. Matthew Beresford, who wrote the book From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth, wrote that there is evidence that vampires came into being in ancient Egypt when someone summoned a demon into our world. If you’ve ever read Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned, you’ll recognize this legend as consistent with her vampire history.
Further support for the Egyptian origin of vampires resides in the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet, the cat-faced goddess of war. She drank blood in such abundance that the Egyptian people feared that once wars ceased, she would turn from a warring ally to blood-thirsty enemy. In an attempt to stave off that event, they took to holding a festival at the end of every war in order to signal to her that the blood binge was to cease.1
Other ancient cultures also show evidence of vampires. Pottery shards excavated from ancient Persia depict creatures drinking human blood2. The Sumerians and Babylonians told similar legends of the demon-goddess Lilith who they claim was Adam’s first wife and refused to submit to his leadership. Instead, she left him and roamed the land, preying on pregnant women and drinking the blood of infants.3
A family purported to be descendants of the Oracles of Delphi tells a story of Ambrogio, an Italian man who came to Greece and met Selene, one of the maidens of the temple of Apollo. He fell in love with the young woman, incurring the wrath of Apollo. The sun god, who wanted Selene for himself, cursed the man by making him unable to bear sunlight. Ultimately Ambrogio won over the goddess Artemis who gifted Selene and himself with immortality. This immortality was passed to another through drinking the person’s blood.4
Hindu folklore tells the story of a vampire, Vetala. What’s most interesting is that Bram Stoker’s family lived in colonial India where he grew interested in Indian occult traditions. Sir Richard Burton, the British explorer who was also in India at the time translating these tales from Sanskrit into English, spoke of having discussed these with Stoker.5 So it’s just as likely that Stoker took his inspiration from India than that he extrapolated from the tales of Vlad the Impaler.
We could go on, listing stories from China and Europe and elsewhere, in which blood-drinking creatures have played a dominant role. But why do we, as humans, have such a long-standing obsession with these creatures?
The Eternal Appeal of the Vampire
Stories of vampires have grown in popularity in the modern era with movies like Twilight, and T.V. shows like The Vampire Diaries and True Blood.
If you look at some of the earlier tales of vampires, the tone is one of warning. Sekhmet, for all her benefits in battle, was a deity to be appeased and avoided. Lilith and Vetala were cautionary tales. People in medieval Europe used vampire legends to explain plagues and other pandemics. Even Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a creature to be feared and destroyed. But today, vampirism is glamorized, romanticized to the extent that whole sub-cultures exist in which people who identify as vampires can drink blood or feed off of the energy of others’ souls, albeit generally with the consent of the other party.
With respect to historical references – those of the cautionary type – the vampire seems to explain those things that are so hard for people to understand. Things like the blood-shed on the battlefield, the miscarriages and infant deaths that plagued much of history, and the outbreaks of disease that run rampant through society at different times. In those cases, Sekhmet, Lilith and the unnamed vampires of medieval Europe, come in handy. They assign blame to those circumstances in which we humans find ourselves powerless.
When it comes to the modern era’s obsession with the romanticized vampire, I attribute that to a post-modern society in which humans exert less effort to survive than they have in prior eras and therefore have more time for self-romanticizing. An era in which humans have assumed an ascendant view of themselves as little gods.
Vampires are essentially the darker cousin of our Marvel superheroes. The immortal, quasi-all-powerful beings who exist for their own benefit and who gift whomever they choose with their benevolence. Iron Man and Batman choose to war and pursue justice on behalf of mankind when and if they please. Modern vampires like Damon and Stefan and Elena of the Vampire Diaries sometimes slaughter and gift people with healing indiscriminately, vacillating between monster and mage.
They can’t be controlled. They give what they choose, when they choose to give it. They exist above humanity, on a transcendent plane of immortality and super-human strength and heightened sensory abilities. They are the human version of modern gods.
So, in truth, the vampire has simply come full-circle, from Sekhmet to the modern day. The only difference is that in prior eras, we held vampires apart from ourselves as something of a capricious god whom we needed to appease and/or avoid. Today, modern humanity attempts to take this godhood for itself, refusing to submit to any external entity.
Conclusion
Regardless of whether one holds the historical perspective – of vampires as an explanation for those inexplicable times of suffering and loss – or a modern perspective in which we seek the immortality and power for ourselves, the vampire speaks to all of the tendencies of the human heart.
Because of that, the vampire will always exist, whether in myth or mainstream culture.
