from the readership in a stagnant manner. In fact, this
becomes somewhat of a convention in the early years
of the Gothic movement.
Into the earlier years of the 1800’s, however, we
begin to see this stagnant horror move. As I have
already mentioned, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
was considered to be a reaction against the fears of
the lack of limits of modern science. Frankenstein
creates a creature made up of parts of dead
humans and manages to reanimate him – he is
essentially God in this novel. While the setting
of Frankenstein is still on the peripheral of the
English readership geographically, Frankenstein’s
creature is mobile where The Castle of Otranto is
stagnant. Frankenstein roams around the “terrifically
desolate”(Shelley, 2008, 75) Alps and the “desolate
and appalling” (Shelley, 2008, 136) highlands of
Scotland to the “majestic and strange” (Shelley, 2008,
129) Swedish mountains to end up “surrounded by
mountains of ice, which admit of no escape” (Shelley,
2008, 181) in the North pole. Frankenstein’s creature
is not stuck in one place in the same way a castle is.
He then has the capability to bring himself, and thus
everything about him that is scary, to the readership.
This is one of the first examples of a horror that can
travel, in this action the possibility of Frankenstein’s
creature affecting the readership increases.
Looking more towards the middle of the century, we
begin to encounter what Cassuto refers to as the
Urban Gothic. The Urban Gothic by definition exists
within an urban setting which automatically means
it exists closer to its readership that previous Gothic
texts. Cassuto defines it as being “marked not by
ornate arched vaults and flying buttresses, but rather
by a secularised version of the fear and foreboding
that such [Gothic] architecture could create” (Cassuto,
2017, 157). One genre that is inherently linked to the
Gothic is the detective genre and for many people the
detective is synonymous with the city. The detective
can be considered part of the Gothic genre.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is
classed as the first Detective narrative but Dupin, the
detective, is also a Gothic figure. One aspect of Dupin
that is inherently Gothic is his status as an outsider.
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The narrator tells us the “he ceased to bestir himself
in the world” (Poe, 1967, 192) and that “we should
have been treated as madmen... we existed within
ourselves alone” (Poe, 1967, 193). Dupin is set up as
a figure that can exist separate from the society of
Paris. The narrator himself labels this as the behaviour
of a ‘madman’ but it allows Dupin to be dangerous,
it allows him to be uncontrolled by society. Teresa
A Goddu writes that “Instead of fleeing reality,
[American] Gothic registers its culture’s anxieties
and social problems” (Goddu, 2007, 63). The notion
of being sperate from society and thus, not being
able to be controlled by society, was a big anxiety of
the Victorian period - one that Poe had addressed
previously in “The Man of the Crowd” and it Gothic
texts previously. It is also an anxiety that goes hand-
in-hand with crime. Rzepka argues that most people
who read detective fiction do so in order to identify
with either the detective or the criminal, or perhaps
both of them (Rzepka, 2005, 22). One reason why
the reader can interchangeably identify with each of
these figures is because they both exist in the same
sphere – apart from the rest of society. There is
always an uncomfortable tension that Dupin enjoys
solving crime that is evident from the introductory
section of the story. “As the strong man exults in his
physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call him
muscles into action, so glories the analyst in the moral
activity which disentangles” (Poe, 1967, 189). This
analogy seeks to normalise the action of the analyst
by comparing it to that of physical activity, but what
it fails to recognise is (generally) crime has to have
taken place in order for the analyst to detect. This
tension further couples Dupin with the underground
criminal – they both appear to get something out of
crime. This corresponds with Spooner and McEvoy’s
definition that the Gothic has a “commitment to
exploring the aesthetics of fear” (Spooner and
McEvoy, 2007, 1). In Poe’s text the ‘aesthetics’ are
concerned with presenting Dupin as sperate to
society, but suspiciously in-tune with criminal activity.
Consider the fact that Dupin only leaves his house
at night and that we know nothing of his family or
really anything about him other than his intelligence.
His ‘aesthetic’ then explores fear by making him
anonymous. Similar to how obscurity works, not
knowing anything about Dupin, and observing his