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140-489: Rachel Dyer: A North American Story is a Gothic historical novel by American writer John Neal . Published in 1828 in Maine , it is the first bound novel about the Salem witch trials . Though it garnered little critical notice in its day, it influenced works by Nathaniel Hawthorne , Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , John Greenleaf Whittier , and Walt Whitman . It is best remembered for

280-592: A Hindu widow, though, under the Act, the widow forsook any inheritance due her from her deceased husband. Social stigma in Joseon Korea required that widows remain unmarried after their husbands' death. In 1477, Seongjong of Joseon enacted the Widow Remarriage Law, which strengthened pre-existing social constraints by barring the sons of widows who remarried from holding public office. In 1489, Seongjong condemned

420-473: A boy. Years later he interacted with Neal as a regular contributor to Brother Jonathan magazine while Neal was editor in 1843. Rachel Dyer is the first fictionalized account of the Salem witch trials story in a bound novel, being preceded only by Salem, an Eastern Tale (1820), which was published anonymously to little notice and low distribution in serial form by a New York City literary journal. Neal's novel

560-537: A cause of the witch hysteria. As presented in the novel, Indigenous Americans represent life, though the Puritans associate them with death and dismiss their insight. Neal's choice to give Burroughs a multiracial identity and have him navigate between white and Indigenous worlds is interpreted as a challenge to the concepts of national unity and imperialism. According to Carlson and Edward Watts, Neal used that mixed-race identity to critique colonial America while implying that

700-598: A counter to the naive and persecuted heroines usually featured in female Gothic of the time, and instead feature more sexually assertive heroines in their works. When the female Gothic coincides with the explained supernatural , the natural cause of terror is not the supernatural, but female disability and societal horrors: rape , incest , and the threatening control of a male antagonist. Female Gothic novels also address women's discontent with patriarchal society, their difficult and unsatisfying maternal position, and their role within that society. Women's fears of entrapment in

840-545: A female named Catherine, conceives herself as a heroine of a Radcliffean romance and imagines murder and villainy on every side. However, the truth turns out to be much more prosaic. This novel is also noted for including a list of early Gothic works known as the Northanger Horrid Novels . The poetry, romantic adventures, and character of Lord Byron —characterized by his spurned lover Lady Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad and dangerous to know"—were another inspiration for

980-529: A female vampire, is notable for its treatment of vampirism as both racial and medicalized. The vampire, Harriet Brandt, is also a psychic vampire , killing unintentionally. In the United States, notable late 19th-century writers in the Gothic tradition were Ambrose Bierce , Robert W. Chambers , and Edith Wharton . Bierce's short stories were in the horrific and pessimistic tradition of Poe. Chambers indulged in

1120-470: A founding body of the US. Neal was at the forefront of the early American literary nationalist movement, which he implies with this novel is deeply connected to the creation of a new legal system that abandons common law through codification . Rachel Dyer was published the same year as Noah Webster's first dictionary . Literature scholar John D. Seelye feels that both books represented a broader literary search for

1260-484: A ghostly nun, and its view of Roman Catholicism as exotic and heathenistic. Nathaniel Hawthorne 's novel The House of the Seven Gables , about a family's ancestral home, is colored with suggestions of the supernatural and witchcraft ; and in true Gothic fashion, it features the house itself as one of the main characters, The genre also heavily influenced writers such as Charles Dickens , who read Gothic novels as

1400-493: A lawyer like himself with persuasive speaking techniques the adolescent Neal learned as a dry goods salesman. Given his interest in history and law, Neal would have been drawn to the Salem court records as research material for the novel. The title character and heroine, however, having no basis in history, he named in honor of his sister, Rachel Wilson Neal. Like his magazine The Yankee , which also launched in 1828, Rachel Dyer may have been part of Neal's campaign to win back

1540-417: A long terminal illness. In addition, both men and women have been observed to experience lifestyle habit changes after the death of a spouse. Both sexes tend to have a harder time looking after themselves without their spouse to help, though these changes may differ based on the sex of the widow and the role the spouse played in their life. The older spouses grow, the more aware they are of being alone due to

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1680-463: A national American identity. Neal commented on this search by making the greatest opponent to common law in his novel, George Burroughs, of mixed English and Indigenous American ancestry and upbringing. Writing indigenous and racially mixed characters into his novels is one of the ways Neal fashioned his literary nationalist brand. As a Gothic novel, Rachel Dyer uses gloomy narration, associates dark spaces with immorality, depicts New England forests as

1820-462: A number of stories that fall within the Gothic genre or contain Gothic elements. They include " Saint John's Eve " and " A Terrible Vengeance " from Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1831–1832), " The Portrait " from Arabesques (1835), and " Viy " from Mirgorod (1835). While all are well known, the latter is probably the most famous, having inspired at least eight film adaptations (two now considered lost), one animated film, two documentaries, and

1960-465: A persecuted heroine fleeing from a villainous father and searching for an absent mother. At the same time, male writers tend towards the masculine transgression of social taboos . The emergence of the ghost story gave women writers something to write about besides the common marriage plot, allowing them to present a more radical critique of male power, violence, and predatory sexuality. Authors such as Mary Robinson and Charlotte Dacre however, present

2100-495: A picture of a heterogenous nation that dismisses Old World precedent and encourages discourse between races and nationalities. Like many of his other novels, Neal used Rachel Dyer to experiment with phonetic transcriptions of Yankee dialect , which is assigned to minor characters like Robert Eveleth, the court bailiff, and frontier townsfolk at the Battle of Fort Loyal. This is Neal's attempt at literary realism and at conceptualizing

2240-455: A preacher of the word of truth. But you may — what is there to hinder you?   Thee will not?   No.   Nor will I. Dialogue is the predominant vehicle for Neal's experiments with writing style in Rachel Dyer , overshadowing plot and characterization. This is particularly the case in courtroom scenes, which make up two-thirds of the book's length, and that provide

2380-499: A rational age. Initiating a literary genre, Walpole's Gothic tale inspired many contemporary imitators, including Clara Reeve 's The Old English Baron (1778), with Reeve writing in the preface: "This Story is the literary offspring of The Castle of Otranto ". Like Reeve, the 1780s saw more writers attempting his combination of supernatural plots with emotionally realistic characters. Examples include Sophia Lee 's The Recess (1783–5) and William Beckford 's Vathek (1786). At

