While debates over accounts of unexplained, paranormal occurrences pervaded parlour talk, the influence of the supernatural over Victorian life was not limited to the social sphere. The supernatural was not merely a form of entertainment, of chilling ghost stories before bedtime, but an “important aspect of the Victorians’ intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and imaginative worlds, and took its place in the domestic centre of their daily lives” (Bown, Burdett, and Thurschwell 2). There is no doubt about Victorians’ deep fascination with the supernatural.
As Victorian authors and artists began to incorporate these themes into their works, the Gothic genre began to take shape. The influences of Spiritualism and psychoanalysis in Victorian popular culture did not confine itself to parlour talk, however. As ideas about the human mind became more and more developed, they also became a more prominent topic in social circles. The emergence of such psychological theories led to a piqued interest in the human mind among Victorians. The emergence of psychological theories in the late Victorian era, such as Eduard von Hartmann’s ‘The Philosophy of the Unconscious’, laid the foundations for the development of the ideologies which would eventually lead to modern psychology, such as Freud’s invention of psychoanalysis (“Eduard von Hartmann”). However, as interest in the world beyond began to grow, so did interest in the world within. Because of this spike in interest, the frequency of séances and supernatural phenomenon soon drew the attention of the public. As the Victorian era progressed, the practice of Spiritualism began to grow, both in practice and in notoriety. The themes that occur in literature are almost always a direct result of the society in which the author is immersed. Although the occurrences of insanity and the supernatural may seem coincidental or unrelated, a closer examination of the culture surrounding such literature tells a different story. Just as frequent, however, is the theme of insanity - of hallucinations, anxiety, and complete mental breakdown - particularly in Gothic texts’ weakest female characters.
When reading and reviewing Gothic texts, the prevalence of ghosts, mysterious apparitions, and unexplainable sounds and events is apparent. The truth behind the influence of Gothic literature can be found in two of its most common themes: the supernatural and madness. While some may attribute the genre’s sudden gain in popularity to a shift in the interests of writers and artists, it is impossible to ignore the various social factors that influenced the eerie genre’s uprising.
However, the genre did not truly take off until the Victorian era, which spanned most of the nineteenth-century. Gothic literature began in the mid-eighteenth-century with Horace Walpole’s ‘The Castle of Otranto’, which is widely considered to the first true work of Gothic fiction (‘The Castle of Otranto’).
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