Published: Headline Review 2006
Since Bram Stoker's Dracula, Whitby has become indelibly associated with gothic horror. It is a town quite well suited to the role, with the popularity of Whitby jet for Victorian funeral and mourning jewellery, and the atmospheric ruined abbey on the cliff top which dominates the time. At the same time, Whitby is a part of the British seaside holiday tradition - which has opposing resonances of the old fashioned and safe. All this makes it an ideal setting for Magrs' debut, a comic gothic fantasy.
Brenda has recently taken over a bed and breakfast in Whitby, which seems to her to be the ideal place for her to live a quiet life. This is something that has not often been possible for her, as her lack of a surname and scarred features suggest. (Anyone who has watched any classic horror films will guess who she is long before Magrs makes it explicit.) But strange forces are at work, and soon she and her neighbour have to deal with demonic beauty treatments, fake Christmas cheer at a Whitby hotel, spiritualist TV programmes and other bizarre incidents. The general outlines of the plot are shared with many horror satires (the supernaturally unusual trying to live a normal life is, for example, the basic premise of Buffy the Vampire Slayer), but of course it's the inventiveness of the specific incidents that matters: and here they are very good indeed. The novel reminded me of other writers of comic fantasy who I like, notably Robert Rankin (particularly the Brentford Trilogy) and Tom Holt.
Generally, Never the Bride is very enjoyable, probably the funniest debut I have read since Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair.
Showing posts with label gothic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gothic. Show all posts
Saturday, 19 May 2007
Tuesday, 27 July 2004
Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
Edition: Penguin, 2000
Review number: 1253
Sheridan Le Fanu's work has never really become an established part of the English literary scene's collection of classic novels. Although his reputation has gone up and down, and though he has boasted some quite famous fans (including Dorothy Sayers), he has always been an outsider. His Irish origins may have had something to do with this (though they didn't prevent his relation Richard Sheridan from becoming massively successful in the London theatre a couple of generations earlier), but it was perhaps more his style of writing and his subject matter. As early as the publication of Northanger Abbey in 1817, it must have been hard to write a Gothic novel intended to be taken seriously, but that was precisely what Le Fanu wanted to write, almost half a century later.
Uncle Silas was Le Fanu's first success in England, and was based on an earlier short story published in an Irish journal edited by the author. It has probably remained his best known novel ever since.
The plot of the novel is quite simple: Maud Knollyes is the daughter and heiress of a rich, eccentric recluse; when he dies, she is placed in the guardianship of her Uncle Silas. This is intended to be a public declaration of one man's confidence in his brother, for Silas was disgraced years earlier when a man to whom he owed money died in his house leaving his neighbours gossiping as to whether it was suicide or murder. Maud will be completely in her uncle's power until she reaches her majority, and if she happens to die during this time, then Silas would inherit the whole estate. Clearly, the only element missing from making this a Gothic tail is the supernatural, the source of a spine tingling chill in the reader - and this is where Le Fanu does something completely unexpected, and very modern.
For throughout the novel Le Fanu piles on the supernatural atmosphere - almost every metaphor and simile is about ghosts or magic - but the uncanny itself never appears. Most Gothic novels are full of "horrid apparitions", occult ceremonies, and so on, but nothing like that happens in Uncle Silas. Northanger Abbey does the same thing, of course, but for comic effect; Le Fanu is using the conventions of the Gothic novel to induce a similar atmosphere, without the absurdities. (This was, after all, the rational Victorian age.) While occasionally clumsy and sometimes lacking in subtlety, Uncle Silas is well written, atmospheric and tense - while the reader expects Maud to escape an uncle who then experiences his just deserts (good to the good, bad to the bad), the road to this ending is neither straight not following the most obvious route. It has funny moments too; Le Fanu may be taking the unlikely clichés of the Gothic novel seriously, but that does not mean he is lacking in a sense of humour.
Of the writers contemporary with Le Fanu, the closest to him in style was problably Wilkie Collins, and their brand of fairly genteel chills fairly soon lost out to the more flamboyant influence of writers like Poe. Nobody would be likely to place either of them in the top rank of Victorian novelists, but Uncle Silas does not deserve to be forgotten either.
Review number: 1253
Sheridan Le Fanu's work has never really become an established part of the English literary scene's collection of classic novels. Although his reputation has gone up and down, and though he has boasted some quite famous fans (including Dorothy Sayers), he has always been an outsider. His Irish origins may have had something to do with this (though they didn't prevent his relation Richard Sheridan from becoming massively successful in the London theatre a couple of generations earlier), but it was perhaps more his style of writing and his subject matter. As early as the publication of Northanger Abbey in 1817, it must have been hard to write a Gothic novel intended to be taken seriously, but that was precisely what Le Fanu wanted to write, almost half a century later.