2520-451: A series of short stories, but the editor rejected it. The essay is a manifesto for American literary nationalism, a movement of which Neal was at the forefront in the 1820s. The product of one of the most aggressive among early literary nationalists, per scholar Ellen Bufford Welch, the essay is far better known among modern critics and scholars than the novel to which it is attached. Literature scholar Hans-Joachim Lang republished it in 1962 in

2660-421: A story in a Gothic building serves several purposes. It inspires feelings of awe, implies that the story is set in the past, gives an impression of isolation or dissociation from the rest of the world, and conveys religious associations. Setting the novel in a Gothic castle was meant to imply a story set in the past and shrouded in darkness. The architecture often served as a mirror for the characters and events of

2800-410: A style for the novel that Neal hoped would come to characterize American literature. Ultimately, the style overshadowed the novel's plot. Rachel Dyer is widely considered to be Neal's most successful novel, with a more controlled construction than his preceding books. A second edition was not released until it was republished by facsimile in 1964. The novel opens with an overview from the narrator of

2940-423: A tale of Witchcraft. Some parts very powerful." Contemporary scholars of John Neal's novels widely consider Rachel Dyer to be his most successful, though it is as obscure to the modern reader as his other books. Biographer Donald A. Sears specifically points to the novel's depth of characterization, skilled phonetic transcription of regional accents, and experiments with dialogue. Both he and Fleischmann claim that

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3080-467: A teenager and incorporated their gloomy atmosphere and melodrama into his works, shifting them to a more modern period and an urban setting; for example, in Oliver Twist (1837–1838), Bleak House (1854) and Great Expectations (1860–1861). These works juxtapose wealthy, ordered, and affluent civilization with the disorder and barbarity of the poor in the same metropolis. Bleak House, in particular,

3220-578: A vehicle for demonstrating style elements that Neal felt should come to define American literature. Neal experimented with a wide range of speech patterns and dialogue techniques, ranging from long, eloquent speeches to short, repetitive murmurs. He omitted quotation marks throughout the novel, feeling they are unnecessary for properly constructed dialogue. Much of the dialogue lacks identifying tags and moves stichomythically back and forth between speakers with little or no interrupting narration. Using crowded, cacophonous courtroom scenes, Neal attempted to paint

3360-496: A video game. Gogol's work differs from Western European Gothic fiction, as his cultural influences drew on Ukrainian folklore , the Cossack lifestyle, and, as a religious man, Orthodox Christianity . Other relevant authors of this era include Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoevsky ( The Living Corpse , written 1838, published 1844, The Ghost , The Sylphide , as well as short stories), Count Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy ( The Family of

3500-586: A widow is " relict ", literally "someone left over"; this word can sometimes be found on older gravestones . Occasionally, the word viduity is used. The phenomenon that refers to the increased mortality rate after the death of a spouse is called the widowhood effect . It is "strongest during the first three months after a spouse's death, when they had a 66-percent increased chance of dying". There remains controversy over whether women or men are worse off, and studies have attempted to make each case, while others suggest there are no sex differences. While it

3640-434: A woman of the royal clan, Yi Guji , when it was discovered that she had cohabited with her slave after being widowed. More than 40 members of her household were arrested and her lover was tortured to death. In some parts of the world, such as Zimbabwe , the property of widows, such as land, is often taken away by her in-laws. While illegal, since most marriages are conducted under customary law and not registered, redressing

3780-438: Is accused of witchcraft. By the time of her trial, many more have been arrested for the same crime, and fear of accusation has swept the town. Burroughs unsuccessfully attempts to defend Corey, who is aloof throughout the trial. Following a speech from Increase Mather , Corey is hanged. Burroughs visits Matthew Paris to investigate the origin of the witch hysteria and finds the household fearful and lifeless. Burroughs then visits

3920-563: Is also uncommon for widows to challenge their treatment because they are often "unaware of their rights under the modern law…because of their low status, and lack of education or legal representation.". Unequal benefits and treatment generally received by widows compared to those received by widowers globally has spurred an interest in the issue by human rights activists . During the HIV pandemic, which particularly hit gay communities, companions of deceased men had little recourse in estate court against

4060-448: Is another well-known example of Gothic fiction from the early 20th century, when many German authors were writing works influenced by Schauerroman , including Hanns Heinz Ewers . Widow The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed widowhood . The term widowhood can be used for either sex, at least according to some dictionaries, but the word widowerhood is also listed in some dictionaries. An archaic term for

4200-475: Is characterized by an environment of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present. The setting typically includes physical reminders of the past, especially through ruined buildings which stand as proof of a previously thriving world which is decaying in the present. Characteristic settings in the 18th and 19th centuries include castles, religious buildings such as monasteries and convents , and crypts . The atmosphere

4340-482: Is convicted and at her execution she proclaims her innocence and prophesies that other innocent victims will be executed. Rachel Dyer (a fictional character not based on any historical figures) appears in the crowd and shouts her support for Sarah Good. Rachel is described as a hunchback with red hair. She and her sister Mary Elizabeth Dyer are Quakers and granddaughters of Mary Dyer, the latter taking her middle name from Elizabeth Hutchinson. Salem resident Martha Corey

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4480-510: Is credited with introducing urban fog to the novel, which would become a frequent characteristic of urban Gothic literature and film. Miss Havisham from Great Expectations , is one of Dickens' most Gothic characters. The bitter recluse shuts herself away in her gloomy mansion ever since being jilted at the altar on her wedding day. His most explicitly Gothic work is his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood , which he did not live to complete and

4620-634: Is disputed as to whether sex plays a part in the intensity of grief, sex often influences how a person's lifestyle changes after a spouse's death. Research has shown that the difference falls in the burden of care, expectations, and how they react after the spouse's death. For example, women often carry more of an emotional burden than men and are less willing to go through the death of another spouse. After being widowed, men and women may react very differently and frequently change their lifestyles. Women tend to miss their husbands more if they died suddenly; men tend to miss their wives more if they died after suffering

4760-485: Is going mad and unable to provide corroborating testimony. Burroughs is convicted on Hubbard's testimony but is comforted by Rachel Dyer. She is convicted later the same day. Burroughs is executed and Rachel Dyer dies in her cell clutching a bible. Their martyrdom breaks the witch hysteria before Mary Elizabeth Dyer or anybody else is executed. The final chapter is followed by an appendix labeled "Historical Facts", in which Neal cites connections between first-hand accounts of