1 Taylor, A. (2017, August 24). Meet Sekhmet, The Ancient Egyptian Cat Goddess And Possibly The World’s First Vampire. Retrieved from https://www.ranker.com/list/goddess-sekhmet-first-vampire/april-a-taylor
2 Marigny, Vampires, p. 14.
3 Gaines, J.H. (2021, April 14). Lilith: Seductress, Heroine or Murderer? Retrieved from https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/people-in-the-bible/lilith/
4 Belmont, M. The Scriptures of Delphi. Retrieved from https://www.gods-and-monsters.com/scriptures-of-delphi.html. And The Vampire Origin Story. Retrieved from https://www.gods-and-monsters.com/vampire-origin.html.
5 Sen, A. and Sharma, A. (2018, January 21). Meet Dracula’s Indian Ancestor Vetala. Retrieved from https://www.thehindu.com/society/meet-draculas-indian-ancestor-vetala/article22479854.ece
I recently released a YouTube video entitled Terror vs. Horror. In it, I discussed the differences between the two and when, as a writer, you would want to use one or the other. For this post, I thought I’d take a related but somewhat different look at the lasting allure of terror in literature.
Keep in mind that I’m not talking about the horror of chainsaw movies or the known threats within every thriller novel and movie you’ve ever seen, although those have enduring appeal as well. For this post, I’m going to stick exclusively to terror – that unseen dread that speaks of more than what manifests on the surface.
Because in the end, the two – terror vs. horror – appeal to us for very different reasons.
As a reminder, terror is defined as the dread your character feels in response to something that strikes a very individual chord with the character. If your character comes home from work to find a silk scarf on the kitchen table, that’s not necessarily frightening to any other character. But if the scarf was her mother’s and was buried with her thirteen years prior, the sight of it will certainly strike a sense of dread and unease in the character (and in the readers who also understand this association).
Gothic novels have used terror since day one because terror parallels Gothic themes so closely – themes that delve into the spiritual and/or psychological depths of the characters.
But why do we – the readers – love terror so much? Why do we seek out and gleefully anticipate the effect that the terror will have on us? I can think of three possible reasons.
Terror Confirms That the Unseen is Real
Terror almost always introduces some element of the supernatural. By that I don’t necessarily mean demons or angels or other unseen beings that we associate with our religions. It may just be a sense, a pervasive thread throughout the work, that there is more that exists than what can be seen. And that that truth lies beyond the surface of the tangible world.
Just writing that reminds me of the Upside Down in Stranger Things. If you love Gothic TV shows (and the 80s), check out Stranger Things on Netflix. In the show, the Upside Down is an alternate dimension that appears identical to, albeit darker than, the real world except that the evil is visible. In the real world this evil is hidden beneath the sunlight and schedules of everyday life. It’s easy to ignore, or overtly denounce its existence. But places like the Upside Down don’t allow for that. The evil is too apparent to dismiss.
This mirrors many spiritual beliefs, including Judeo-Christian ones, that teach that there is a spiritual world beyond what our senses perceive. And that the spiritual world is vastly larger and more complex than ours is. Regardless of what beliefs you hold, most people believe that there is something more to this world.
Terror points to that and declares that it is true by consistently focusing on the unseen and reflecting that, whether it’s a spiritual or a psychological phenomenon, it is a real and influential factor in our lives.
Terror Speaks to the Depths of the Human Soul
Often these factors focus us inward. In the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, the author delves into the depths of the human soul and examines the two sides to a person – the one that longs for goodness and the other that longs for evil. He puts forth the idea that both sides can’t coexist and that the evil side will always win out.
Shirley Jackson examines a slightly different scenario in her writing. For example, consider her novella We Have Always Lived in The Castle, in which she explores the role of the community against the individual. We could think about this from a sociological standpoint, but I believe that it boils down to a psychological matter. What happens to a person’s capacity for evil when he or she is part of the collective? Does one’s identity within a group enhance each individual’s tendency to ostracize and persecute those who aren’t in the group?
The terror that these authors use points to the fact that the human soul is something more than merely our personality or the shell of our material bodies.
Terror Forces Us to Examine Ourselves
All of this has a tendency to focus our attention on ourselves. Hopefully not in a self-centered way. But in the sense that it forces us to consider the things about ourselves that we might otherwise want to overlook or deny.
If you’ve ever read Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Tell-Tale Heart, Poe uses the reference of a murder victim’s purportedly beating heart to point to the true problem: the main character’s heart. It’s his guilty conscience that’s really calling to him, reminding him of what he has done and who he is. Forcing him to confront the things he’s attempted to bury.
To illustrate this, consider if, in contrast, the authors were to use horror. In the presence of an external, tangible threat, how much easier would it be to overlook all of the things we’ve just mentioned? It would be natural. But terror, by focusing on the unseen and the dread that certain associations cause within us, forces to face those things that lie beneath the surface.
