53 pages • 1 hour read
Laura PurcellThe Silent Companions
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context: The History of the Gothic Literary Tradition
The Gothic literary tradition began in Germany and England in the 18th century, developing alongside and drawing inspiration from the Romantic movement. In Britain, the genre was popularized by writers such as Horace Walpole, Anne Radcliffe, and Matthew Lewis. These authors’ works evoke Gothic fiction’s characteristic atmosphere of anticipation and dread through supernatural elements and bleak and foreboding settings that create a sense of the sublime, both melancholic and sinister. Gothic novels are frequently set in crumbling castles or decaying monasteries, drawing inspiration from the Middle Ages’ intimidating architecture (from which the genre itself derives its name). These environments, complete with hidden chambers, creaky floorboards, and lurking shadows, take on a personality, reflecting the protagonists’ psychological uneasiness while also painting the past as an oppressive force in the narrative present. Later Gothic-influenced works, such as Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw and Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, illustrate the centrality of setting to the genre.
Though frightening occurrences happen in Gothic stories, the horror is typically more psychological than visceral, requiring characters to fight to maintain control of their minds amid the unexplainable. Ghosts, vampires, and other mysterious beings stalk the pages of the Gothic, blurring the distinction between reality and fantasy (