4900-514: Is grieving for his recently deceased wife. Psychologically vulnerable and superstitious, he centers his life on his ten-year-old daughter, Abigail Paris (based on Betty Parris ). She and her twelve-year-old cousin, Bridget Pope (based on Abigail Williams ), begin to exhibit what he perceives as demonic behavior. Indigenous neighbors who used to visit the household begin avoiding it and Matthew Paris searches for an explanation. He interrogates Tituba , an enslaved Indigenous household servant who lives in

5040-488: Is his best work, but that he is capable of better: "It is the best thing of the sort ever produced by John Neal, though not altogether such a work as might have been hoped for by his countrymen." The other Yankee review was written by a friend, who anticipated the prevailing sentiment amongst modern scholars that Rachel Dyer represents Neal's best effort to date to control his own expansive proclivities. According to him: "Wherever Neal's imagination has been employed throughout

5180-453: Is immediately in front of us." The mysterious imagination necessary for Gothic literature to have gained any traction had been growing for some time before the advent of the Gothic. The need for this came as the known world was becoming more explored, reducing the geographical mysteries of the world. The edges of the map were filling in, and no dragons were to be found. The human mind required a replacement. Clive Bloom theorizes that this void in

5320-586: Is inducing Terror – or else "a great deal of the apprehension vanishes"; Obscurity is necessary to experience the Terror of the unknown. Bloom asserts that Burke's descriptive vocabulary was essential to the Romantic works that eventually informed the Gothic. The birth of Gothic literature was thought to have been influenced by political upheaval. Researchers linked its birth with the English Civil War , culminating in

5460-415: Is jealous of Burroughs's affection for Mary Elizabeth Dyer, appears at his trial. She provides spectral evidence by testifying that both of his dead wives have appeared to her as spirits and told her that he murdered them. A boy named Robert Eveleth testifies that Hubbard, Abigail Paris (now dead), and Bridget Pope (who is dying) conspired against Burroughs. Eveleth's testimony is dismissed, and Matthew Paris

5600-526: Is now worshipped under the name of classical English   ... the deadest language I ever met with". Neal also advanced cultural pluralism in the essay, criticizing his literary peers for limiting themselves to white characters as representative of the American identity. He blamed them for helping advance Jacksonian values on the rise at the time: manifest destiny , empire building, Indian removal , consolidation of federal power, racialized citizenship, and

5740-475: Is often described with words such as "wonder" and "terror." This sense of wonder and terror that provides the suspension of disbelief so important to the Gothic—which, except for when it is parodied, even for all its occasional melodrama , is typically played straight, in a self-serious manner—requires the imagination of the reader to be willing to accept the idea that there might be something "beyond that which

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5880-426: Is particularly important, as his 1833 short story The Queen of Spades was so popular that it was adapted into operas and later films by Russian and foreign artists. Some parts of Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time (1840) are also considered to belong to the Gothic genre, but they lack the supernatural elements of other Russian Gothic stories. The following poems are also now considered to belong to

6020-552: Is set in the twenty-second century and speculates on fantastic scientific developments that might have occurred three hundred years in the future, making it and Frankenstein among the earliest examples of the science fiction genre developing from Gothic traditions. During two decades, the most famous author of Gothic literature in Germany was the polymath E. T. A. Hoffmann . Lewis's The Monk influenced and even mentioned it in his novel The Devil's Elixirs (1815). The novel explores

6160-575: Is strongly associated with the Gothic Revival architecture of the same era. English Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, marked by harsh laws enforced by torture and with mysterious, fantastic, and superstitious rituals . Similar to the Gothic Revivalists' rejection of the clarity and rationalism of the Neoclassical style of

6300-584: Is threatened by their sexuality, and makes his accusation as a result. Finally, Neal portrays Judith Hubbard's false testimony against Burroughs as revenge for romantic rejection from Burroughs. Neal was one of Blackwood's Magazine 's most prolific contributors between 1824 and 1825, while living in London. In 1825, he proposed a series of short stories based in the US, and submitted the first one in October of that year. Scottish publisher William Blackwood accepted

6440-501: Is typically claustrophobic , and common plot elements include vengeful persecution, imprisonment, and murder. The depiction of horrible events in Gothic fiction often serves as a metaphorical expression of psychological or social conflicts. The form of a Gothic story is usually discontinuous and convoluted, often incorporating tales within tales, changing narrators, and framing devices such as discovered manuscripts or interpolated histories. Other characteristics, regardless of relevance to

6580-594: The New-York Mirror in 1839. Neal was likely inspired to elevate Burroughs to the role of protagonist in his version of the witch trials story because of Burroughs's stint as minister in Portland (then Falmouth). Both men were also famous for their physical strength. Given these connections, academic Maya Merlob argues that Neal may have felt comfortable filling in many of the unknown details of Burroughs's life with circumstances of his own, making Burroughs into something of

6720-514: The American literary nationalist essay, "Unpublished Preface", that precedes the body of the novel. Following a darkly poetic narrative, the story centers on historical figure George Burroughs and fictional witch hysteria victim, Rachel Dyer. With about two-thirds of the story taking place in the courtroom, it follows the trials of multiple alleged witches. Themes include justice, sexual frustration, mistreatment of Indigenous Americans by Puritans ,

6860-457: The Cult of Domesticity . Unlike Neal's earlier literary nationalist works that portrayed the US as a unified nation, the "Unpublished Preface" represents the author's movement toward American literary regionalism in reaction to Jacksonian populism , according to Watts and Carlson. Like the novel itself, the "Unpublished Preface" rejects precedent, calling for "another Declaration of Independence , in

7000-520: The Enlightened Establishment, the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime , and a quest for atmosphere. Gothic ruins invoke multiple linked emotions by representing inevitable decay and the collapse of human creations – hence the urge to add fake ruins as eyecatchers in English landscape parks. Placing

7140-561: The Graveyard poets . They were also present in novels such as Daniel Defoe 's A Journal of the Plague Year , which contains comical scenes of plague carts and piles of corpses. Even earlier, poets like Edmund Spenser evoked a dreary and sorrowful mood in such poems as Epithalamion . All aspects of pre-Gothic literature occur to some degree in the Gothic, but even taken together, they still fall short of true Gothic. What needed to be added