It does this by asking why? Why is Dr. Jekyll unable to escape from Mr. Hyde? Why is Merricat (in We Have Always Lived in The Castle) constantly at odds with the villagers? And why is the unnamed narrator in The Tell-Tale Heart haunted by the beating of the heart?
Terror focuses the readers beyond the terror itself to the source of the terror: the characters themselves. And by extension, ourselves.
That quality will always make terror relevant because it speaks to the depths of our human condition. Who we are and why we act the way we do.
What’s more evil than a story in which a couple of demonic ghosts haunt two young children? One in which the children are active and willing participants. Children who have grown to love and embrace the evil they’ve witnessed.
If you’re looking for a Gothic story full of mystery and depth, in which many questions are never answered and the act of exploring them leads down into dark labyrinths, look no further than Henry James’s novella, The Turn of the Screw.
Synopsis
The story is about a governess who is hired to care for two orphaned children – Miles and Flora – who live in their Uncle’s country house in England. As soon as the governess arrives, she discovers that something is amiss with the two children. Their actions are often furtive and range from curious to openly malevolent. The governess, the book’s protagonist sets out to uncover the source of the two children’s strange behavior and to save them from whatever forces are acting against them.
But in this ghost story, the children are the true antagonists. She soon discovers that they have no desire to be saved and are eager to hold her at bay, keeping her in a state of ignorance. Rather, they seek out and encourage the presence of the two ghosts whose intentions are unquestionably nefarious.
The Theme
In this novella, James examines the loss of innocence and the extent to which adults intentionally or unintentionally act as a destructive force in the lives of children.
In conjunction with this theme, he uses at least four Gothic tropes: ghosts, unexplained deaths, isolation, and orphans.
Gothic Tropes
Ghosts: The story features two ghosts – those of the prior governess (Miss Jessel) and gardener (Peter Quint), who, in life, had been engaged in a romantic relationship. The new governess eventually discovers that when they were living at the country house, these two individuals knowingly exposed the children to and caused them to participate in their sexual activity. They made no attempt to save or preserve the children’s innocence and instead, were active contributors to its loss.
Unexplained Deaths: Miss Jessel and Peter Quint both died mysteriously. He supposedly died from a slip-and-fall accident on an icy walkway, which seems unlikely for a relatively young man. James leaves the readers to speculate as to how he may have actually died.
Miss Jessel’s death is unknown. It is implied that she may have committed suicide, but James never supplies a motive other than what the reader might speculate. As a ghost, she comes to the children, telling them that she wants them to join her in hell. The deaths of these characters mirrors an inexplicable loss such as the loss of innocence in childhood. And Miss Jessel’s overt comments are consistent with the theme in that she is a destructive force in the children’s lives.
At the end of the book, the little boy, Miles, dies unexpectedly, which is perfectly in keeping with the theme. There is much speculation as to why or how the boy dies. However, I believe that the most likely interpretation is that it is the new governess who killed him. This answer parallels the theme the most closely – that despite her desire and attempts to save the children and preserve their innocence, she is the ultimate cause of their destruction.
Isolation: This story features a strong sense of isolation. The children are isolated by virtue of their status as orphans, which we’ll address in a moment, but the governess is also isolated. The children are actively attempting to hide their doings from her so that she must struggle to uncover the truth on her own. The Uncle is irascible and indifferent to her anxiety. The housekeeper is kind but largely ignorant, although she does share some of the history of the family. This leaves the governess isolated both mentally and emotionally. She must struggle through the theme’s question on her own. In the book, this mirrors the emotional response we should have to the children’s loss of innocence. Her loneliness mirrors their tragically enlightened state.
Orphans: While the orphaning of children is not necessarily a classic Gothic trope, it acts as one in The Turn of the Screw. In the story, they are orphaned in one sense or another by several different parties. First, their parents died, leaving them unprotected from external [potentially evil] influences such as those from Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. Second, their Uncle, a man who should have stepped in and played this role in their parents’ absence, has no interest in their lives and is, at best, nothing but a distant benefactor. He has orphaned them simply by virtue of his absence in their lives. And last, but not least, Miss Jessel and Peter Quint orphaned these children in a figurative sense by actively subjecting them to activities that are inappropriate for children and which destroyed their innocence.
All of these tropes mirror the theme’s exploration of the role that adults play in failing to guard against or overtly causing a child’s loss of innocence.
Is the book really Gothic?
First let’s look at the theme. It’s definitely irrational. The extent to which even the most well-intentioned adults cannot save children from a loss of innocence and instead, by virtue of their own failings, further this inevitable loss, is a spiritual question. A question of the transference of dark enlightenment. It’s a theme that we can all understand and yet it can’t be proven empirically.
