The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction. Dorothy Scarborough
influence of the crude scientific thought and investigation of the eighteenth century is apparent in the Gothic novels. Frankenstein, as we have seen, was the outcome of a Romantic, Darwinian dream, and novels by Godwin, Shelley, and Maturin deal with the theme of the elixir of life. William Beckford’s Vathek has to do with alchemy, sorcery, and other phases of supernatural science. Zofloya, Mrs. Dacre’s diabolical Moor, performs experiments in hypnotism, telepathy, sorcery, and satanic chemistry. And so in a number of the imitative and less known novels of the genre science plays a part in furnishing the material. There is much interest in the study of the relation of science to the literature of supernaturalism in the various periods and the discoveries of modern times as furnishing plot material. The Gothic contribution to this form of ghostly fiction is significant, though slight in comparison with later developments.
The Gothic Ghosts.
The Ghost is the real hero or heroine of the Gothic novel. The merely human characters become for the reader colorless and dull the moment a specter glides up and indicates a willingness to relate the story of his life. The continuing popularity of the shade in literature may be due to the fact that humanity finds fear one of the most pleasurable of emotions and truly enjoys vicarious horrors, or it may be due to a childish delight in the sensational. At all events, the ghost haunts the pages of terror fiction, and the trail of the supernatural is over them all. In addition to its association with ancient superstitions, survivals of animistic ideas in primitive culture, we may see the classical and Elizabethan influence in the Gothic specter. The prologue-ghost, naturally, is not needed in fiction, but the revenge-ghost is as prominent as ever. The ghost as a dramatic personage, his talkativeness, his share in the action, reflect the dramatic tradition, with a strong Senecan touch. The Gothic phantoms have not the power of Shakespeare’s apparitions, nothing approaching the psychologic subtlety of Hamlet or Julius Cæsar or the horrific suggestiveness of Macbeth, yet they are related to them and are not altogether poor. Though imitative of the dramatic ghosts they have certain characteristics peculiar to themselves and are greatly worth consideration in a study of literary supernaturalism.
There are several clearly marked classes of ghosts in Gothicism. There is the real ghost that anybody can pin faith to; there is the imagined apparition that is only a figment of hysterical fear or of a guilty conscience; and there is the deliberate hoax specter. There are ghosts that come only when called—sometimes the castle dungeons have to be paged for retiring shades; others appear of their own free will. Some have a local habitation and a name and haunt only their own proper premises, while others have the wanderlust. There are innocent spirits returning to reveal the circumstances of their violent demise and to ask Christian burial; we meet guilty souls sent back to do penance for their sins in the place of their commission; and there are revenge ghosts of multiple variety. There are specters that yield to prayers and strong-minded shades that resist exorcism. It is difficult to classify them, for the lines cross inextricably.
The genealogical founder of the family of Gothic ghosts is the giant apparition in The Castle of Otranto. He heralds his coming by an enormous helmet, a hundred times larger than life size, which crashes into the hall, and a sword which requires a hundred men to bear it in. The ghost himself appears in sections. We first see a Brobdignagian foot and leg, with no body, then a few chapters later an enormous hand to match. In the last scene he assembles his parts, after the fashion of an automobile demonstration, supplies the limbs that are lacking and stands forth as an imposing and portentous shade. After receiving Alfonso’s specter—Alfonso will be remembered as the famous statue afflicted with the nose-bleed—he “is wrapt from mortal eyes in a blaze of glory.” That seems singular, considering the weighty material of which he and his armor are made. There is another interesting specter in the castle, the monk who is seen kneeling in prayer in the gloomy chapel and who, “turning slowly round discovers to Frederick the fleshless jaws and empty sockets of a skeleton wrapped in a hermit’s cowl.”
Clara Reeve’s young peasant in The Old English Baron, the unrecognized heir to the estate, who is spending a night in the haunted apartment, sees two apparitions, one a woman and the other a gentleman in armor though not of such appalling size as the revenant in Otranto. The two announce themselves as his long-lost parents and vanish after he is estated and suitably wed. Mrs. Radcliffe[9] introduces the shade of a murdered knight, a chatty personage who haunts a baronial hall full of men, and at another time engages in a tournament, slaying his opponent.
Mrs. Bonhote[10] shows us a migratory ghost of whom the old servant complains in vexation:
Only think, Miss, of a ghost that should be at home minding its own business at the Baron’s own castle, taking the trouble to follow him here on special business it has to communicate! However, travelling three or four hundred miles is nothing to a ghost that can, as I have heard, go at the rate of a thousand miles a minute on land or sea.
In this romance the baron goes to visit the vault and has curdling experiences.
“A deep groan issues from the coffin and a voice exclaims, ‘You hurt me! Forbear or you will crush my bones to powder!’ ” He knocks the coffin in pieces, whereupon the vocal bones demand decent burial and his departure from the castle. Later the baron sees the ghost of his first wife, who objects to his making a third matrimonial venture, though she has apparently conceded the second. In the same story a young woman’s spook pursues one Thomas, almost stamping on his heels, and finally vanishing like a sky-rocket, leaving an odor of brimstone behind. A specter rises from a well in The History of Jack Smith, or the Castle of Saint Donats,[11] and shakes its hoary head at a group of men who fire pistols at it.
The Castle of Caithness[12] shows a murdered father indicating his wounds to his son and demanding vengeance. An armored revenge ghost appears in Count Roderick’s Castle, or Gothic Times, an anonymous Philadelphia novel, telling his son the manner of his murder, and scaring the king, who has killed him, to madness. The revenge ghosts in the Gothic do not cry “Vindicta!” as frequently as in the early drama, but they are as relentless in their hate. In Ancient Records, or The Abbey of St. Oswyth,[13] the spirit of a nun who has been wronged and buried alive by the wicked baron returns with silent, tormenting reproach. She stands beside him at midnight, with her dead infant on her breast.
Suddenly the eyes of the specter become animated. Oh!—then what flashes of appalling anger dart from their hollow orbits on the horror-stricken Vortimer! Three dreadful shrieks ring pealing through the chamber now filled with a blaze of sulphurous light. The specter suddenly becomes invisible and the baron falls senseless on his couch.
Scant wonder! In the same story Rosaline, the distressed heroine, is about to wed against her will, when a specter appears and forbids the bans. Again, Gondemar has a dagger at her throat with wicked intent, when a spook “lifts up his hollow, sunken countenance and beckons with angry gestures for his departure.” Gondemar departs!
Another revenge ghost creates excitement in The Accusing Spirit. A murdered marquis appears repeatedly to interested parties and demands punishment on his brother who has slain him. Another inconsiderate specter in the same volume wakes a man from his sleep, and beckoning him to follow, leads him to a subterranean vault, stamps his foot on a certain stone, shows a ghastly wound in his throat and vanishes. On investigation, searchers find a corpse in a winding-sheet beneath the indicated spot. Another accusing spirit appears in the same story—that of Benedicta, a recreant nun, who glides as a headless and mutilated figure through the cloisters and hovers over the convent bed where she “breathed out her guilty soul.” The young heroine who has taken temporary refuge in the convent and has to share the cell with this disturbing room-mate, is informed by an old nun that, “Those damned spirits who for mysterious purposes receive permission to wander over the earth can possess no power to injure us but that which they may derive from the weakness of our imagination.” Nevertheless, the nervous girl insists on changing her room! Another famous cloistered ghost, one of the pioneer female apparitions of note, is the Bleeding Nun in Lewis’s The Monk, that hall of Gothic horrors. He provides an understudy for