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Gothic literature can in no way be considered fundamentally conservative.

Though it is possible to find conservative readings or trends within the Gothic period, too
many radical ideas pervade the literary culture of the time to allow it be classified so
concretely. Gothicisms placement within the Romantic period, characteristic
preoccupation with the concept of originality, commentary on religion and the sublime,
and challenge to class structure and gender roles indicate that tempered radicalism may
be a more accurate position for the period on the political spectrum. An analysis of Mary
Shelleys Frankenstein supports this proposed categorization, as well as Gothic parodies
such as Jane Austens Northanger Abbey and Gothic criticisms.
The relationship between Gothicism (considered within the scope of the broader
class of Romanticism) and its predecessor, the neoclassical period, is the first indication
that Gothic works are better classified as radical than conservative. Critic David Durant
asserts that Gothicism is now considered a revolutionary movement. There is almost
unanimous agreement among recent theoreticians of the genre that the genre constitutes a
step away from the neo-classic (Durant 43). Gothicism and Romanticism both
concentrate on exploring pathos rather than revering logos, and together completely
transformed ideas about the true purpose of literature. Robert D. Hume quotes David
Daiches to affirm this revolutionary interpretation, in order to suggest that the Gothic
novel is more than a collection of ghost-story devices, the product of a dilettante interest
in the potentialities of the Middle Ages for picturesque horror" (Hume). Jerrod E. Hogle
further supports rejecting Gothicism as entirely conservative in his introduction to The
Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. He claims,
most often, though, Gothic works hesitate between the revolutionary and the
conservative No other form of writing or theatre is as insistent as Gothic on
juxtaposing potential revolution and possible reaction about gender, sexuality,
race, class, the colonizers versus the colonized, the physical versus the
metaphysical, and abnormal versus normal psychology and leaving both
extremes sharply before us and far less resolved than the conventional endings in
most of these works claim them to be (Hogle 13).
The prevalence of these radical trends implies that neither Gothic works nor Gothic
authors are staunchly conservative.

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Aside from the genres function as a contributing agent of change in the

progression of literary understanding, the method in which these authors chose to write
their works can be viewed as radical in and of itself. In fact, the English government saw
Gothic literature as revolutionary propaganda and condemned it for that very reason.
As the Revolution in France degenerated into the wholesale slaughter of the
Terror, which seemed to bury the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, much
of the reactionary ruling class in England condemned such democratic ideals as
leading inevitably to the complete collapse of society. Gothic novels were
politically censured as the terrorist system of writing, and their authors
denounced as Jacobins set on destroying England (Norton).
One of the most obvious ways that the genre could be conceived as fully
conservative is the repetition of so many archetypal elements within the novels- the
ruined castle, the lightning on the mountain, the hero and the damsel. However, these
elements are actually used to explore and reveal features that, especially in relation to the
neoclassicism of the past, are easily associated with the radical concepts of the human
psyche and sublime understanding. This is a direct reflection of Romanticism, though the
Gothics subvert the Romantic standards in various ways. Vijay Mishra, in The Gothic
Sublime, attributes the Gothic process of achieving that desired sublime understanding
to experiences with horror, while the Romantics wrote about transcendence through
nature (Mishra 2). David Morris criticism states that the Gothics used these archetypes to
reveal repressed truth about the individual and humanity, again in contrast to the natural
revelations of the Romantics (Morris 1). While the Gothic methods themselves may not
seem like a step towards the radical along the literary spectrum, the themes and results
offer a clearer progression forwards.
Looking at the implications of the storys plotline, Frankenstein is a novel that
can at first glance appear to have incredibly conservative overtones. The consequences of
scientific progress and the ideals of discovery are condemned with the creation of a
ruinous and havoc-wreaking monster, suggesting a warning against change. However,
this apparent resistance to progress actually bolsters the theory for a radical
categorization of the work. The concept of natures sublimity and power is distinctly
Romantic, and again subverted the neoclassical priorities that preceded this literary

