Gothic and Romantic Crowds

Abstract

Readers tend to associate the Gothic novel with solitude and with investigation of the conscience or the individual psyche. The typical Gothic heroine or hero spends a good deal of her or his time alone in subterranean passages in which candles or lamps are wont to expire; alone in contemplating ruins, sublime scenes, or sylvan landscapes; alone confined in dungeons or convents. Heroines and heroes possess both a susceptibility to feeling and an overactive imagination that lead them, when melancholic, to solitary recitation of verse and, when curious or frightened, to the mistaking of natural phenomena for supernatural interventions. The curious or frightened heroine within the work is a model for the reader who, consuming romances in a private or even furtive manner, identifies with her and thrills at sharing her fears, while the distorted perceptions that result from excessive imagination and delicate sensibility are the object of authorial investigation in the case of heroine and reader alike. However, the melancholy or anxious loneliness of the heroine pales in comparison to the utter isolation of the conscience-ridden villain, who flees from society only to find that nature provides no consolation for him. The villain creates his monsters alone, and he sells his soul in the presence of no human being. The voices he hears and the figures he sees are, likely as not, projections of his own tormented conscience. Why then do I focus on Gothic crowds?