Uncle Silas was Le Fanu's first success in England, and was based on an earlier short story published in an Irish journal edited by the author. It has probably remained his best known novel ever since.
The plot of the novel is quite simple: Maud Knollyes is the daughter and heiress of a rich, eccentric recluse; when he dies, she is placed in the guardianship of her Uncle Silas. This is intended to be a public declaration of one man's confidence in his brother, for Silas was disgraced years earlier when a man to whom he owed money died in his house leaving his neighbours gossiping as to whether it was suicide or murder. Maud will be completely in her uncle's power until she reaches her majority, and if she happens to die during this time, then Silas would inherit the whole estate. Clearly, the only element missing from making this a Gothic tail is the supernatural, the source of a spine tingling chill in the reader - and this is where Le Fanu does something completely unexpected, and very modern.
For throughout the novel Le Fanu piles on the supernatural atmosphere - almost every metaphor and simile is about ghosts or magic - but the uncanny itself never appears. Most Gothic novels are full of "horrid apparitions", occult ceremonies, and so on, but nothing like that happens in Uncle Silas. Northanger Abbey does the same thing, of course, but for comic effect; Le Fanu is using the conventions of the Gothic novel to induce a similar atmosphere, without the absurdities. (This was, after all, the rational Victorian age.) While occasionally clumsy and sometimes lacking in subtlety, Uncle Silas is well written, atmospheric and tense - while the reader expects Maud to escape an uncle who then experiences his just deserts (good to the good, bad to the bad), the road to this ending is neither straight not following the most obvious route. It has funny moments too; Le Fanu may be taking the unlikely clichés of the Gothic novel seriously, but that does not mean he is lacking in a sense of humour.
Of the writers contemporary with Le Fanu, the closest to him in style was problably Wilkie Collins, and their brand of fairly genteel chills fairly soon lost out to the more flamboyant influence of writers like Poe. Nobody would be likely to place either of them in the top rank of Victorian novelists, but Uncle Silas does not deserve to be forgotten either.
Thursday, 8 November 2001
Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
Edition: Oxford, 1983
Review number: 988
The most famous vampire story of them all has become an enduring part of the mythology of our culture. Hundreds of books, films and TV programmes have been based on the ideas in this novel; its only rival as a Gothic myth is the story of Frankenstein.
The story is told in what I suspect was a new variation on the form of the epistolary or journal novel, being supposedly a collection of documents - letters, journals and newspaper clippings - that together tell the tale of Count Dracula's involvement with Jonathan Harker and his friends. There are three distinct parts to the story - Harker's visit to the Count's Transylvanian castle; the Count's arrival in Whitby and the death of Lucy; and the campaign against the Count under the direction of van Helsing.
The novel has obvious defects. The sensationalist prose may have set the standard for trash fiction, and certainly fits the subject matter, but it would hardly win prizes for literary merit. The contributions supposedly the work of different hands all read much the same - a common defect in this sort of structure. Some of the novel's most important events are unmotivated, particularly the decision of the Count to move to Whitby (with considerable inconvenience, given his need for the soil of his homeland and the difficulty he has in crossing water) after centuries of safety in Transylvania. His meeting with friends of Jonathan Harker, who has just escaped from him in Romania, is an unlikely coincidence, too.
The reasons that the story has succeeded so spectacularly despite these defects are also quite easy to see. Stoker has taken several existing traditions and made an exciting and atmospheric whole from them. This whole is clearly related to psycholgical ideas current at the time of publication. While it would be wrong to explain away the story as being about repressed sexuality - especially female sexuality - or the subconscious, these ideas are obviously present. (The principal victim of Dracula in England is a woman, and she is transformed from a pure angelic being into a predator.) By tapping into ideas that were around at the time, Stoker ensured the immediate popularity of his novel. The themes he picked have continued to fascinate through the twentieth century, and so the myth's continued success has some connection to the way that ideas of the irrational have shaped our own time.
There is indeed an interesting strand of anti-rationality in the story; van Helsing cannot fight Dracula by explaining him away or through the application of science (the only use he makes of technology is to journey to Romania by rail rather than sea to get there before the vampire). Instead, he must attack him with knowledge of religion, arcane lore and superstition - the crucifix, stake and garlic. This is a tradition which has continued right down to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
There are repeated images of madness throughout the novel, with it being consistently used as a metaphor for the feeling experienced when under the control of the vampire. Van Helsing hypnotises Mina when she falls under Dracula's spell, and this was a technique used at the time for the treatment of the insane (by Freud, among others). There is also a character, Renfield, who is an inmate in an asylum and whose insanity, influenced by the vampire, takes the form of a need to consume animal flesh (flies, spiders, and small birds).