period. Shelley concretely links her works to the Romantics by adhering to the trend of
directly referencing Miltons Paradise Lost, in the epigraph of the novel:
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me? (Shelley).
These lines imply yet another radical element of Shelleys work. She upheaves
religious norms and allows Victor the freedom, however badly it eventually fails, of
playing God. According to Jane Blumberg in her essay Frankenstein and the Good
Cause, this Milton reference appealed to the democratic ideals that the English
government condemned as part of terroristic and radical writing.
Lucifer's defiant act was heroic; challenging oppression and sacrificing personal
happiness -- a place in heaven -- to lead the cause of liberty the character of
Victor owes much to Milton's Satan. Victor's vaunting ambition defies God as
creator of man. His good intentions become clouded by his own vanity He
attempts to usurp the monolithic power of the establishment -- God -- and assert
the supremacy of mortal man. This is Satan's appeal to the radicals (Blumberg).
Frankenstein, called also the Modern Prometheus, combines these two creation stories
to propose a subversive and reflexive version of creation -- the role of God is diminished
and man celebrated as his own creator (Blumberg). However, Shelleys also mitigates
the novels radical tendencies in this area as well. Blumberg states, Shelley weaves a
new Romantic myth from those already established, but she does not accept Prometheus
unconditionally as a role model. In Prometheus Unbound [Percy Shelley] embraced the
Titan as a radical icon, though an imperfect one. Shelley is still more circumspect and
weighs the consequences of his action with considerable caution (Blumberg).
Moderate radicalism is also evident in the treatment (or in Frankensteins case,
non-treatment) of women and presence of feminist content. As the daughter of Mary
Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Shelley had a
family history of feminist concerns. Although the female characters of her novel seem to
match stereotypical ideal women, within the context of the time period this does not
actually align with a conservative attitude. Rather, writes Blumberg,

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to return to the features which betrayed Frankenstein as a product of radical
thought; it departs strikingly from the feminine novelShelley [did not] reaffirm
that marriage was the simple solution to all a woman's troubles. Other writers
such as Fanny Burney (1752-1840) and Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821) had
progressive views for women, and they reflected them by allowing their women a
wide range of character, education or experience. Nonetheless, they focussed in
the main on the heroine and a love story... In her significant shift of focus away
from this convention Shelley was less feminine or ladylike than any of the
prominent and radical women writers of her time (Blumberg).

Some critics viewed the singular role of women in typical and unprogressive roles as a
contrast deliberately created to comment negatively on gender roles. The de Lacey
daughter, Elizabeth, and Justine were all condemned to oppressive domestic roles that
Shelley exposed as problematic through their flaws and fates. Critic Mary Jacobus
perceives the absence of a mother or wife figure for the monster, and even a heroine
character at all, as symptomatic of a feminist commentary. She states,
A curious thread in the plot focuses not on the image of the hostile father
(Frankenstein/God) but on that of the dead mother who comes to symbolize to the
monster his loveless state. Literally unmothered, he fantasizes acceptance by a
series of women but founders in imagined rebuffs and ends in violence
(Jacobus).
Victors panicked destruction of the monsters requested bride provides another moment
of clear feminist commentary. Sitting in his laboratory, Dr. Frankenstein begins to
consider the consequences of allowing a female version of his monstrous creation. He
muses,
she also might turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she
might quit him, and he be alone again, exasperated by the fresh provocation of
being deserted by one of his own species. Even if they were to leave Europe and
inhabit the deserts of the new world, yet one of the first results of those
sympathies for which the daemon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils
would be propagated upon the earth who might make the very existence of the
species of man a condition precarious and full of terror (Shelley 129-130).

This evident fear of female sexuality and reproductive abilities, coupled with the attempt
at a singularly male birth that ended in incredible and horrible failure, points to the
insinuation that Victor himself recognizes the power of womanhood. He finds her
creation more threatening and powerful than the creation of the counterpart male, giving
Shelley the opportunity to comment on female oppression and misogynistic ideology.
Margaret Homans explains,
[T]he impossibility of Frankenstein giving [his creature] a female demon, an
object of its own desire, aligns the demon with women, who are forbidden to have
their own desires. But if the demon is really a feminine object of desire, why is it
a he? I would suggest that this constitutes part of Shelley's exposure to the male
romantic economy that would substitute for real and therefore powerful female
others a being imagined on the model of the poet's own self. By making the
demon masculine, Shelley suggests that romantic desire seeks to do away, not
only with tbe mother, but also with all females so as to live finally in a world of
mirrors that reflect a comforting illusion of the male self's independent
wholeness (Homans).
Shelleys criticisms of genders function within society and male-female relationships
further support the impossibility of a truly conservative Gothicism.
Shelleys challenges to social norms and specifically social class structure
demonstrate another turn away from conservative values within Frankenstein. The
monsters representation of the bigger and stronger proletariat compared to the weaker
but more wealthy and educated bourgeoisie reflects the social struggles occurring at the
time and mimics the uprising of the working class. Victor, originally superior to the
monster in circumstance and in power, is eventually superseded and held under his
creations control. When the two meet, the monster demands, You are my creator, but I
am your master; -obey! (Shelley 146). In another section, the monster defers to Victors
control under the assumption that Victor will accept patriarchal obligation of the
monsters welfare. He claims, I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to
my natural lord and king, if thou wilt also perform thy part, which thou owest me
(Shelley 93). Here, Victor symbolizes a governmental authority figure, and the monster
represents the constituent masses. His threat of revolt if Victor refuses to assume his due