And second, let’s examine the use of the tropes. The ghosts are specific to the theme, in particular to the loss of the children’s innocence. They are the most direct evidence of the role adults play in that loss. The unexplained deaths are not general as they might be in a horror story, but are specific to those who either directly caused the loss of innocence or to Miles, who was the new governess’s principle focus. Because of that, they are highly specific to the theme and the governess’s exploration of it. And lastly, the sense of isolation (for the governess or for the orphaned children) is not meant to heighten fear or drag a secret sin out into the open as it would be in the Horror genre. Rather, James uses this isolation to cause the reader to feel the weight of their loss of innocence. Thus, the tropes all exist to support the Gothic theme.
To summarize: yes, I would say that The Turn of the Screw is absolutely Gothic, traditionally Gothic in every sense – the irrational theme, the use of supportive, Gothic tropes, and even the subtle and growing undertone of terror are consistently Gothic.
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The Gothic genre is one of the most misunderstood genres in all of literature. I’ve seen and heard just about every misconception – including the idea that Gothic and Horror are the same, Gothic writing is evil, Gothic literature is about the paranormal, Gothic books are “dark” (whatever that means) and every other false idea out there. And the truth is made more confusing by fact that Gothic literature sometimes includes some or all of the above. But it doesn’t have to, because those aren’t the definition of what makes something Gothic.
To be fair, there was a time in my life when I didn’t know anything about the genre. I didn’t even know that the first adult book I had come to love – Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier – was in the Gothic genre. My English teacher had assigned the book. I began reading it and, almost instantly, fell into the deep well of dark Romanticism and spine-tingling pleasure that is Gothic literature.
As I grew, I read just about every book I could find. I loved the Horror genre as well, but I found myself particularly drawn to certain types of books: Wuthering Heights, The Turn of the Screw, and Jane Eyre, among so many others. Eventually I learned enough to know that much of what I loved most was in the Gothic genre.
But the conundrum came when I tried to define the genre. What is Gothic literature? Trying to research the subject is a long journey into superficiality. Many people seem to love the genre, but few can articulate what defines a Gothic novel beyond the tropes themselves. And it makes sense. Gothic writing is very compelling largely because it is so deep, because its themes are generally transcendent, sometimes even numinous. But that fact – what makes this genre so appealing – also makes it harder to qualify.
Regardless, after reading and studying it for several decades, I’m going to attempt to do just that.
But first, let’s clear up the most prevalent misconception about Gothic writing: that its the Gothic tropes that make a book Gothic.
Misconception: Gothic tropes are what makes a book Gothic.
Gothic tropes are awesome. They’re the things that I want to see when I read a Gothic novel, at least on the surface. They’re the things like:
A crumbling estate or castle
Characters who are insane or otherwise mentally ill
Dark and stormy, or gloomy weather
A helpless heroine
Terror, or dread
Melodrama
Sometimes elements of romance
Family secrets
Supernatural elements – ghosts, werewolves, vampires, etc.
Forlorn landscapes
Isolation
There are a lot more, of course. And most Gothic writing incorporates at least one or two of these elements. Mr. Rochester keeps his mad wife in the attic, Heathcliff wanders the desolate moors, the ghost of Peter Quint haunts the new governess in The Turn of the Screw.
And I love all of these things. I love a dark and stormy atmosphere and lots of dark subterfuge. But if those things alone make a book Gothic then we have a problem. Because there are plenty of Gothic works that use few if any Gothic tropes.
If you’ve read Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, or We’ve Always Lived in the Castle, books that are also categorized as Gothic, you may have noticed that most of the stereotypical Gothic tropes are absent from her writing. So what makes it Gothic?
How about The Picture of Dorian Gray? Oscar Wilde employs a strong sense of terror, but besides that, it’s hard to argue that any of the traditional Gothic elements are present. The main character can’t even rightly be said to be mentally ill. If anything, he’s tormented by a self-inflicted weight of guilt. Then why is that book described as Gothic?
What about Poe? Have you ever read his poem, The Raven? It’s one of the most recognizably Gothic works. Many lovers of the Gothic genre think of The Raven and Gothic as synonymous. The poem is beautiful. And tragic. And emotionally gripping. But there’s nothing horrifying about it. There’s no madness. No dark crimes. No intrigue. No family secrets. Just a man haunted by the sadness he carries after losing his beloved Lenore. It’s a poem about loss and the shadow it casts over us.
Given the preponderance of evidence to the contrary, Gothic literature must be something so much more than barren, foggy landscapes and locked doors and dark predilections.
So then, what is it?
History of Gothic Literature
To answer that question, we need to start with a quick history lesson. The first work of Gothic literature is generally considered to be The Castle of Otranto, written by Horace Walpole in 1764. Like many firsts, it’s horribly awkward. But it broke ground in the genre and it paved the way for all of the subsequent works that we have today.