The vampire is in part a way to externalise this type of irrationality, just as in the past a poor farmer might blame witchcraft for failed crops. Today, people tend to blame their upbringing or the government for their own shortcomings rather than the supernatural, but the connection still makes the story compelling. Stoker has turned his psychological interests into an adventure story, and while lurid it is never so trashy as to be off-putting; those are the secrets of the success of Dracula.
Review number: 988
The most famous vampire story of them all has become an enduring part of the mythology of our culture. Hundreds of books, films and TV programmes have been based on the ideas in this novel; its only rival as a Gothic myth is the story of Frankenstein.
The story is told in what I suspect was a new variation on the form of the epistolary or journal novel, being supposedly a collection of documents - letters, journals and newspaper clippings - that together tell the tale of Count Dracula's involvement with Jonathan Harker and his friends. There are three distinct parts to the story - Harker's visit to the Count's Transylvanian castle; the Count's arrival in Whitby and the death of Lucy; and the campaign against the Count under the direction of van Helsing.
The novel has obvious defects. The sensationalist prose may have set the standard for trash fiction, and certainly fits the subject matter, but it would hardly win prizes for literary merit. The contributions supposedly the work of different hands all read much the same - a common defect in this sort of structure. Some of the novel's most important events are unmotivated, particularly the decision of the Count to move to Whitby (with considerable inconvenience, given his need for the soil of his homeland and the difficulty he has in crossing water) after centuries of safety in Transylvania. His meeting with friends of Jonathan Harker, who has just escaped from him in Romania, is an unlikely coincidence, too.
The reasons that the story has succeeded so spectacularly despite these defects are also quite easy to see. Stoker has taken several existing traditions and made an exciting and atmospheric whole from them. This whole is clearly related to psycholgical ideas current at the time of publication. While it would be wrong to explain away the story as being about repressed sexuality - especially female sexuality - or the subconscious, these ideas are obviously present. (The principal victim of Dracula in England is a woman, and she is transformed from a pure angelic being into a predator.) By tapping into ideas that were around at the time, Stoker ensured the immediate popularity of his novel. The themes he picked have continued to fascinate through the twentieth century, and so the myth's continued success has some connection to the way that ideas of the irrational have shaped our own time.
There is indeed an interesting strand of anti-rationality in the story; van Helsing cannot fight Dracula by explaining him away or through the application of science (the only use he makes of technology is to journey to Romania by rail rather than sea to get there before the vampire). Instead, he must attack him with knowledge of religion, arcane lore and superstition - the crucifix, stake and garlic. This is a tradition which has continued right down to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
There are repeated images of madness throughout the novel, with it being consistently used as a metaphor for the feeling experienced when under the control of the vampire. Van Helsing hypnotises Mina when she falls under Dracula's spell, and this was a technique used at the time for the treatment of the insane (by Freud, among others). There is also a character, Renfield, who is an inmate in an asylum and whose insanity, influenced by the vampire, takes the form of a need to consume animal flesh (flies, spiders, and small birds).
The vampire is in part a way to externalise this type of irrationality, just as in the past a poor farmer might blame witchcraft for failed crops. Today, people tend to blame their upbringing or the government for their own shortcomings rather than the supernatural, but the connection still makes the story compelling. Stoker has turned his psychological interests into an adventure story, and while lurid it is never so trashy as to be off-putting; those are the secrets of the success of Dracula.
Wednesday, 7 June 2000
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (Or: The Modern Prometheus) (1818)
Edition: Penguin, 1985
Review number: 522
The chilling story of Victor Frankenstein and the being he created from dead bodies has been popular ever since it first appeared, and is often cited as being the first modern science fiction novel. The book has greater psychological depth than the various film versions, and the relationship between Frankenstein and the monster can be (and has been) interpreted in different ways.
The plot is probably familiar to most people. An explorer in the Arctic sees two sleds, one chasing the other across the ice. He rescues a man from the rear one when there is an accident, and hears his remarkable story. Victor Frankenstein is a distinguished scientist, but was always fascinated by the speculations of outdated medieval thinkers ike Albertus Magnus. He collected together parts of dead bodies, seeking to make the man he created from them live by the power of electricity. Yet, when he is successful, he is suddenly repelled by the hideous parody of a human being that he has created and rejects him.
