Ann Radcliffe: “Terror and Horror are so far opposite that the first expands the

soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes
and nearly annihilates them .... And where lies the differentce between horror and
terror, but in the uncertainty and obscurity that accompany the first, respecting the
dreading evil?”

Linda Bayer-Berenbaum: ‘terror is more immediate, more emotional, and less

1) “Gothic was chaotic . . . ornate and convoluted . . . excess and exaggeration, the product of
the wild and uncivilised.” (David Punter, The Literature of Terror)

2) ‘‘Gothic writers work on the fringe of the acceptable.” (David Punter, The Literature of
Terror)

3) “In the gothic tradition characters and events are exaggerated to become symbols, ideas,
passions. It retains a singular moral function – that of provoking unease.” (Angela Carter,
Afterword to Fireworks)

5) “One of the defining characteristics of the gothic genre is that of the uncanny double.”
(Laura Kranzler, Introduction to Elizabeth Gaskell’s Gothic Tales)

6) “To make anything very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary.” (Edmund
Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,
1757)

“The power of the gothic is to use the supernatural as an image for real social fears.” (Punter,
1996) – This is so good for relation to the Christmas Carol

“Vampires are strictly hierarchical…the Count embodies the charismatic power of the leader”
(Farson, 1975)

“The vampire bite is a way of imagining sex while simultaneously denying it.” (Ernest-
Jones, 1845)

Frankenstein

“The creature is a displaced version of the working class, brought to life from the limbs of the
feudal poor.” (Michie, 1988)

“Like the proletariat, the monster is denied a name and individuality, like the proletariat he is
a collective and artificial creature.” (Fischer, et. al., 1983) this is a communist reading, (Marx
1848, written at a similar time to Frankenstein
‘‘Women are at once sentimentalised and viewed as deformed or monstrous in comparison
with an explicitly male norm.” (Richardson, 1994) – Lizzy, Justine and then Carter is the case

“The language of the creature [has] a sort of beauty, in contrast with the relationship between
him and Victor which only renders him visibly ugly” (Brooks, 1978)

“The creature’s rhetorical trope is simply a reflection of Victor’s narcissism and desire for
approval.” (Vine, 1996)

“In Shelley’s view, man’s Hubris (=pride) both usurps the place of God and attempts to
sublate woman’s physiological prerogative.” (Smith, 1988) – birth

The Bloody Chamber

Duncker (1984) – “Carter is re-writing the tales within the straight jacket of their original
structures.”

Atwood (1994) – Carter questions “traditional myths about the nature of woman’’

Together they constitute a critique of the idea of adult womanhood sanctioned by patriarchy
and a suggested alternative to it.”

Bettelheim (1976) – A Courtship of Mr Lyon ‘‘constitutes a critique of idea of adult

Bettelheim (1976) – “animals in fairy tales represent our animal nature- in general terms our
‘untamed id’ more specifically our sexual impulses.”

Bettelheim (1976) – TB narrators ‘‘discovers the animal in herself- her sexuality- only to be
stripping herself of the veneer of civilization which has socialised her as a woman.”

Armitt (1997) – “The central male protagonist of ‘The Bloody Chamber’ is depicted as
metamorphic figure oscillating along the boundaries between the human and the bestial.”

Bacchilega (1997) – “Therefore, it is through the distinctive techniques of the postmodern

‘Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void,
but out of chaos.’
Mary Shelley, from her Introduction to Frankenstein, 1831

‘My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive
images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of
reverie.’
Mary Shelley, from her Introduction to Frankenstein, 1831
‘It is ironic but entirely appropriate that ... the nameless monster seems to have
usurped the name of his creator.’
M.K. Joseph, Introduction to Frankenstein, Oxford World Classics Edition, 1998

‘Horace Walpole ... attempts to blend imagination and probability. Other writers
of Gothic narratives do the same, placing the reader in that liminal state between
our real world and the world of imagined fears and horrors. They also, through
their narrative methods, provide an unsettling fragmentation of perspective, an
unnerving sense of dark truths hidden below, or embedded in, our everyday lives
...’
Bernard O’Keeffe, ‘Strange But True?’, The English Review, February 2011

‘Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. One man thinks himself the
master of others, but remains more of a slave than they.’ – Victor enslaved
himself with trying to break laws of nature, Dad in TTB spend loads because he
thought how rich he is
Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762

‘Mary Shelley is not an anti-Enlightenment figure. Her novel is not an out-and-

‘... the monster is, in a literal sense, a projection of Frankenstein’s mind, and an
embodiment of his guilt in withdrawing from his kind and pursuing knowledge,
though not forbidden, is still dangerous.’
M.K. Joseph, 1998