But what predicated the book? What was going on in the world at that time? Because that’s the very answer that will help us understand what is truly Gothic. And what isn’t.
Walpole wrote his book during the height of the Age of Reason. If you know much about philosophy, you know that the Age of Reason, among other things, promoted the belief that nothing can be said to be true if it can’t be proved through reason and/or empirically, meaning through the five senses. So, if you can’t touch it, see it, taste it, etc. it can’t be true. Therefore, the Age of Reason was extremely disdainful of any spirituality of any kind. For obvious reasons. If your God can’t be reasoned to exist, your beliefs can’t be true.
The same can be said to be true of a lot of psychological conditions.
Into the midst of that climate, Walpole ushered in the Gothic genre. A genre that deals with what some scholars call “the irrational.” The word “irrational” stems from the Latin words “in” meaning “not” and “rationalis” meaning “rational” or “able to be reasoned.” So, with respect to Gothic writing, “irrational” means those things that can’t be reasoned. Within the Gothic genre, we find a rebuttal to the Age of Reason.
The Age of Reason said, if it can’t be reasoned or known empirically, it doesn’t exist. Gothic literature says, there are spiritual and psychological truths that we can’t see or touch. What makes a book Gothic is that it features an irrational theme – themes that are generally spiritual and/or psychological in nature.
Examples
For example, consider the theme of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, that explores the dangers of playing God and how destructive that can be. Or Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. In that book, King demonstrates that the characters who prevail over evil are those who are willing to acknowledge that evil exists, whereas those who try to ignore it are destroyed by that evil. Consider The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty, which presents a horrifying case that God, the Devil and evil do exist and that we would be unwise to discredit the power of any of the above. Or look at Shirley Jackson’s books – like We Have Always Lived in the Castle – that deal with the evils of the collective against the individual.
In all of these, we can see irrational themes, those that can’t be reasoned. Themes that are spiritual or psychological in nature.
The Gothic tropes that we mentioned earlier – things like crumbling old houses, isolation and family secrets – exist to support and clarify those themes. In subsequent posts, we’ll examine many examples of how these tropes are used. For instance, we’ll talk about the kinds of themes that vampires have been used to demonstrate. Or how and why we might use terror versus horror to support a Gothic theme. Or why and when dark and stormy weather has been used.
But those things aren’t the reason the book is Gothic. They’re just the supporting actors on the Gothic stage. The book is Gothic if it contains a Gothic theme, an irrational one. Stay tuned for a lot more examples.
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I love villains. Sometimes I love to watch them attempt to succeed, despite their very nefarious intentions. And sometimes I love to hate them. I want to see them fail. But regardless of my feelings for a specific villain, what I want to see most is complexity.
It’s something that we talk about a lot in the writing community – writing antagonists (and protagonists for that matter) who aren’t one-sided. The 100% good guy versus the 100% bad guy just doesn’t fly in the modern era. Our generation knows that no one is that cut and dry. There are skeletons in closets and ill intentions to one degree or another in just about any human character.
But one of the best ways to add complexity to the villain is to give him or her a sidekick.
I learned this while writing my most recent novel and the things that I incorporated made the story so much richer. The protagonist is a young Bavarian girl. The antagonist is her grandmother. As my protagonist delves into the history of her family, she uncovers a dark web of conspiracy with her grandmother at the center of it.
But her grandmother has her own reasons.
I wanted to show that, to portray her as someone who is doing what she can to support the ends that she believes are best. To do that most efficiently and effectively, I gave her a manservant, Berend. The son of her father’s manservant, the two of them grew up together as playmates and close confidantes.
There are several things that this villain-sidekick accomplishes.
Backstory/ Motives
In the case of my story, because of their deeply intertwined history, this villain-sidekick has a unique view of the antagonist. One that none of the other characters has. He has known the antagonist for the longest period of time – since childhood. He’s known her at different life stages. He knows what she used to be like before she became the person she is today. He knows parts of her story that she hasn’t told anyone else in the family, especially her daughter-in-law and granddaughter.
This made it easier to introduce the antagonist’s backstory. Whether you do this through subtext or through multiple points of view (I used both), readers still gain a new and complex viewpoint into the villain’s world. He is able to speak to the antagonist’s motives, the very things that she’s not willing to admit even to herself.
It also gives the antagonist a chance to voice some of that herself. The things that she wouldn’t say to the protagonist – because, of course, she would oppose the antagonist’s actions – she’ll say to her sidekick. They’re in it together.