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7280-517: The Jacobite rising of 1745 which was more recent to the first Gothic novel (1764). The collective political memory and any deep cultural fears associated with it likely contributed to early Gothic villains as literary representatives of defeated Tory barons or Royalists "rising" from their political graves in the pages of early Gothic novels to terrorize the bourgeois reader of late eighteenth-century England. The first work to call itself "Gothic"

7420-461: The Sati Prevention Act , which made it illegal to support, glorify or attempt to commit sati. Support of sati, including coercing or forcing someone to commit sati, can be punished by the death sentence or life imprisonment, while glorifying sati is punishable with one to seven years in prison. The people of Fiji practised widow-strangling. When Fijians adopted Christianity, widow-strangling

7560-437: The folklore of Chiloé of southern Chile, widows and black cats are important elements that are needed when hunting for the treasure of the carbunclo . In societies where the husband is the sole provider, his death can leave his family destitute. The tendency for women generally to outlive men can compound this. The Bible has written several commandments about caring for the widow, the prohibition against harming her and

7700-567: The trope of vampires having sharpened teeth. Another notable English author of penny dreadfuls is George W. M. Reynolds , known for The Mysteries of London (1844), Faust (1846), Wagner the Wehr-wolf (1847), and The Necromancer (1857). Elizabeth Gaskell 's tales "The Doom of the Griffiths" (1858), "Lois the Witch", and "The Grey Woman" all employ one of the most common themes of Gothic fiction:

7840-423: The 1690s with republican America of the 1820s highlights the relative value placed on human life in each era. Historian Philip Gould and literature scholars David J. Carlson and Fritz Fleischmann feel the juxtaposition critiques early nineteenth-century American reliance on tradition and hierarchy. This critique of Puritans as opponents of personal liberty is balanced by Neal's nationalist desire to portray them as

7980-416: The 1790s." The popularity and influence of The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Monk saw the rise of shorter and cheaper versions of Gothic literature in the forms of Gothic bluebooks and chapbooks , which in many cases were plagiarized and abridgments of well known Gothic novels. The Monk in particular, with its immoral and sensational content, saw many plagiarized copies, and was notably drawn from in

8120-572: The 20th century), is a loose literary aesthetic of fear and haunting . The name refers to Gothic architecture of the European Middle Ages , which was characteristic of the settings of early Gothic novels. The first work to call itself Gothic was Horace Walpole 's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto , later subtitled "A Gothic Story". Subsequent 18th-century contributors included Clara Reeve , Ann Radcliffe , William Thomas Beckford , and Matthew Lewis . The Gothic influence continued into

8260-498: The Dyer sisters because of their vocal opposition to the witch hysteria. The three learn that authorities in Salem have issued warrants for their arrest. They flee and are captured en route to the colony of Providence Plantations . While imprisoned and awaiting trial, Burroughs fails to convince the Dyer sisters to issue false confessions in the hope of delaying their own executions until the hysteria passes. Salem resident Judith Hubbard, who

8400-581: The German Schauerroman and the French R oman noir . Eighteenth-century Gothic novels were typically set in a distant past and (for English novels) a distant European country, but without specific dates or historical figures that characterized the later development of historical fiction. The saturation of Gothic-inspired literature during the 1790s was referred to in a letter by Samuel Taylor Coleridge , writing on 16 March 1797, "indeed I am almost weary of

8540-642: The German journal Amerikastudien . The "Unpublished Preface" recognizes efforts by other American novelists to explore American places and characters, but criticizes them for failing to help develop new linguistic and formal styles. This could be achieved, Neal argued, through experimentation with American colloquialism, speech patterns, and regional accents. Contending that American novelists relied too much on British precedent, he charged Washington Irving with copying Joseph Addison and James Fenimore Cooper with copying Walter Scott . Neal said: "I shall never write what

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8680-485: The Gothic and influenced Bram Stoker 's vampire novel Dracula (1897). Stoker's book created the most famous Gothic villain ever, Count Dracula , and established Transylvania and Eastern Europe as the locus classicus of the Gothic. Published in the same year as Dracula , Florence Marryat 's The Blood of the Vampire is another piece of vampire fiction. The Blood of the Vampire , which, like Carmilla, features

8820-444: The Gothic genre made it rich territory for satire. Historian Rictor Norton notes that satire of Gothic literature was common from 1796 until the 1820s, including early satirical works such as The New Monk (1798), More Ghosts ! (1798) and Rosella, or Modern Occurrences (1799). Gothic novels themselves, according to Norton, also possess elements of self-satire, "By having profane comic characters as well as sacred serious characters,

8960-426: The Gothic genre: Meshchevskiy's "Lila", Katenin's "Olga", Pushkin 's "The Bridegroom", Pletnev 's "The Gravedigger" and Lermontov 's Demon (1829–1839). The key author of the transition from Romanticism to Realism, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol , who was also one of the most important authors of Romanticism, produced a number of works that qualify as Gothic fiction. Each of his three short story collections features

9100-564: The Gothic novel, providing the archetype of the Byronic hero . For example, Byron is the title character in Lady Caroline's Gothic novel Glenarvon (1816). Byron was also the host of the celebrated ghost-story competition involving himself, Percy Bysshe Shelley , Mary Shelley , and John William Polidori at the Villa Diodati on the banks of Lake Geneva in the summer of 1816. This occasion

9240-407: The Gothic novelist could puncture the balloon of the supernatural while at the same time affirming the power of the imagination." After 1800 there was a period in which Gothic parodies outnumbered forthcoming Gothic novels. In The Heroine by Eaton Stannard Barrett (1813), Gothic tropes are exaggerated for comic effect. In Jane Austen 's novel Northanger Abbey (1818), the naive protagonist,

9380-459: The Gothic tradition, Mary Shelley's novel is often considered the first science fiction novel, despite the novel's lack of any scientific explanation for the animation of Frankenstein's monster and the focus instead on the moral dilemmas and consequences of such a creation. John Keats ' La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819) and Isabella, or the Pot of Basil (1820) feature mysteriously fey ladies. In