The monster's appearance also leads to his instant rejection by all he meets, whatever his intentions, until he starts to take revenge on his maker by murdering Frankenstein's family, one by one.
As claims to be the origination of the science fiction genre go, it is easy to see why they arise. If the difference between SF and fantasy lies in a basis in extrapolation from known science rather than in what is known to be impossible - a defensible definition - then most fantastic works before Frankenstein fall into the second category (travelling to the moon in a ship, for example). Experiments in which electrical currents caused spasms in dead frogs' legs made the production of life by electricity feasible (and this is made clear by the sections in which Frankenstein's scientific knowledge is described).
Written in a century in which belief in a creator God began to wither in Western Europe, some of the resonances of the novel were perhaps more obvious at the time when it was published than today. The relationship between marred creation and creator, creature and seemingly rejecting creator, is clearly meant to be seen as commentary on the advanced thought about Christianity at the time. Frankenstein, as creator, is depicted as having failed to fulfil his responsibilities, and his actions are seen as some justification for the crimes committed by the monster (who would have been better off if he had never been created). Frankenstein has put himself in the position of God, and cannot live up to it.
Today, there are obvious resonances between the rejection of the monster because of his appearance and the actions of racists. These were probably not intended to be as strong as they appear now. The major resonance is the separation of different parts of the personality; it would not require many changes to make the story one of a deluded man blaming an imaginary monster for his own crimes. The two main characters (Frankenstein and the monster) are ambiguous, neither fully evil nor fully pure. This is the major strength of the novel, which (in true Romantic, Gothic fashion) has the innter torture of Frankenstein at its centre.
Review number: 522
The chilling story of Victor Frankenstein and the being he created from dead bodies has been popular ever since it first appeared, and is often cited as being the first modern science fiction novel. The book has greater psychological depth than the various film versions, and the relationship between Frankenstein and the monster can be (and has been) interpreted in different ways.
The plot is probably familiar to most people. An explorer in the Arctic sees two sleds, one chasing the other across the ice. He rescues a man from the rear one when there is an accident, and hears his remarkable story. Victor Frankenstein is a distinguished scientist, but was always fascinated by the speculations of outdated medieval thinkers ike Albertus Magnus. He collected together parts of dead bodies, seeking to make the man he created from them live by the power of electricity. Yet, when he is successful, he is suddenly repelled by the hideous parody of a human being that he has created and rejects him.
The monster's appearance also leads to his instant rejection by all he meets, whatever his intentions, until he starts to take revenge on his maker by murdering Frankenstein's family, one by one.
As claims to be the origination of the science fiction genre go, it is easy to see why they arise. If the difference between SF and fantasy lies in a basis in extrapolation from known science rather than in what is known to be impossible - a defensible definition - then most fantastic works before Frankenstein fall into the second category (travelling to the moon in a ship, for example). Experiments in which electrical currents caused spasms in dead frogs' legs made the production of life by electricity feasible (and this is made clear by the sections in which Frankenstein's scientific knowledge is described).
Written in a century in which belief in a creator God began to wither in Western Europe, some of the resonances of the novel were perhaps more obvious at the time when it was published than today. The relationship between marred creation and creator, creature and seemingly rejecting creator, is clearly meant to be seen as commentary on the advanced thought about Christianity at the time. Frankenstein, as creator, is depicted as having failed to fulfil his responsibilities, and his actions are seen as some justification for the crimes committed by the monster (who would have been better off if he had never been created). Frankenstein has put himself in the position of God, and cannot live up to it.
Today, there are obvious resonances between the rejection of the monster because of his appearance and the actions of racists. These were probably not intended to be as strong as they appear now. The major resonance is the separation of different parts of the personality; it would not require many changes to make the story one of a deluded man blaming an imaginary monster for his own crimes. The two main characters (Frankenstein and the monster) are ambiguous, neither fully evil nor fully pure. This is the major strength of the novel, which (in true Romantic, Gothic fashion) has the innter torture of Frankenstein at its centre.
Friday, 14 April 2000
William Beckford: Vathek (1786)
Translation: Samuel Henley, 1786
Edition: Penguin, 1970
Review number: 480
William Beckford was an eccentric millionaire; his short novel Vathek is an eccentric novel. It is apparently a morality tale based on some of the stories in the Arabian Nights. It tells the story of Vathek, an imaginary descendant and successor of Caliph Haroun al Raschid. He has two passions: for decadent luxury (vast feasts, beautiful concubines) and arcane knowledge. When an evil looking Indian magician visits his court, his desire for knowledge becomes even greater when he sees something of the magical power of this man. He becomes willing to go to any lengths to discover his secrets, even abjuring Islam and sacrificing the fifty most beautiful children in his realm. However, the episode has been arranged by Mohammed to give Vathek a last chance to repent of his evildoing, and disaster awaits him when he fails to do so.
