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Chelsea Ramsey
Mr. Rousseau-Smith
The Gothic Time Period and its Influence on Literature, Architecture, and Paintings
What is Gothic? Gothic can be many things. From architecture to literature the
Gothic movement has had a lot of impact. Gothic writers “exalted the sublime, and
appealed to the reader’s imagination” (“The Gothic Experience,” 5).
The meaning of the term Gothic is based on perspective, it’s a concept that is
“neither wholly formal nor historical [and it] enjoys a certain haziness, allowing the
actual word to mean what users want it to mean” (Recht, 1). However, the term Gothic
originated for a Germanic tribe called “Goths” who were considered barbaric. Therefore,
Gothic has become associated with being barbaric and savage. So what is the Gothic
time period? The Gothic time period started during the middle ages with its architecture
but didn’t have a major influenced literature until approximately 1785, during the
Romantic period. It was after the French Revolution that gothic literature became more
popular. After both the American, and later the French, Revolution people didn’t want to
read stories about how happy and perfect everything was. People began writing stories
about the way they saw the world.
The first piece of gothic literature was entitled The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic
Story by Harace Walpole. It was when other author’s, who imitated this style, wrote
gothic stories that they decided to name the genre Gothic, taking the name from the
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original work. This new genre created excitement from the people. They “found the
novel electrifyingly original and thrillingly suspenseful” (“The Gothic Experience,” 1). The
gothic style contains remote settings, supernatural elements, medieval buildings, evil
villains, and a heroines struggle. During the seventeenth century people began to pair
Gothic and politics together, saying they were related. Gothic was seen as a good
influence to the people until the eighteenth century. After the Reformation there were
two main religions, the Germanic Protestant and the Roman Catholics. The Germanic
Protestants believed in standards of freedom, while Roman Catholicism continued their
rituals and superstitious ideas. Early in gothic literature the writings “suggested a
nostalgia for a pristine past while simultaneously wallowing in the hauntings and
supernatural events that originated in Catholic ritual” (“History of Gothic Writing”).
These supernatural events and “hauntings” are major elements of Gothic literature.
In Gothic literature there are many motifs that can be used. A particular work may
not have all of these but will have a mix of them. Some of them are the castle, which is
haunted, the forest, the graveyards, churches, demons, and knowledge or power that is
forbidden. There are many more motifs and symbols that can be used, such as the
monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, who became an outcast because everyone
was too scared of him to give him a chance to communicate.
As gothic literature progressed authors began using the dangers of science in
their stories as a theme. In Shelley’s Frankenstien Victor Frankenstein creates a
monster. He doesn’t realize the mistake he made until he wakes it up. “How can I
describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch from whom with
such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form” (Shelley, 51)? In this we see the
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dangers that science can possess if used improperly. Gothic literature emphasizes that
we should be careful in how we use scientific knowledge.
It not only warns us against the improper use of sciences but another theme
seems to be persecuted women. Many pieces of gothic literature will have a woman
who is in distress. Usually gothic stories with women in distress will “contain images of
women who have gone insane, have been kept captive by tyrannical men, or have been
murdered” (Lake).
With Gothic literature a major characteristic is having multiple narrators and a
story within a story. This is the case with both Frankenstein and Joseph Conrad’s Heart
of Darkness. Although Heart of Darkness isn’t considered a fully gothic story it has
some key elements of Gothic writing, such as the multiple narrators and stories. More
elements that it contains are the exotic setting in Africa and the senses of fear and
horror. It also contains the “general focus on the emotional rather than the rational”
(Origins).
With all these symbols, themes, and recurring images it is easy to see that a
Gothic story is not a happy story. In fact it is just the opposite. There are no happy
endings and happy love stories. Although there may be happiness and love somewhere
it is only for a brief moment and it will never end the way we want it to.
Usually in a Gothic story everything bad happens during the night. We see this in
Frankenstein when Victor has created the monster or when the monster is causing
destruction in the towns and with the people. It is usually on a dark, gloomy, or stormy
night when events such as these take place in any Gothic story. During the daytime is
that moment of brief happiness that occurs. Even when someone dies it is most likely at
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night. The darkness represents the bad or evil that is going on at the time. Whereas, the
light represents the good. The darkness is a simple way to determine whether a story is
Gothic or not.
Other things that can determine if a piece of literature is Gothic are “extreme
situations, anxiety…threat, paranoia; exaggerated villains and innocent victims” (LloydSmith, 133), plus many more images and symbols. Another major identifier is the
destruction of the family. With Gothic literature they try to destroy the family because it
is “considered a stable unit” and “if the family cannot offer security, nothing can” (Malin,
50). Without the support of their family nothing seems to go right. Once the family is
broken down everything after that just contributes to their downfall.
Many things are involved when it comes to writing a piece of Gothic literature.
Whether it be the symbols of the haunted castle, the labyrinths, and the forests, or
whether it is the themes of forbidden knowledge, misuses of science or persecution of
women. Each image and character is contributory to the meaning of Gothic and has its
own role. Darkness, various narrators, and even vampires are all major parts of the
Gothic writings. Although Gothic literature was “widely reviled as infantile, depraved,
and potentially corrupting, American Gothic appealed to the popular audience in a
rapidly growing readership” (Lloyd-Smith, 25).
Not only did the Gothic time period influence literature but it also had an influence
on architecture. Probably one of the most famous Gothic buildings is the Notre-Dame
de Dijon cathedral. The Notre-Dame de Dijon is considered a piece of architecture that
is “prodigiously ingenious and the only system capable of meeting the needs of modern
architecture” (Recht, 13).