9520-403: The Gothic. Emily Brontë 's Wuthering Heights (1847) transports the Gothic to the forbidding Yorkshire Moors and features ghostly apparitions and a Byronic hero in the person of the demonic Heathcliff. The Brontës' fictions were cited by feminist critic Ellen Moers as prime examples of Female Gothic, exploring woman's entrapment within domestic space and subjection to patriarchal authority and

9660-731: The Great Republic of Letters". This is a theme for which Neal was well-known at the time and that ran through all seven of Neal's previously published novels, many of which included literary nationalist statements in their prefaces. However, the essay also used the relatively uncontroversial concept of literary nationalism to advance the more controversial push among radical American lawyers to abandon English Common law. This nationalist/regionalist challenge likely inspired Walt Whitman to write Leaves of Grass twenty-seven years later, according to author Benjamin Lease. Whitman likely read Rachel Dyer as

9800-641: The Screw (1898), and the stories of Arthur Machen . In Ireland, Gothic fiction tended to be purveyed by the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy . According to literary critic Terry Eagleton , Charles Maturin , Sheridan Le Fanu , and Bram Stoker form the core of the Irish Gothic subgenre with stories featuring castles set in a barren landscape and a cast of remote aristocrats dominating an atavistic peasantry, which represent an allegorical form

9940-508: The Sublime and Beautiful , which "finally codif[ied] the gothic emotional experience." Specifically, Burke's thoughts on the Sublime, Terror, and Obscurity were most applicable. These sections can be summarized thus: the Sublime is that which is or produces the "strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling"; Terror most often evoked the Sublime; and to cause Terror, we need some amount of Obscurity – we can't know everything about that which

10080-732: The Terrible, having been a hireling in the Critical Review for the last six or eight months – I have been reviewing the Monk , the Italian , Hubert de Sevrac &c &c &c – in all of which dungeons, and old castles, & solitary Houses by the Sea Side & Caverns & Woods & extraordinary characters & all the tribe of Horror & Mystery, have crowded on me – even to surfeiting." The excesses, stereotypes, and frequent absurdities of

10220-533: The US as a culturally diverse place. This pioneering effort to document regional American dialect was cited in the first edition of the Dictionary of American English more than a century later. Rachel Dyer starts with a three-page preface and a fifteen-page essay titled "Unpublished Preface to the North-American Stories". Neal wrote the latter in 1825 for Blackwood's Magazine as an introductory essay to

10360-517: The United States to signify their widowhood and devotion to their deceased husband. After the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856 in India, the status of widowhood for Hindu women was accompanied by a body symbolism - The widow's head was shaved as part of her mourning, she could no longer wear a red dot sindoor on her forehead, was forbidden to wear wedding jewellery, had to keep her bosoms uncovered and

10500-653: The Vourdalak , 1839, and The Vampire , 1841), Mikhail Zagoskin ( Unexpected Guests ), Józef Sękowski / Osip Senkovsky ( Antar ), and Yevgeny Baratynsky ( The Ring ). By the Victorian era , Gothic had ceased to be the dominant genre for novels in England, partly replaced by more sedate historical fiction . However, Gothic short stories continued to be popular, published in magazines or as small chapbooks called penny dreadfuls . The most influential Gothic writer from this period

10640-428: The ability to ascend socio-economically, widows—who were "presumably celibate"—were much more able (and likely) to challenge conventional sexual behaviour than married women in their society. It may be necessary for a woman to comply with the social customs of her area because her fiscal stature depends on it, but this custom is also often abused by others as a way to keep money within the deceased spouse's family. It

10780-506: The cheaper pamphlets. Other notable Gothic novels of the 1790s include William Godwin 's Caleb Williams (1794), Regina Maria Roche 's Clermont (1798), and Charles Brockden Brown 's Wieland (1798), as well as large numbers of anonymous works published by the Minerva Press established by William Lane at Leadenhall Street , London in 1790. In continental Europe, Romantic literary movements led to related Gothic genres such as

10920-429: The collective imagination was critical in developing the cultural possibility for the rise of the Gothic tradition. The setting of most early Gothic works was medieval, but this was a common theme long before Walpole. In Britain especially, there was a desire to reclaim a shared past. This obsession frequently led to extravagant architectural displays, such as Fonthill Abbey , and sometimes mock tournaments were held. It

11060-427: The countries that have joined CEDAW. In the United States, Social Security offers a Survivor's Benefit to qualified people once for a loss through their 50th birthday after which a second marriage may be considered when applying for benefits. The maximum still remains the same but here the survivor has options between accessing their earned benefits or one of their qualifying late spouses at chosen intervals to maximize

11200-404: The court's most outspoken opponent, Burroughs questions the judges' rulings and receives in reply: "such was the law, the law of the mother-country and therefore the law of the colonies". But the story centers more on the Dyer sisters' martyrdom, which is presented by Neal as a female tradition of quiet dissent to patriarchal legalism. According to author Donald Sears, juxtaposing crown colonies of

11340-462: The day Would quake to look on.  The components that would eventually combine into Gothic literature had a rich history by the time Walpole presented a fictitious medieval manuscript in The Castle of Otranto in 1764. The plays of William Shakespeare , in particular, were a crucial reference point for early Gothic writers, in both an effort to bring credibility to their works, and to legitimize

11480-564: The death of their husband or wife. This negatively impacts the mental as well as physical well-being in both men and women. In some parts of Europe and Latin America , including Russia , Slovakia , the Czech Republic , Greece , Italy , Portugal , Spain and Mexico , widows used to wear black for the rest of their lives to signify their mourning, a practice that has largely died out. Orthodox Christian immigrants may wear lifelong black in

11620-611: The decadent style of Wilde and Machen, even including a character named Wilde in his The King in Yellow (1895). Wharton published some notable Gothic ghost stories. Some works of the Canadian writer Gilbert Parker also fall into the genre, including the stories in The Lane that had No Turning (1900). The serialized novel The Phantom of the Opera (1909–1910) by the French writer Gaston Leroux

11760-418: The deceased’s family. Not yet able to have been legally married the term widower was not considered socially acceptable. This situation was usually blessed with an added stigma being attached to the surviving man. As of 2004, women in United States who were widowed younger are at greater economic hardship risk. Married women who are in a financially unstable household are more likely to become widows "because of

