Compare and Contrast – How typical the five stories you have analysed of the gothic horror genre.  How did the Authors create tension and atmosphere of fear, using language, character and setting?

This essay will show how the five Victorian short stories are typical of the gothic horror genre.  These short stories are The Speckled Band, The Ostler, The Old Nurse’s Story, The Red Room and the Signalman.

These stories will be compared with each other to show how typical they are to the gothic horror genre.  This will be explained to show how the Author creates tension.

In the Old Nurse’s Story, The Red Room and The Ostler there are elements of supernatural which is a typical feature of the gothic horror.  For example in The Red Room, the candles keep on going out and there is no logical explanation.  “I walked back, re-lit one, and as I did so, the candle in the right sconce of one of the mirrors went out”.  “Almost immediately its companion followed it”. “There was no mistake about it, the flame vanished as if the wicks had been suddenly nipped between a finger and thumb”.

This quote shows the supernatural feature when the candles go out, but he explains this as if there was someone else in the room with him.

“The flame vanished as if the wicks had been suddenly nipped between a finger and thumb”.  A finger and thumb, meaning a ghost, or a supernatural being!

The fact that the mirrors winked, gives the effect they are alive, which creates tension, as eyes wink, so are these mirrors watching him?  This creates the feature of supernatural as this is not what mirrors usually do.

The Old Nurse’s story shares the same feature of supernatural when the little ghost girl starts banging on the window, but only Miss Rosamond can hear the ghost girl.

“Look, Hester! Look! There’s my poor little girl out in the snow!”

“I turned towards the long narrow windows, and there, sure enough, I saw a little girl…crying, and beating against the window panes as if she wanted to be let in…..  I remembered that even in the stillness of that dead cold weather, I had heard no sound”.

Showing that little Miss Rosamond could only hear the phantom child shows that she has a supernatural connection to the ghost.  This also creates tension and an atmosphere of fear as Miss Rosamond seems to be vulnerable, which means this can be linked to the Speckled Band were Miss Stoner is vulnerable from the mysterious creature that killed her sister.

In most of these short stories, women and children are the victims.  I think this is so the reader would find this to be shocking, especially in Victorian times, as women were portrayed to be inferior to men, as they were expected to stay at home and look after the house and the children.

In The Old Nurse’s Story, The Ostler has the same feature of supernatural.  In this case it’s a woman called Rebecca who tries to kill Isaac. 

“His eyes followed her.  She was a fair, fine lady, with yellowish flaxen hair and light grey eyes.  She was round at the side of the bed, speechless with no expression in her face, with no noise following her foot fall”.

This description of “no expression in her face” creates tension and fear.  No expression means you cannot tell what she is going to do to Isaac. 

The fact that no noise followed her footsteps means you could be floating, which is stereotypical of a ghost.  Ghosts are known to be the living dead, so The Ostler can be linked to the Signalman which involves the death of many people, one of them being a woman.

The stereotypical gothic horror theme of death can be linked to all the stories, apart from The Red Room and The Ostler.

Tension and an atmosphere of fear are created in many ways in these five short stories.  Characters are often one of these ways.  Depending on what way characters are described we can usually associate it with tension. 

In The Ostler, Wilkie Collins creates tension by saying that when Rebecca walked “still with no sound following the stealthy footfalls”.

This creates tension as Collins is describing Rebecca as a ghost or paranormal being.  Collins also says she came towards the “lest hand side of the bed….to the right side of the bed”.  This builds up the tension as you do not know when Rebecca is going to stab Isaac with the Buckhorn and you fear for Isaac’s life.  This can be compared to The Red Room as you fear for the characters life there too.

In the Red Room, Well’s creates a build up of tension when all the candles were ‘extinguished’, one candle after another, until the fire suddenly went out.  This creates fear and tension as we fear for the characters safety, as he is left in the mysterious darkness.