Increased Tension
This increases the tension as well. When the villain has a sidekick, the villain himself is more fearsome. Now it’s not just the single antagonist who’s opposed to the protagonist. My protagonist has to overcome her grandmother, her grandmother’s sidekick, and her grandmother’s sidekick’s sidekick. The stakes are higher. The victory harder to win.
In addition, the villain-sidekick often adds a different facet to the opposing force.
Consider Game of Thrones. In Martin’s books he uses the two Clegane brothers – Gregor and Sandor – to support Tywin Lannister. Though Tywin is wholly evil and ruthless, these two fearsome characters add two additional dimensions to his antagonism. While Tywin plots the demise of others from his throne, Gregor and Sandor are free to go out on the rampage. Tywin is the brain while they are the brawn.
Because of the added dimensions of evil, the antagonist force as a whole feels that much more insurmountable.
Relatability
A villain-sidekick also demonstrates sympathy for the villain that readers are unlikely to witness from any other character. In my novel, Berend sympathizes with the antagonist. He knows why she’s doing what she’s doing. He even disapproves of some of it and tells her so. But he also sees her as a person in a way that those who oppose her do not.
I can explain this best with a quick illustration.
In the past, I worked in public accounting. At one firm we had a client who intimidated all of my colleagues, including the owner of the accounting firm. This client was one of several owners of a trading company. Traders tend to be taller than average, especially back in the day when trading was almost exclusively conducted on the exchange floor. Height was an extreme advantage since a tall person could get the attention of other traders faster than a shorter person could.
This guy was very tall and fairly broad. So, he was a physically intimidating person. But what made him most intimidating was that he made no attempt at pleasantries. Ever. No smiling at people. No small chat. Rather, his mannerisms were very brusque.
At the time, I was the newest member of the team, so they turned him over to me. Fortunately I don’t intimidate very easily. But what really opened my eyes to him was when I met with him one day and, during our meeting, he took a personal call from his wife. During the conversation, his two year old jumped on the phone.
My client’s tone of voice shifted instantly. To hear this very formidable man suddenly talking gently, calling the child, sweetie, was such a radically different view into who he is. I almost laughed. From then on, my tone warmed towards him. And his tone warmed towards me.
That’s what your villain-sidekick can accomplish. Through this character, readers see another side to the antagonist. They see a person who sympathizes with and maybe even loves this character.
If you’ve done a great job of setting up the villain, readers will still believe that the antagonist should fail and the protagonist should succeed. But the antagonist will appear that much more nuanced and realistic. Ironically, this often this makes her that much more despicable. Well-rounded characters are easier to love and easier to hate.
I’ve found that adding a villain-sidekick makes a story that much more interesting.
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One of the things I love most is when I discover a writer whose writing appeals to me so much that I want to read everything they’ve written. And one of the side effects of doing that is that I usually see a trend emerging in that writer’s writing. There’s some theme or question that they’re exploring in everything they create. It may morph and take on different shades of meaning as their works progress, but it’s still there. The question. Or as I’m referring to it here, their demon.
It’s that thing that haunts the writer. They hash it out from every angle, exploring the nuances of the issue until, hopefully, they can find a way to understand it.
So what is it?
It could be anything, of course. The demon is as unique as each writer. For Shirley Jackson it was the constant isolation and ostracism that she felt from the New England village where her husband taught. She wrote about it as a violent tendency that established groups have towards outsiders. And as a psychological imbalance that left her feeling unsettled and displaced.
Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles are essentially a chronicling of her own journey to understand her faith (and sometimes a lack thereof). Outside of the Gothic realm, Steinbeck and Dickens were distraught about the injustices suffered by the poor.
Some writers are haunted by a family dynamic that left them scarred and which colors everything they see and do. Others see the human tendency for violence and write about it as an impending doom that we can’t escape. Others question the rights of different groups of people or the balance of power in the world.
You can see how these demons can take any shape or size. The point of this post isn’t to identify the ghosts that haunt other writers, as fun as that is. It’s to ask, what is mine? What is yours?
As a writer, what is that one question that you carry with you, that won’t leave you alone?
That’s what you and I should be writing. And yes, it requires a lot of vulnerability. But that’s what will have the greatest impact on readers.
I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, but this weekend I was camping with some friends and around the campfire, over a couple of bourbons 🙂 we asked ourselves that very thing.
So, how do we uncover our demon? I can think of a few ways that would help to pin it down.
Look at Your Hot Buttons
Typically, we think of a “hot button” as something that sets us off, or angers us the most. But in this case, think of it as anything that consistently triggers an intense emotional response in you. What makes you the most afraid? Or the angriest? Or the saddest?
Dig deeper, past the snakes and office politics and animal rescue videos. Look for perpetual triggers. Look for the most intense response. Look for the thing that affects you so deeply that you’re afraid to write about it. Maybe it feels the most vulnerable, or the most volatile – as if you can’t even handle the issue without losing control of your emotions.