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Gothic cathedrals were religious churches which originated in France and began
to spread quickly throughout Europe. Their characteristics include stained glass
windows, arches, vaulted ceilings, and gargoyle statues. The floor plan of the Gothic
cathedral was usually designed with the head of the church facing the east. This was in
the same style as the churches that were built before the Gothic design. As for the rest
of the floor plan it was designed and decorated according to biblical themes.
The north façade, associated with cold and darkness, is where depictions
of Old Testament themes are found. The south, which received the most
light, is usually given over to stories from the New Testament. The
western façade, which witnesses the setting of the sun, is devoted to
depictions of the Last Judgment (Gothic Cathedral, 3).
The Gothic cathedral was designed by a man of the name of Suger. When Suger
was born his father gave him to a monastery and “became the politically powerful Abbot
of the St-Denis monastery” (Lienhard). He wanted to create a church that helped people
see the beauty of God and that “we could come to understand absolute beauty, which is
God, only through the effect of beautiful things on our senses” (Lienhard). It was with
this belief that he created what we know call the Gothic cathedral. He believed that the
geometric shape of the cathedral “is the source of all beauty because it exemplifies the
laws by which divine reason made the universe itself” (Lienhard). It was because of this
belief that Gothic cathedrals were constructed with the large, stained glass windows, the
arches, spires, and buttresses.
The way Gothic cathedrals were set up was so they could tell stories from the
Bible. The stained glass windows would have images in them of Jesus or Mary and they
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would tell you of different events, such as the birth of Jesus. The way the Gothic
cathedral is set up makes the viewer’s eyes constantly moving about, looking from one
thing to the next. In Roland Recht’s book Believing and Seeing the Art of Gothic
Cathedrals Recht states:
“Gothic” art is first and foremost and abundance of visual images that
make architecture their support. But the architecture itself is treated as an
image; it solicits attention continually, one form pointing to another in
accordance with a play of relationships, never allowing the human eye to
rest. Never were forms so numerous or so complex, giving visible shapes
to the teachings of Scripture, with pride of place taken by the Incarnation
and its, final tragic, act Passion – which allowed evil, cruelty, hatred, and
suffering to enter the artistic representation.
With this we can see the complexity the Gothic cathedral is constructed with.
They were purposely created to capture the stories within the Bible. Each item, such as
the stained glass windows, serves a purpose in creating that affect. For example the
large stained glass windows provide the cathedral with lots of light and to capture
theological ideas. When Suger thought of this it was to capture that when “the spirit of
God passed through the womb of the virgin, losing nothing of his divinity in the process,
so the light passes through the material of the glass and yet maintains its illuminating
properties” (Gothic Cathedral, 4).
Every aspect in the Gothic cathedral has a meaning toward religion. They aren’t
buildings of darkness and evil but a place to worship and to remember the stories within
the Bible. They were considered artistic because of their intricate designs and patterns.
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Along with cathedral there was also Gothic art. The characteristics of Gothic
paintings are not like the cathedrals, “Gothic painting is first of all a predominance of
line, be it scrolling, undulating or fractured, and ultimately an ornament tied to the plane”
(Gothic Era). When a painting has a person in it they are dressed in robes that depict
the Gothic era. Another characteristic would also be the curving of the human body.
They were never straight but always curved to resemble a sort of S-shape. While the
body was curved the face had the shape of an oval.
Throughout the time of the Gothic paintings the way the people were dressed
changed, although the faces remained the same shape.
Draperies in the preceding Early and High Gothic periods assume —
again in painting as in sculpture — a far greater variety of expressions.
Predominant, however, are thinner, more close-fitting robes with long,
parallel folds. Narrow pleats are common. In the final phase of the Gothic
style, which follows a “Baroque” phase of overspilling, rounded folds, one
stereotype replaces another. While robes remain lavishly cut, their folds
now assume a crystalline sharpness. (Gothic Era)
With these characteristics the people also possessed beards and thick curls of hair. The
Gothic paintings originated in France where there where still the remains of classical
buildings. It was these buildings, and the study of them, that inspired the paintings and
“the development of Gothic forms of ornament and a new image of man” (Gothic Era).
It was the time of the Gothic movement that inspired so many works of art. From
cathedrals and paintings to literature we see what “Gothic” means. Today it may mean
darkness and something that is evil, but when it started it was about God and religion.
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Cathedrals represented the Bible while literature could mean anything from religion to
the misuses of science and knowledge. Although the ending of a Gothic novel is never a
happy one they show us what could really happen in such instances. If we tried to be
God-like and create a person from extra body parts, such as in Frankenstein, we would
realize that we are just people with lesser power. We cannot create something that is
not in our power to do so. As a society we learn from these types of stories the dangers
of too much knowledge. We should be careful with the gain of knowledge and power. If
we misuse it we will ultimately meet our downfall.
At the time of Gothic arts we see that people were just depicting how they saw
the world or how it would end up. Cathedrals were meant to inspire religion. They were
constructed in such a way that everything was about God. Everyone was aware that
there was a higher power. We as people can’t decide what happens to the world. We do
not have all the knowledge there is and we aren’t meant to know everything, although
many people think that we should. There are some things that are not meant for us to
know and Gothic literature encapsulates that. With the cathedrals and paintings
representing Biblical themes it is another reminder that there is a higher power and that
there are some things out there in the world that are not meant for our knowledge. While
knowledge and science can be a wonderful thing, if used incorrectly it will only ruin us.
According to the Gothic period God is the most important thing and if we misuse power,
knowledge, and science we will be lead to disaster.
Works Cited
Recht, Roland. Believing and Seeing: the Art of Gothic Cathedrals. Chicago: University
of Chicago, 2008. Print.
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Lloyd, Smith Allan. American Gothic Fiction: an Introduction. New York: Continuum,
2004. Print.
Malin, Irving. New American Gothic. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1962. Print.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2003. Print.
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