The Gothic Hero

Ah, the Gothic hero--thrilling creature! So very appealing and yet so very naughty, he was the creation of a kind of fiction that was, let us face it dear readers, aimed mainly at the ladies. He is the hero not in the sense that he is heroic, but in the sense that he is the main male characater--like a tragic hero, who may, like Macbeth, not be very heroic in modern terms at all. He is unlikely to rescue kittens from trees.

As such, a gothic hero is a kind of hyper-alpha male. He has some features of the tragic hero--he is the protagionist, we often see things from his point of view, and yet we can also see that he has a fatal flaw (and sometimes more than one). Often, he is a character who battles the forces of good and evil within himself (think of Milton's Satan as the pattern for this kind of hero--we sympathise, we even find him appealing, but we know which choice he ought to make).

The Gothic Hero resembles the Byronic Hero in some respects. He is generally intelligent, perhaps cunning, certainly cynical and self-aware, he is conscious of (and may share with the reader his consciousness of) his own flaws, though this doesn't seem to stop him pursuing his own way. He typically despises convention (may, like Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre, appear to despise conventional moral codes) yet is appealing and even seductive. He will often have a dark secret in his past--his identity, a etrrible thing that he has done or has had done to him--which influences his behaviour.

To put it simply--he is the ultimate rake that women want to reclaim and reform. Heathcliff is a good example. He is selfish and yet wounded, and his vulnerability shows through even his cruellest acts. Remember when he says to Isabella that he is only killing her dog because he's jealous of it? The excuse of abusive relationships down through the centuries echoes in that little exchange. It appeals to herthough, because it offers that little chink of possibility that he is sincere, and that he oves her.

Gothic heroes often have dark secrets in their past. In an early novel such as The Castle of Otranto Manfred is the hero/villain who is battling with his own wicked passions and Theodore is the hero (with the mysterious past)who is true and good and the victim of mistaken identity. In later novels they seem to more often become one and the same person, or more obviously parallel 'splits' of each other.

It's interesting that the Brontes dealt quite firmly with their gothic heroes. Mr Rochester is mutilated and blinded--'tamed'--before Jane can marry him (she rejects his offer of a bigamous marriage, or a liaison outside marriage). Heathcliff dies without ever winning Cathy so that the second generation of lovers may live peaceful lives. In Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the heronine stands up to her abusive husband altogether,and refuses to submit to his treatment--a sort of more feisty Isabella.


Gothic heroes are often made sympathetic; sometimes seen as victims even at their most vicious ('the artrocious lineliness of that monster') and often suffer through events that for others would be seen as good--such as adoption or a respectable marriage (again, think of Heathcliff here). The hero is also often seen as 'animal', at the mercy of his darker instoncts of sexuality, predatory and yet helpless (very Angela Carter). In this way, he can become a sorty of everyman figure, ruled by his passions, yet yearning to be better than that.

Gothic heroes are still popular--just think of Twilight, or Mitchell in Being HumanI quite like Kirstin Miller's take on the idea of the gothic hero. She has some good points!