That’s the thing you’re looking for.
Look at Your Past
I have a friend who often writes about domestic abuse because that’s her story. Not that she was abused, but that she prevailed. She was in a bad place in the past and she found her way out of that. She wants to give that hope to others who are going through something similar.
Perhaps you’ve believed a lie about yourself, something that your family, or other influential figures taught you. This may take you back to your childhood. Is there something that you’re carrying? Something that haunts your current decisions and relationships? Something that still tries to tell you who you are?
That’s the thing you’re looking for.
Look at Your Mistakes
Is there something you do…over and over and over again. Other than brushing your teeth. Maybe you consistently sabotage relationships because you believe that you aren’t worth loving. Maybe you superimpose your own feelings onto others so that you constantly second-guess their motives and assume the worst of them. Maybe you’re self-destructive.
That’s the thing you’re looking for.
Ask Yourself Why
When you find that something, dig into the why’s. And it’s ok not to know for sure. The key is to ask yourself what the answer could be. What might be the root.
If you’re self-destructive, dig into why that is. Are you looking to escape something? Do you hate yourself, and if so, why? Is there something that you’re afraid to face?
If you’re sabotaging relationships, is it because of something you’ve experienced – a betrayal, or a disappointment – that left you certain that no relationship will ever last.
Write It
Then take that thing and work it into your writing. Write it from every angle you can find. Turn it over and explore it until, hopefully, you find healing from it. Until it leaves you free and clean from its influence.
That’s the writing that makes the deepest impression on me. That’s what stays with me as a reader. Because it isn’t just an adventure to find the hidden stone, or a mystery to solve. It’s a deep, soul-wrenching exploration of the kinds of questions that plague us all.
Give the world the truest version of yourself.
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When you think of Gothic writing, you might be inclined to picture ghosts and undead beings rising from the grave. Perhaps you think of insane wives in the attic, tormented souls haunting the heathlands, or decaying houses driving their inhabitants mad.
These are some of the best parts of Gothic writing, but what makes them so great is that they point to the underlying B-plot. They bring that hidden meaning to life. The writers used them to make the story’s theme clearer to readers.
How? That’s what we’re talking about today.
Last week I wrote a post, Using Your Secondary Characters Wisely. In it, I mentioned that I had run into some difficulties in the early stages of my current manuscript. The plot was a great one but it still felt flat. One thing I did to solve the problem was to revisit my plans for the secondary characters and to flesh out how they could demonstrate the theme from other angles. That filled out the story a great bit.
But something was still missing.
I figured it out. My B-plot was still hidden, still symbolic. Because it wasn’t tangible, it didn’t have the power that Gothic stories should have.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term B-plot, that’s just a reference to the underlying meaning of the story. The A-plot is your overarching one. The B-plot is the thematic one. I’ll give you an example.
Let’s say you want to write a story about a twelve-year-old boy whose family has uprooted him and moved to a new community. Perhaps they used to live in Boston, where he loved Red Sox games and had lots of friends in his school and in his baseball league. The family moves to upstate New York where he feels isolated. The kids seem strange, the country is quiet and sparsely populated, the house is an old farmhouse unlike his brownstone back in Boston. He’s out of his element.
On the surface, he’s trying to find his way in a new school, with a new baseball team, in which the dynamics are all different, and with his newfound awareness of girls. That’s your A-story, the principle plot.
But underneath it all, you want to tell a story about this boy’s fear that this new environment will change who he is. He wants to hold onto his Boston identity. And he’s not sure he wants to be an adult; he’d rather stay in the comfortable place of perpetual childhood. He’s afraid of becoming someone different. That’s your B-story, the thematic truth you’re exploring.
However you write this story, it could be very interesting. But if you want it to be a Gothic story – and it definitely has the thematic makings of one – what you want to do is make the B-story tangible.
How?
Well, what would represent unwanted change? Change that comes with a lot of fear and consequences? Vampires, for one.
Vampires introduce the idea of being altered in ways that are permanent and potentially disastrous. No more sunshine, no more community, society, life-as-we-know-it. They come with a connotation of thrilling danger, but also fear.
One way this could play out is that your character moves to upstate New York, senses that the other kids are strange and then, part way through the book, discovers that the area is rife with vampires. The kids who seems so different to him are actually the undead.
And they want him to join them.
Do you see how this could bring the B-story to life in a way that’s both exciting and also visceral. The readers feel the truth more intensely through the presence of this added element. It’s not just a vampire story, it’s a story in which the vampires represent everything this boy is struggling to accept. Puberty, a new environment, a different culture.
