'The picture of Dorian Gray' and Gothicism

Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Seminar für Englische Philologie
WS 2004/05, Hauptseminar Oscar Wilde
Semester: 06

The picture of Dorian Gray and Gothicism

by

Marlissa Gerken

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 4

2. The Gothic genre 5

2.1 Origins of the Gothic tradition 5
2.2 The Gothic Return in the 1890s 6
2.3 Scientific Theories of the Victorian fin de siècle 7
2.4 Main Characteristics of the New Gothic 9

3. The Gothic in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray 10

4. Conclusion 15

5. Bibliography 16

5.1 Primary Literature 16
5.2 Secondary Literature 16

1. Introduction

Today, a Gothic novel is commonly defined as “a story of terror and suspense, usually set in a gloomy old castle or monastery”¹. This definition is based on the traditional Gothic novel, which was originated by Horace Walpole in 1764². A number of elements came to be classed as Gothic and by the end of the century, the genre was fully established³. However, when examining different Gothic works that have been published since the beginning of the Gothic tradition, one finds that the Gothic cannot be reduced to a scary story with a medieval setting. The Gothic is a genre that changes over time. The traditional elements usually persist, but new features are added to enrich the genre and to catch the spirit of the time. Kelly Hurley made the important observation that the “Gothic is rightly […] understood as a cyclical genre that re-emerges in times of cultural stress in order to negotiate anxieties for its readership by working through them in displaced (sometimes supernaturalized) form.”⁴ When a nation is exposed to either internal or external threats, which often cannot be clearly defined, the people begin to feel uncomfortable. The Gothic novel then, according to Hurley, can help these people in distress by giving concrete shapes to their fears.
When the Gothic novel first came up at the end of the 18th century, people in Britain were coping with the impact of the French Revolution. The tradition flourished until the 1820s, when Charles Maturin’s work Melmoth the Wanderer failed to reach a large readership⁵. In the 1890s then, which is known as the time of the Gothic revival, new Gothic figures emerged with even greater force than at the previous fin de siècle⁶. The Victorian public had undergone great changes, resulting from the British Empire being threatened by external and internal forces. Interestingly, the setting was now no longer removed in time and space; Gothic occurrences at this point revolved around the city of London. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is an important work of this era; it shows most of the new features of the New Gothic. This paper will focus on the changes in Victorian society that led to a revival of the Gothic novel and discuss the traditional as well as the new elements that have arisen in the Gothic tradition at the end of the 19th century. Wilde’s novel will hereby provide the textual evidence.

2. The Gothic genre

2.1 Origins of the Gothic tradition

Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), which is the first known Gothic novel, marks the beginning of the Gothic tradition.⁷ The work’s subtitle, A Gothick story, shows the author’s intention to produce a novel with Gothic content. Gothic was then associated with old castles, the Middle Ages and superstition⁸.
The story already shows most of the characteristics of the later Gothic tradition. Such features are the medieval setting, the use of “antiquated spaces”, some hidden secrets from the past rising from these antiquated spaces that haunt the protagonist, the prospect of the supernatural, the presence of a powerful and often aristocratic villain who exercises pressure on his subjects, the decline of primogeniture and of aristocratic rights and the rise of a new middle class, the portrayal of women in victimized positions…⁹ As in later Gothic novels of the 18th century, the author does not go into great detail when it comes to describe customs and traditions of the supposed historical era the novel is set in. The treatment of history thus remains relatively superficial.¹⁰ This can be explained when considering that the authors did not intend to teach their readers about history but to delight their growing audiences, in large part female, which were newly demanding “popular entertainment”¹¹. Ever since Walpole had succeeded in supplying this ‘entertainment’ to his readership, there was a growing demand for such novels and by the end of the 1790s, one could almost speak of an ‘addiction’.¹² Jane Austen later successfully parodied the female obsession with Gothic stories in Northanger Abbey (1818).¹³ The Gothic novel had great success until the 1820s, the most prominent writer of this period being Ann Radcliffe with her novel The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), when Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer failed financially.¹⁴ By the mid 18th century the Gothic as a literary genre was basically extinct. The term ‘Gothic’ was then predominantly applied to certain recurrent motifs in architecture.

[...]

1 Baldick, p. 106

2 Sage, p. 81

3 Sage, p. 83

4 Hurley, p. 194

5 Sage, p. 84

6 Sage, p. 85

7 Sage, p. 81

8 Baldick, p. 106

9 Sage, p. 82; Hogle, p. 2

10 Sage, p. 82

11 Sage, p. 83

12 Sage, p. 83

13 ibid.

14 Sage, p. 84