Harry Potter and The Castle o f Otranto
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a powerful weapon, a nearly impenetrable fortress, but the castle denies
Voldemort possession and Harry is able to defeat him on the grounds,
thus making the world safe for future students of Hogwarts. Though
Hogwarts is severely damaged after the battle, it can be repaired and
rather than being left as a ruin, as in the case of Otranto and Udolpho, it
is reconstructed in order to continue to serve as the setting for education
and adventure.
The phenomenal success of the Harry Potter Series suggests that
Rowling was able to tap into something essential, or at least universal, to
the human experience, an idea that seems more and more fleeting in a
postmodern world devoid of a traditional center. Moreover, her use of
the Gothic castle as the setting for the series reaffirms the power of the
Gothic to impact readers over two centuries after its introduction. Yet
rather than thinking of Hogwarts as simply derivative of Otranto and
Udolpho before it, a mere twenty-first century incarnation of an older
structure, Rowling, like all good writers, leaves the Gothic castle in
better shape than when she found it. Her understanding of how Gothic
castles work allows her to manipulate them to her own ends, hardly
something new to the Gothic, but, at the same time, indicative of a writer
who is more than capable of making the Gothic castle her own. Hogwarts
remains, after seven books and one hell of final battle, standing in a long
line of Gothic castles that came before it and at the head of the line for
many modem readers, ready and able to influence the next series of
Gothic castles to come along. When considered this way, it is not a leap
to suggest that the next time a writer decides to delve into the windy
corridors of Otranto and Udolpho, perhaps they will take a moment and
dip into the Room of Requirement, for it, like the Gothic castle itself, is
only as limited as our own imaginations.
University of Nevada Las Vegas
Garland D Beasley
Notes
' For a number of such readings, see: Harry Potter and the Ivory Tower: Perspectives on
a Literary Phenomenon. Ed. Lana A. Whited. Colombia: University o f Missouri Press,
2002.
^ The seven books in the Potter series will be referred to parenthetically by the following
abbreviations: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (SS), Harry Potter and the
Chamber of Secrets (CS), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (PA), Harry Potter
and the Goblet of Fire (GF), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (OP), Harry
Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (HBP), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
(DH).