The Victorian Literature of Fear

Abstract

This article examines the prolific field of literary criticism on the Victorian gothic. It begins by offering a brief history of the genre and by delineating differences between its eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century manifestations. The article then isolates major critical discussions on the important triad of anxiety, monstrosity, and identity, focusing primarily on the last fifteen years. Among the most promising developments are recent interventions from queer theory, postcolonial studies, and economic theory. The final part of the article offers suggestions for future research, calling for a balance between a particularizing and expansive approach to the gothic.

Victorian gothic soundscapes

“…Through their terrifying depictions of monstrous bodies, disembodied voices, and scientific experiments gone awry, Victorian gothic texts forced readers to confront issues surrounding definitions of the human from a more critical perspective and apply scientific frameworks not previously available. Revisiting Aviva Briefel's () question regarding why the gothic is “so good at insinuating itself into multiple periods and fictions” (p. 509), one might argue that it not only engages sound to approach perpetual questions about humanness but also possesses sound‐like qualities that contribute to its mobility and pervasiveness. Robert Mighall's () sense of the Victorian gothic as a mode defined by “its attitude to the past and its unwelcome legacies” (p. xix) suggests that like Wollaston's imagined realms of sound, the Victorian gothic might be excavated to recover histories that have faded from consciousness and expose other forms of existence.…”

“…As Briefel () claims at the start of her review of gothic criticism, the Victorian gothic is haunted by the inaugural period of the genre that many sonic studies tend to focus on: 1764 to 1820 (p. 508). Some of the key features that have emerged through efforts to define the Victorian gothic include its blending of contemporary sensibilities with past anxieties (Wolfreys, ), its shift from the Romantic concern with “psychological and imaginative limits” to the Victorian concern with how “the boundaries crossed by science transform the understanding of humanity's place in the natural world” (Botting, , p. 13), its creation of monsters, and its evocation of “less containable” fears (Briefel, , p. 510). While changes in the soundscape are certainly not the root of these differences, the role of sound within Victorian gothic fiction departs from earlier gothic texts in ways that correspond to many of these characteristics.…”

“…Close listening becomes a necessary skill for successfully navigating “a world at large—and in flux,” to borrow Picker's () phrase. Meanwhile, the importance for Victorian scholars arises from how interpreting gothic bodies through sound might provide alternative modes of knowing the Victorians, clarify how the genre intervenes in conversations about issues like embodied experience and taxonomic classification, and reshape the critical language used to describe the gothic by adding new dimensions to commonly used terms like “excessive,” “pervasive,” and “unspeakable” (Botting, ; Briefel, ; van Elferen, ).…”