That’s what Gothic tropes should do. They should elucidate and enhance the theme.
Once I remembered that and worked it out, my story took on a well-rounded life of its own. It’s no longer flat. Now I just need to finish writing it. 🙂 Hopefully this will help you too.
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If you’ve ever written something – a book, or short story, or screenplay – and felt like it wasn’t the world’s most interesting story, or maybe it was a great idea, but it just felt…well, flat…the problem may have been your secondary characters.
I just dealt with this very issue while working on the first draft of my current book. I had the entire plot outlined and had written somewhere around 15% of the draft before I realized that something was wrong. Now, to give myself some credit, this story is very different from what I’ve written before, so I assumed that it would feel different to write. But when I sat back and analyzed the situation, I realized two different things were wrong with the story.
One was the extent to which I was making the B-story manifest in Gothic tropes. I’ll tell you all about that in another post. The other was a problem with the secondary characters. When I worked through both of these, I sat back and found myself face-to-face with a story that’s incredibly robust. And so, so, so much better than what I had before…which had been a pretty great story idea to start with.
I’ll tell you how I fixed these things and hopefully what I learned will help you in some way.
I should have known better. I just finished a novel that I love and one of the many things I learned while writing that one was that in order to demonstrate the theme to its fullest extent, it needs to show up in all of the primary and at least most of the secondary characters.
What I mean by that is that if you’re dealing with a theme, any theme, it should play out in several different ways in the novel. Not just through the actions of the main character. Let’s say your theme is:
We carry the ghosts of our past relationships and there’s no way to escape them.
Ok. Fun theme. Obviously this is going to evidence itself in the main character’s story. Perhaps he is in a new relationship with someone. Everything is going well – better than it ever has with anyone. But as this relationship progresses, his former girlfriend haunts him. Not literally, although that would be awesome.
At first, everything his new partner does reminds him of her. When she chews her food, he sees his former girlfriend. When she walks, he’s reminded of the other one. It escalates and soon he no longer hears what his new girlfriend is saying. He hears only what he remembers the former one saying, or what he knows she would do or say in each situation. It escalates more and soon he’s seeing his former girlfriend everywhere he goes. Even when he’s alone. He’s becoming unhinged.
On the surface, you already have a great story concept. But it can be a million times better by using the secondary characters.
Who’s the antagonist here? Well, in one sense it’s his own mind. His inability to move past the prior relationship is threatening the current one. But you’ve probably introduced some other, more tangible antagonist as well. Perhaps it’s his mother. Mothers make great antagonists. Especially in the case of a young man in a relationship.
She doesn’t like the new girlfriend. She was – maybe still is – best friends with his last girlfriend. The one who’s haunting him. His mother is constantly comparing the two and finding the new girlfriend lacking. Maybe she’s even trying to reunite him with his former flame, or attempting to sabotage the new relationship. In that respect, she’s an opposing force in his current relationship. Why is she doing this? Maybe the new girlfriend reminds her of her mother, the main character’s grandmother, a woman who was controlling and demeaning in every way possible. That’s the ghost she’s still carrying.
But what about his friends? Let’s say he has a best friend and maybe another close friend. The three of them go way back. If you’re going to demonstrate the theme really well, you should show how it plays out in the lives of these other two characters as well. But in different ways.
Perhaps one of them is divorced. His wife has full custody of their kids. The alimony and child support are a constant stress on his life, not to mention the emotional strain of not seeing his kids very often. In that sense, those relationships are a ghost he can’t escape and doesn’t entirely want to.
How about the other friend? Let’s say she contracted HIV years ago from a man who lied to her and cheated on her. She’s carrying the scars of that relationship – physically and emotionally. Now she’s in a relationship with a woman and is trying to find in her everything that she could never find in a man. In many ways, the pain of her past is affecting her current relationship. It’s a constant struggle for them.
Do you see it? Through these other characters, we’re fleshing out the different ways that a past relationship haunts a person. The mother’s haunted by her mother. The one friend by his ex-wife and children. The other friend by her cheating ex who left her with a life-long illness.
Now the plot needs to work so that all of these threads come together and build up the main character’s journey to be free from the ghost of his prior girlfriend. But I think you get the point. Once you have the theme working from several different angles, the story will automatically feel full and interesting.
And that’s exactly what I had intended to do early in this current manuscript, but when I started writing, it wasn’t there. The other threads had fallen out and there were holes in the tapestry – motives that felt nebulous, conversations that felt more like empty words than like well-crafted subtext.
Once I worked those threads back in, I was able to pull the manuscript together in new and vastly-improved ways. As I said before, I also had to work out the manifestation of the B-plot in Gothic tropes. But we’ll talk about that in the next post! 🙂
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