Macbeth--dark doings

I think it's time I considered Macbeth in this blog. In many ways, one of my favourite plays (certainly the most memorable in many ways--if not the most edifying). One thing that always strikes me in the play is the ways in which images of darkness and light are used in the play. They are there from the first moments, when the thunder and lightning that opens the play introduces the witches, through the frequent invocations of darkness made by both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, to the bloody conclusion of the play, where Macbeth exclaims ‘I gin to be aweary of the sun’. Perhaps more than in any other play by Shakespeare, this dichotomy of light and dark dominates the imagery used throughout by all the major characters.

This sharp differentiation of light and dark, a focus on shadows, as well as a symbolic interpretation of what darkness might represent are all features of later gothic writing. When thinking about Macbeth as a gothic play, it is therefore worth examining how the literal distinction between darkness and light, or night and day, becomes transmuted, throughout the play, into a powerful symbolism that reflects good and evil.

There's a theory that all the scenes take place in darkness, or near-darkness (dawn and dusk). Very gothic. Do you think there's enough evidence to back this idea up?

Truth is stranger than fiction...

Just as I wrote the post below... What do I find? Truly there is nothing new under the sun.

Is Gothic literature the equivalent of today's chicklit?

Just because it is rather focused on alpha males and trembling heroines--and also because it was considered to be not very serious literature at the time of writing. Certainly Mrs Radcliffe was considered to be very 'girly' in its target audience, as Austen points out. Her hero Henry Tilney is seen as being very much a 'new man' in admitting to liking Gothic novels... interesting side question, is Henry Tilney deliberately opposed to the type of the Gothic hero, ot is he a version of one?

When I was at school, back in the dawn of time, we would never have studied Wuthering Heights as a Gothic text, because the Gothic was seen by my teachers to be a little trashy in some ways, though to be fair they had fairly high standards when it came to the canon (certainly we wouldn't have done Frankenstein for GCSE, for instance, that would have been very lowbrow) and to think of a text as a 'gothic novel' would be to diminish its importance as a serious novel. I suppose this is a hangover from the 'follow-ups' to the Gothic, the Victorian 'sensation' novel. Texts such as East Lynne (which inspired Mrs Doubtfire) or Lady Audley's Secret were certainly not the kind of literature you could study for an exam. How things have changed!

You can see this view reflected in Austen's take-off of it in Northanger Abbey, which shows you how long ago I was at school (about 1789), but it lasted for quite a long time. Now, of course, we look at the Brontes and there are plenty of gothic features, and it seems strange to think that such a novel wasn't always in that genre... What do you think?

The Company of Wolves-The Wedding Party

Look everyone--some truly easy gothic revision. Question for discussion--how closely do you think it relates to Angela Carter's real themes?

Liminal Matters

The Latin word for threshold is Limen, and for this reason we have the adjective 'liminal', which is a key word for the Gothic. A liminal state has been described as a state where identity becomes uncertain, a state of transition or disorientation, where normal boundaries and sensations are dissolved.

In Gothic Literature, the idea of the liminal, and of liminal spaces, is an important one. You only have to think about Gothic texts for a little while to see how important the concept can be. So you might consider how Frankenstein (the scientist, not the creature) breaks boundaries with his research, or how Cathy in Wuthering Heights climbs into windows (and all that symbolises!) or how Dracula creates a sense of the normal boundaries of life and death being shifted and changed, or how the gate of Hell is described in Paradise Lost.

Thresholds mean doors, which may open into experiences, different worlds, for good or bad. Can you think of any other examples of liminal spaces in the texts that we have studied? In The Bloody Chamber it seems to me that thresholds of more than one kind are important--what do you think?