That there is more to Vathek than meets the casual glance is shown by the rather disturbing fact that Beckford identified himself with the antihero of his tale, and his cousin's wife Louisa with Vathek's consort Nouhinar, while they both saw her son as one of the sacrificial victims. This identification was one of the reasons that Vathek had a reputation among later Romantics similar to that enjoyed by Huysmans' Against Nature among late nineteenth century aesthetes. Vathek was a character who put his chosen pleasures above the humanity of those around him, and feeds directly into the Romantic movement's glorification of sensation and experience, so that it is not particularly surprising that Byron referred to it as his 'Bible'. There is of course an element of self-dramatisation in this; there can be few people willing to sacrifice fifty children for their own pleasure.
Edition: Penguin, 1970
Review number: 480
William Beckford was an eccentric millionaire; his short novel Vathek is an eccentric novel. It is apparently a morality tale based on some of the stories in the Arabian Nights. It tells the story of Vathek, an imaginary descendant and successor of Caliph Haroun al Raschid. He has two passions: for decadent luxury (vast feasts, beautiful concubines) and arcane knowledge. When an evil looking Indian magician visits his court, his desire for knowledge becomes even greater when he sees something of the magical power of this man. He becomes willing to go to any lengths to discover his secrets, even abjuring Islam and sacrificing the fifty most beautiful children in his realm. However, the episode has been arranged by Mohammed to give Vathek a last chance to repent of his evildoing, and disaster awaits him when he fails to do so.
That there is more to Vathek than meets the casual glance is shown by the rather disturbing fact that Beckford identified himself with the antihero of his tale, and his cousin's wife Louisa with Vathek's consort Nouhinar, while they both saw her son as one of the sacrificial victims. This identification was one of the reasons that Vathek had a reputation among later Romantics similar to that enjoyed by Huysmans' Against Nature among late nineteenth century aesthetes. Vathek was a character who put his chosen pleasures above the humanity of those around him, and feeds directly into the Romantic movement's glorification of sensation and experience, so that it is not particularly surprising that Byron referred to it as his 'Bible'. There is of course an element of self-dramatisation in this; there can be few people willing to sacrifice fifty children for their own pleasure.
Wednesday, 15 March 2000
Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1765)
Edition: Penguin, 1972
Review number: 452
Until you read some Gothic novels, it may seem strange that they are not more popular today, as the origins of the modern horror genre and parts of science fiction and fantasy. Yet the only one which has consistently survived is Frankenstein, and it could certainly be argued that it is not really a Gothic novel. As popular literature, the Gothic novel reflected the tastes of the time, tastes which are not the same as ours today. (More recent popular writers, of whom Marie Corelli is perhaps the most obvious example, have disappeared from view for similar reasons.)
The Castle of Otranto is one of the first Gothic novels, formative of the genre. It is intended to read as though it were a medieval chronicle, though Walpole's idea of a medieval chronicle is as inauthentic as Walter Scott's idea of medieval dialogue. The story is of the supernatural downfall of the usurping counts of Otranto, followed by the restoration of the true dynasty. The castle is full of hidden passages and dungeons, though we never get any real sense of its geography; its importance is to be a stage for improbably events, not to be realistic in any way.
Review number: 452
Until you read some Gothic novels, it may seem strange that they are not more popular today, as the origins of the modern horror genre and parts of science fiction and fantasy. Yet the only one which has consistently survived is Frankenstein, and it could certainly be argued that it is not really a Gothic novel. As popular literature, the Gothic novel reflected the tastes of the time, tastes which are not the same as ours today. (More recent popular writers, of whom Marie Corelli is perhaps the most obvious example, have disappeared from view for similar reasons.)
The Castle of Otranto is one of the first Gothic novels, formative of the genre. It is intended to read as though it were a medieval chronicle, though Walpole's idea of a medieval chronicle is as inauthentic as Walter Scott's idea of medieval dialogue. The story is of the supernatural downfall of the usurping counts of Otranto, followed by the restoration of the true dynasty. The castle is full of hidden passages and dungeons, though we never get any real sense of its geography; its importance is to be a stage for improbably events, not to be realistic in any way.
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