charge of responsibility parallels the underlying foundations of revolution, which was a

major political issue at the time Shelley authored the novel. The de Laceys also
exemplify Shelleys criticism of the government structure. Portrayed as characteristically
good people, they suffer due to the tyrannical reign of the government that led to the
imprisonment of the father and their impoverishment. The de Laceys are described as
wholesome individuals who properly appreciate the value of human relationships. The
monster believes that nothing could exceed in beauty (Shelley 101) over the de Laceys
personal lives due to their prioritization of family over all (he condemns Victor, Walton,
and Clervals sacrifices of family in their pursuit of knowledge). Though the de Laceys
are poor and struggling working class members, they are still happier and more fulfilled
than the richer and more powerful bourgeoisie characters.
Gothic parodies offer another spin on the Gothic novel, satirizing their pop-fiction
conventions. Jane Austens Northanger Abbey caricatures Gothicism by directly
comparing the female protagonist, Catherine Morland, to an avid reader of such fiction.
When she leaves to stay in the titular Northanger Abbey with the Tilney family, she
honestly expects reality to correspond with the horrifying and dramatic Gothic
description of life in an abbey. Austen includes the names of actual Gothic novels,
namely Ann Radcliffes The Mysteries of Udolpho, as the foundations for Catherines
misunderstanding of the truly imaginative nature of the period. Catherine comes to regret
treating these fictions as fact after her imagination leads her to embarrass herself in front
of the Tilneys. Austen moralistically describes her new attitudes towards the Gothic
genre after she realizes her mistake.
She saw that the infatuation had been created, and the mischief settled long before
her quitting Bath, and it seemed as if the whole might be traced to the influence of
that sort of reading which she had there indulged. Charming as were all of Mrs.
Radcliffes works, and charming even as were the works of all her imitators, it was
not in them perhaps that human nature, at least in the midland counties of England,
was to be looked for (Austen 146-147).
However, in the introduction to the novel by Claudia L. Johnson, an important fact about
the nature of parody is pointed out. Johnson writes, Clearly, though she pokes a lot of
fun, Austen is not simply disavowing gothic. To be sure, all parody denaturalizes the

conventions of what it is parodying but at the same time, parody reaffirms and
reconstitutes what it is parodying (Johnson xiv). Johnson later relates this back to
Austens open reassertion of the Gothic through the character of Catherine. In the novel,
Catherine states, in suspecting General Tilney of either murdering or shutting up his
wife, she had scarcely sinned against his character, or magnified his cruelty (Austen
183). Johnson explains, Catherines crucial modifier scarcely shows us that she has
reached a new level of literary sophistication, revaluing gothic fiction as figural rather
than literal representation that illuminates and dignifies the ambiguous distresses,
dangers, and betrayals of ordinary life (Johnson xxiii). This explication of the figurative
representation defines the heart of the Gothic attendance to radicalism, especially in the
face of its sometimes overdone structure. Though the hero and heroine might be
traditional, their discoveries about humanity and about themselves in situations of true
fear are not.
As Frankenstein and Northanger Abbey illustrate, Gothic literature is absolutely
not fundamentally conservative. As a branch of Romanticism and an investigation into
the human condition, a more fitting general placement would be somewhere between
moderate and radical. However clich the plot, the fear and truth elicited from the
writing, as well as the underlying themes explored by the author, attest that these works
challenge both popular ideals and literary foci of the previous periods.

Bibliography

Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey ; Lady Susan ; The Watsons ; Sanditon. Oxford: Oxford
UP, 2003. Print.
Blumberg, Jane. Frankenstein and the Good Cause. Mary Shelley's Early Novels
(Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 1993), pp. 30-56. Web.
Hogle, Jerrold E. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 2002. Print.
Homans, Margaret. "Bearing Demons: Frankenstein's Circumvention of the Maternal,"
Bearing the Word: Language and Female Experience in Nineteenth-Century
Women's Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 107.
Hume, Robert D. "Gothic vs. Romantic: A Revaluation of the Gothic Novel." PMLA 84.2
(March 1969): 282-90. Web
Jacobus, Mary. "Is There a Woman in This Text," New Literary History 14.1 (1982),13233.
Mishra, Vijay. The Gothic Sublime. Albany: State University of New York Press.
1994.
Morris, David. Gothic Sublimity. New Literary History. Winter, 1993.
Norton, Rictor. Gothic Readings: The First Wave, 1764-1840. London: Leicester UP,
2000. Web.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. Print.