11900-564: The devil's domain, and portrays superstition as the product of rural isolation. Nathaniel Hawthorne cited the novel's Puritan Massachusetts setting as an influence in writing The Scarlet Letter , and Sears argues that Sarah Good's curse from the gallows may have inspired Matthew Maule's curse in Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables . After reading Rachel Dyer , John Greenleaf Whittier and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow were inspired to include witchcraft in their poetry and prose. Neal used

12040-577: The domestic, their bodies, marriage, childbirth, or domestic abuse commonly appear in the genre. After the characteristic Gothic Bildungsroman -like plot sequence, female Gothic allowed readers to grow from "adolescence to maturity" in the face of the realized impossibilities of the supernatural. As protagonists such as Adeline in The Romance of the Forest learn that their superstitious fantasies and terrors are replaced by natural cause and reasonable doubt,

12180-450: The duty to make her happy during the holidays, for example: "Be joyful at your festival—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns".(Hebrew Bible, Book of Deuteronomy 16:14) In 19th-century Britain, widows had greater opportunity for social mobility than in many other societies. Along with

12320-419: The earlier work by referring to Burroughs as "the wild preacher of the woods   ... a personage worthy of the dramatic era of Elizabeth". The critic concluded that Neal "exults the name of Yankee, and Yankees should be proud of him". Neal also published two reviews of his own novel in his magazine The Yankee . Speaking of himself in the third person, he repeated a sentiment in the "Unpublished Preface" that it

12460-865: The early 19th century; works by the Romantic poets , like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Lord Byron , and novelists such as Mary Shelley , Charles Maturin , Walter Scott and E. T. A. Hoffmann frequently drew upon gothic motifs in their works. The early Victorian period continued the use of gothic aesthetic in novels by Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters , as well as works by the American writers Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne . Later well-known works were Dracula by Bram Stoker , Richard Marsh's The Beetle and Robert Louis Stevenson 's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde . 20th-century contributors include Daphne du Maurier , Stephen King , Shirley Jackson , Anne Rice , and Toni Morrison . Gothic fiction

12600-470: The emerging genre as serious literature to the public. Tragedies such as Hamlet , Macbeth , King Lear , Romeo and Juliet , and Richard III , with plots revolving around the supernatural, revenge, murder, ghosts, witchcraft , and omens , written in dramatic pathos, and set in medieval castles, were a huge influence upon early Gothic authors, who frequently quote, and make allusions to Shakespeare's works. John Milton 's Paradise Lost (1667)

12740-482: The female Gothic allowed women's societal and sexual desires to be introduced. In many respects, the novel's intended reader of the time was the woman who, even as she enjoyed such novels, felt she had to "[lay] down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame," according to Jane Austen . The Gothic novel shaped its form for woman readers to "turn to Gothic romances to find support for their own mixed feelings." Female Gothic narratives focus on such topics as

12880-419: The free will of New World people. Neal connected the disparate mid-17th-century stories of Quaker dissenters Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer of Boston with the story of the 1692 Salem witch trials. This is interpreted as a critique of English Common law 's irrational reliance on precedent by setting up the witch trial story as supernatural retribution for Dyer's and Hutchinson's persecution under unjust laws. As

13020-514: The grave chapter of American history it represents. He feels that the strength of the story's construction comes more from the absence of wandering excesses than the presence of a unified theme. Whereas most scholars posit that Neal subdued his natural expansive tendencies in order to write Rachel Dyer , Maya Merlob argues that his more erratic works represent as much an intentionally chosen model as this novel does. Gothic fiction Gothic fiction , sometimes called Gothic horror (primarily in

13160-401: The height of the Gothic novel's popularity in the 1790s, the genre was almost synonymous with Ann Radcliffe , whose works were highly anticipated and widely imitated. The Romance of the Forest (1791) and The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) were particularly popular. In an essay on Radcliffe, Walter Scott writes of the popularity of Udolpho at the time, "The very name was fascinating, and

13300-486: The historical context preceding the Salem witch trials . The narrator describes belief in witchcraft as a universal human trait that was well established amongst educated authorities in the 1690s in both the United Kingdom and British North America . When Puritans fled persecution in England and colonized New England , they quickly turned to violence to control Quaker colonists and Indigenous Wampanoag . Mary Dyer

13440-428: The household with her husband, John Indian. Paris accuses Tituba of witchcraft, and she is arrested, tortured, convicted, and executed. While undergoing torture, she implicates Sarah Good of the same crime in her confession. Reverend George Burroughs appears at Good's trial. Of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry and upbringing, Burroughs is a Puritan minister who has been a widower twice. He witnessed

13580-406: The increased benefits for delaying a filing (i.e. at age 63 claim husband one's reduced benefit, then husband two's full amount at 67 and your own enhanced benefit at 68). In parts of Africa, such as Kenya , widows are viewed as impure and in need of cleansing. This often requires having sex with someone. Those refusing to be cleansed risk getting beaten by superstitious villagers, who may also harm

13720-417: The jealousy she felt at other women's attraction to Burroughs. She also bemoans how differently she may have been treated at trial, had she been more physically attractive. Neal wrote at a time when most critics attacked literature that failed to conform to traditional British conventions, and he intended Rachel Dyer to defy those criticisms. Sexual frustration is also a theme throughout the novel. Neal links

13860-446: The latter poem, the names of the characters, the dream visions, and the macabre physical details are influenced by the novels of premiere Gothicist Ann Radcliffe. Although ushering in the historical novel, and turning popularity away from Gothic fiction, Walter Scott frequently employed Gothic elements in his novels and poetry. Scott drew upon oral folklore , fireside tales, and ancient superstitions, often juxtaposing rationality and

14000-493: The main plot, can include sleeplike and deathlike states, live burials , doubles , unnatural echoes or silences, the discovery of obscured family ties, unintelligible writings, nocturnal landscapes, remote locations, and dreams. Especially in the late 19th century, Gothic fiction often involved demons and demonic possession , ghosts , and other kinds of evil spirits . Gothic fiction often moves between " high culture " and " low " or " popular culture ". Gothic literature

14140-560: The mistakes of the 1690s were at risk of being repeated in his own time. Neal clearly states in the preface that one of his intentions in crafting the novel's title character was to counteract the dominant literary theme that links positive personal attributes with physical beauty, saying "that a towering intellect may inhabit a miserable body". This is a theme he also employed with the character of Hammond in his 1823 novel Errata . Despite her physical deformities, Rachel Dyer demonstrates high morals and commitment to female solidarity in spite of

