Early gothic novels are characterised by the portrayal of dark sides of both the world and personality that usually result in characters’ madness. In their psychoanalytic theories Freud, Lacan and Kristeva regard fear of uncertainty as to the most powerful human emotion thus it is clear why horror genre continues to attract attention of modern audience. As a result, gothic novels appear to be the principal source for a psychoanalytic investigation, because, according to Freud’s psychoanalysis, the evil and horror are usually inspired by people, by their powerful emotions and illusions, but not only by miraculous phenomena. In view of such cruel and complex social reality, there is no wonder that English literature has gradually turned from rationality to the unconscious, to the exploration of psychological states of characters and coexistence of good and evil in people. On the basis of supernatural powers, gothic writers uncover some elements of human mentality simultaneously the fear depicted in gothic novels reveal the negative impact of French and American Revolutions, as well as rationality of the era of Enlightenment on people’s consciousness. Such popularity can be explained by the fact that gothic novels make attempts to analyse in-depth people’s consciousness that conflicts with the existing cultural stereotypes and superstition of the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries. Nowadays gothic is advanced and changed, but it remains one of the most important genres of modern cinematography and literature. Despite the fact that gothic novels are sometimes criticised for their too gloomy plots and settings, the gothic genre has acquired unusual fame since the first gothic romance The Castle of Otranto written by Walpole.
It was in that controversial period when the gothic novel was created, reflecting the destruction of old social identity and pursuit of new identity. At the end of the eighteenth century, Great Britain began to experience various social changes that challenged the existing ideologies and evoked human consciousness. However, psychoanalysis can be successfully applied to the investigation of the emergence of modern-day horror from nineteenth-century gothic. Recently, psychoanalysis has been exposed to harsh criticism from the side of modern scholars and philosophers. The first gothic novel The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole dates back to 1765, followed by Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Bram Stoker’s Dracula that considerably advanced the gothic genre. Such a shift is inseparably connected with the spread of psychoanalysis created by Sigmund Freud, Jacque Lacan and Julia Kristeva and that gradually influenced the interpretation of early gothic romances and modern gothic horror. The Emergence of Modern Day Horror from 19th Century GothicĮxploring modern-day horror films and novels, it is possible to draw a parallel between the nineteenth-century gothic genre and contemporary horror.
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