write Chose The Gothic Mode To Convey The Idea That Evil Was Within Humans, "As A Distortion, Warping [The] Mind", And Not As An External Malevolent Force.' (Jacqueline Howard) Discuss The Treatment Of Evil In Two Or Three Gothic Novels Studied This Term In The Light Of This Statement.
...the action. The setting is often a dark, mysterious castle, where ghosts and sinister humans roam menacingly. Horace Walpole invented the genre with his Castle of Otranto. Walpole was the first to write this type of novel and was published in 1754. The last type of the gothic novel was Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and was published 1847. Between 1794 and 1847 there were several novels were written of the same form, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1794) by Ann Radcliffe, The Monk (1796) by Matthew G. Lewis. There is usually a quite similar path the gothic novel follows. The conventional Gothic hero or heroine is usually a good person by nature, enduring an ethical calamity after which he or she returns to rigid social (mostly domestic) principles. The calamity is either initiated by the discovery of a repressed secret or by the Gothic villain. The villain is usually a male aristocrat, driven by plentiful malevolence and thoroughly corrupted. Other Gothic villains include dishonest monks or nuns or depraved family members. The repressed secret is frequently some incomplete family business: an unpunished murder of long-ago, parental abuse and filial pain, an indistinguishable sinful past of the family, some undeserved claim for a title.
This essay will focus on two specific novels of the gothic form, The Monk (1796) by Matthew G. Lewis and Northanger Abbey (1818), Jane Austen. The essay will discuss the root of evil and whether gothic novels showed evil was within humans and not owing to external manipulation. The essay will take a look at the main characters and their roles concerning evil also will view the acts of the villains.
The Monk is a novel of controversy as the main character is the villain and also a Monk, this Monk begins as a pious man but is led astray and becomes a murderous, sexually abusive criminal. The Monk is...
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