What makes a setting Gothic?

Well, as we saw today, pretty much anywhere can be turned into a gothic setting by adding a few key features to them. Loneliness is one of these features. When people are alone they are more vulnerable and the whole setting itself becomes disconcerting and abnormal, as we are not used to being completely on our own or reading books about people completely on their own. The vulnerability of the person being on their own may be because they cannot rely on others to help them, e.g. a cry for help. Or, because they may not actually be alone, it may just seem as if they are, making the setting more spoooooky and therefore gothic.

Another feature which can be applied to pretty much any 'normal' setting to make it gothic is the 'presence of the supernatural' this links in to being alone or 'being alone' muahaha. From random openings and closings of doors to 'something' breathing down your neck. A lil bitta 'unknown presence' goes a long way in making a setting more frightening and generally gothical.

And the third idea is the 'corruption of innocence' in some way. Louis' generic 'child with teddy' becoming evil is a standard thing that may creep us out. But why is this? I hear you cry. Well, you wouldn't generally expect an 'innocent' person/thing to be corrupt, so that in itself is disconcerting. This whole 'unexpectedness' makes the setting more gothic as it means we don't know what's going to happen or maybe even what is happening, making the setting more mysterious which is normally a gothic trait.

Gothic settings dundunduuuun

Okaaay soo, 'castles' and 'vaults', in particular, seem to be recurring settings in both extracts. Castles are very big, old places which seem to provide dutifully ominous settings for the dark, mysterious deeds that occur in gothic tales. A Vault can be 'a chamber beneath a church or in a graveyard used for burials' being associated with both churches and graveyards links vaults to the common gothic themes of religion or anti-religion and death/the afterlife, making them suitably eerie settings for gothic tales.

'darkness', 'moonshine', 'wind', 'dismal' are examples of the words used in 'The Castle of Otranto' to describe the atmosphere. They are all words with fairly negative or 'scary' connotations, e.g. you cannot see what, or who, is there in 'darkness' and therefore do not know what is going to happen, causing tension and apprehension. The words 'moonshine' and 'wind' may be suggesting links with the supernatural or pathetic fallacy.

'sun', 'illuminated by torches', 'light', 'gleam', 'thunder', are all words used to describe the atmosphere in'Vathek'. This shows a less stereotypically 'gothic' atmosphere (stereotypical by the modern mind anyway), as the words have slightly less negative connotations, but more mysterious ones, e.g. 'gleam' suggests something ghostly/supernatural may be there, but not necessarily in a malevolent way.

This difference may be due to the different story lines of the texts and the different times they were written. The second text was written twenty years later. The first text is a more 'stereotypical' gothic tale of scary monsters appearing in the setting of darkened 'intricate cloisters', whereas the second text describes the architecture, 'spacious and lofty', in a less frightening, and more non-fictionally accurate (when referring to real-life gothic buildings) report of the 'gothic setting'.

Also, both texts use the word 'subteranneous', could this symbolise that gothic novels are not set in the 'normal' world alongside mere 'normal' people? And are instead underground amongst the dead or the unkown? ...YOU DECIDE.