14280-630: The most celebrated Realists, wrote Faust (1856), Phantoms (1864), Song of the Triumphant Love (1881), and Clara Milich (1883). Another classic Russian Realist, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky , incorporated Gothic elements into many of his works, although none can be seen as purely Gothic. Grigory Petrovich Danilevsky , who wrote historical and early science fiction novels and stories, wrote Mertvec-ubiytsa ( Dead Murderer ) in 1879. Also, Grigori Alexandrovich Machtet wrote "Zaklyatiy kazak", which may now also be considered Gothic. The 1880s saw

14420-704: The motive of Doppelgänger , a term coined by another German author and supporter of Hoffmann, Jean-Paul , in his humorous novel Siebenkäs (1796–1797). He also wrote an opera based on Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué 's Gothic story Undine (1816), for which de la Motte Fouqué wrote the libretto. Aside from Hoffmann and de la Motte Fouqué, three other important authors from the era were Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff ( The Marble Statue , 1818), Ludwig Achim von Arnim ( Die Majoratsherren , 1819), and Adelbert von Chamisso ( Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte , 1814). After them, Wilhelm Meinhold wrote The Amber Witch (1838) and Sidonia von Bork (1847). In Spain,

14560-419: The myth of national American unity in the face of pluralist reality, and republican ideals as an antidote for Old World precedent. Originally written in 1825 as a short story for Blackwood's Magazine , Rachel Dyer was expanded after Neal returned to his hometown, Portland, Maine , from a sojourn in London. He experimented with speech patterns, dialogue, and transcriptions of Yankee dialect , crafting

14700-438: The novel's interpretation of republican American values to condemn the treatment of Indigenous Americans by European Americans. He defends Metacomet 's legacy from King Philip's War and characterizes the witch hysteria as supernatural retribution for the Puritans' mistreatment of their Indigenous neighbors. Carlson argues that these story elements anticipated many 21st-century historians' characterization of war-related anxieties as

14840-400: The origin of the witch hysteria to the sexual development of young Bridget Pope, whose bewitched behavior stems from sexual frustration and is calmed too late when she is reunited with her love interest, Robert Eveleth, after the trials have already begun. Matthew Paris is depicted as an isolated, sexually frustrated man. With Tituba and John Indian the only couple in the household, Matthew Paris

14980-551: The political plight of Catholic Ireland subjected to the Protestant Ascendancy. Le Fanu's use of the gloomy villain, forbidding mansion, and persecuted heroine in Uncle Silas (1864) shows direct influence from Walpole's Otranto and Radcliffe's Udolpho . Le Fanu's short story collection In a Glass Darkly (1872) includes the superlative vampire tale Carmilla , which provided fresh blood for that particular strand of

15120-495: The power of ancestral sins to curse future generations, or the fear that they will. M. R. James , an English medievalist whose stories are still popular today, is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story." In Spain, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer stood out with his romantic poems and short tales, some depicting supernatural events. Today some consider him the most-read Spanish writer after Miguel de Cervantes . In addition to these short Gothic fictions, some novels drew on

15260-667: The priest Pascual Pérez Rodríguez was the most diligent novelist in the Gothic way, closely aligned to the supernatural explained by Ann Radcliffe. At the same time, the poet José de Espronceda published The Student of Salamanca (1837–1840), a narrative poem that presents a horrid variation on the Don Juan legend. In Russia, authors of the Romantic era include Antony Pogorelsky (penname of Alexey Alexeyevich Perovsky), Orest Somov , Oleksa Storozhenko , Alexandr Pushkin , Nikolai Alekseevich Polevoy , Mikhail Lermontov (for his work Stuss ), and Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky . Pushkin

15400-518: The public, who rushed upon it with all the eagerness of curiosity, rose from it with unsated appetite. When a family was numerous, the volumes flew, and were sometimes torn from hand to hand." Radcliffe's novels were often seen as the feminine and rational opposite of a more violently horrifying male Gothic associated with Matthew Lewis . Radcliffe's final novel, The Italian (1797), responded to Lewis's The Monk (1796). Radcliffe and Lewis have been called "the two most significant Gothic novelists of

15540-461: The reader may grasp the heroine's true position: "The heroine possesses the romantic temperament that perceives strangeness where others see none. Her sensibility, therefore, prevents her from knowing that her true plight is her condition, the disability of being female." 'Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter business as

15680-508: The recent Battle of Fort Loyal while serving as minister in Falmouth (now Portland, Maine ), but refused to take sides. He escaped injury by mingling into the crowd of Pequot warriors outside the fort, dressed and speaking as a Mohawk . Burroughs defends Good in court and criticizes colonial leaders of breaking treaties and waging unjust war with the Iroquois . Despite Burroughs's defense, Good

15820-504: The respect of his hometown, according to author Donald Sears. Many in Portland had rejected him for the unsympathetic characterization of local Portland figures in his earlier novels and for his criticism of American authors in British magazines. According to Neal, he wrote it "hoping it may be regarded by the wise and virtuous of our country as some sort of atonement for the folly and extravagance of my earlier writing". Neal also announced that he

15960-485: The revival of the Gothic as a powerful literary form allied to fin de siecle , which fictionalized contemporary fears like ethical degeneration and questioned the social structures of the time. Classic works of this Urban Gothic include Robert Louis Stevenson 's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde 's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), George du Maurier 's Trilby (1894), Richard Marsh 's The Beetle (1897), Henry James ' The Turn of

16100-577: The story and paid for it, but delayed publication until Neal demanded it back in February 1826. After returning to his native Portland, Maine, in 1827, he set to work on expanding it, consulting Robert Calef 's More Wonders of the Invisible World , which had been republished in 1823. The resulting novel Rachel Dyer is longer, but not substantially different from the original tale, which Neal eventually published as "New-England Witchcraft" in five issues of

16240-466: The story has more "control and warmth". Lease, however, tempers his praise of the novel's powerful and well-constructed elements, critiquing the more excessive parts of the novel, particularly the courtroom scenes, "where the lawyer in Neal gets somewhat the better of the novelist." Irving T. Richards goes further, claiming that Rachel Dyer suffers from "absurd extravagances" that are "especially obnoxious" given

