Arts & Literature
The Gothic Treatment of Morals and Doom
Recently I watched the classic mystery/horror movie Daughter of Darkness (1948) and the gothic element of in the movies’ theme and setting was inviting enough to make me think of writing a word or two about it.
Scanning my memory of literature for literary connections of the work, the first word coming to mind, of course, was Frankenstein—Mary Shelley’s masterpiece gothic novel. The call for morals reflected at once in both works. To see if I can get from a quick online search for more than what I remember from my reading of elements of gothic fiction, I ran a web search and found a somewhat surprising result—Jane Austen’s name in the list of gothic novelists.
My memory at once scanned for the Austen novels that I had read and the work that leapt forward to my attention was, of course, Northanger Abbey. I couldn’t think of any other works of Austen that I had read (Emma and Mansfield Park) or was familiar with via watching the adaptation (the movie Sense and Sensibility) or reading the plot summary in from of book blurbs (Pride and Prejudice) to employ the gothic.
 and the gothic element of in the movies’ theme and setting was inviting enough to make me think of writing a word or two about it. Scanning my memory of literature for literary connections of the work, the first word coming to mind, of course, was Frankenstein—Mary […])