16380-407: The story's construction. Compared to Neal's earlier novels, Alexander Cowie celebrated that "Neal for once abandoned his literary monkeyshines", Fleischmann calls it "carefully controlled", Lease says it was "far more concentrated in effect", Sears says it was "written with better control", Lang claims it has "more concentrated power", and Seelye writes in the introduction to the 1964 republication that

16520-468: The story. The buildings in The Castle of Otranto , for example, are riddled with tunnels that characters use to move back and forth in secret. This movement mirrors the secrets surrounding Manfred's possession of the castle and how it came into his family. From the castles, dungeons , forests, and hidden passages of the Gothic novel genre emerged female Gothic. Guided by the works of authors such as Ann Radcliffe , Mary Shelley , and Charlotte Brontë ,

16660-547: The strong relationship between mortality [of the male head] and wealth [of the household]." In underdeveloped and developing areas of the world, conditions for widows continue to be much more severe. The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (ratified by 135 countries) while slow, is working on proposals which will make certain types of discrimination and treatment of widows (such as violence and withholding property rights) illegal in

16800-644: The supernatural. Novels such as The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), in which the characters' fates are decided by superstition and prophecy , or the poem Marmion (1808), in which a nun is walled alive inside a convent, illustrate Scott's influence and use of Gothic themes. A late example of a traditional Gothic novel is Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) by Charles Maturin , which combines themes of anti-Catholicism with an outcast Byronic hero. Jane C. Loudon 's The Mummy! (1827) features standard Gothic motifs, characters, and plot, but with one significant twist; it

16940-459: The transgressive and dangerous attempts to subvert and escape such restriction. Emily Brontë's Cathy and Charlotte Brontë 's Jane Eyre are examples of female protagonists in such roles. Louisa May Alcott 's Gothic potboiler, A Long Fatal Love Chase (written in 1866 but published in 1995), is also an interesting specimen of this subgenre. Charlotte Brontë's Villette also shows the Gothic influence, with its supernatural subplot featuring

17080-412: The witch trials and the circumstances of the story. "They were ministers of the gospel, who   ... pursued their brethren to death, scourged, fined, imprisoned, banished, mutilated, and where nothing else would do, hung up their bodies between heaven and earth for the good of their souls". Many scholars see Rachel Dyer as a story of injustice rooted in the imposition of Old World legal forms upon

17220-636: The woman and her late husband's children. It is argued that this notion arose from the idea that if a husband dies, the woman may have performed witchcraft against him. Use of widows in harem has been recorded in Ancient Egypt , medieval Europe, and Islamic empires. Sati was a practice in South Asia where a woman would immolate herself upon her husband's death. These practices were outlawed in 1827 in British India and again in 1987 in independent India by

17360-492: The work fulfilled the literary nationalist call of the "Unpublished Preface" better than any other by Neal. Biographer Benjamin Lease feels that, while Hawthorne and Herman Melville used the same themes years later to produce better novels, "in 1828, Rachel Dyer stands alone". Lease and Lang compared it to the 1953 play The Crucible , claiming Neal's work matched the play in dramatic effect, but surpassed it in sophistication. When praising Rachel Dyer , many scholars focus on

17500-497: The work, it has been more temperate and rational than on any former occasion of the kind." Years later, the novel was praised by Whittier and Longfellow, who both received their first impactful encouragement in The Yankee . Whittier praised the opening chapters as "magnificent poetry" that certainly sprang from Neal's deep convictions. In 1868, Longfellow wrote brief and mixed praise in his private journal: "Read John Neal's Rachel Dyer,

17640-412: Was Horace Walpole 's The Castle of Otranto (1764). The first edition presented the story as a translation of a sixteenth-century manuscript and was widely popular. Walpole, in the second edition, revealed himself as the author which adding the subtitle "A Gothic Story." The revelation prompted a backlash from readers, who considered it inappropriate for a modern author to write a supernatural story in

17780-553: Was a notable Gothic writer, and converted from Catholicism to Anglicanism. In Switzerland, Jeremias Gotthelf wrote The Black Spider (1842), an allegorical work that uses Gothic themes. The last work from the German writer Theodor Storm , The Rider on the White Horse (1888), also uses Gothic motives and themes. After Gogol, Russian literature saw the rise of Realism, but many authors continued to write stories within Gothic fiction territory. Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev , one of

17920-611: Was abandoned. Those likely to be accused and killed as witches , such as in Papua New Guinea , are often widows. Widow inheritance (also known as bride inheritance) is a cultural and social practice whereby a widow is required to marry a male relative of her late husband, often his brother. The Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856 , enacted in response to the campaign of the reformer Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar , to encourage widow remarriage and provided legal safeguards against loss of certain forms of inheritance for remarrying

18060-422: Was also very influential among Gothic writers, who were especially drawn to the tragic anti-hero character Satan , who became a model for many charismatic Gothic villains and Byronic heroes . Milton's "version of the myth of the fall and redemption, creation and decreation, is, as Frankenstein again reveals, an important model for Gothic plots." Alexander Pope , who had a considerable influence on Walpole,

18200-457: Was an aesthetic to tie the elements together. Bloom notes that this aesthetic must take the form of a theoretical or philosophical core, which is necessary to "sav[e] the best tales from becoming mere anecdote or incoherent sensationalism." In this case, the aesthetic needed to be emotional, and was finally provided by Edmund Burke 's 1757 work, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of

18340-469: Was an obscure novel when it was published, attracting little critical attention in the US and virtually none in the UK for years. Referring to the novel's comparatively focused construction, one American reviewer said five months after publication that it "has fewer of the peculiarities of its peculiar author". A British critic, while reviewing Neal's next novel Authorship in 1831, offered brief and lukewarm praise of

18480-545: Was done with novels as an artistic medium. Though he did publish Authorship in 1830 and The Down-Easters in 1833, he wrote first drafts of both novels in London before publishing Rachel Dyer . He did not write another bound novel until True Womanhood in 1859, at the urging of Longfellow, Samuel Austin Allibone , and others in the literary field.   Do thee mean to confess?   I — I! —   Ah George —   I cannot Rachel — I dare not — I am

18620-620: Was executed for her religious convictions and fellow Quaker Elizabeth Hutchinson (based on Anne Hutchinson ) cursed their persecutors. A series of events impacting the Massachusetts Bay Colony fulfilled that curse: King Phillip's War , King William's War , epidemics, an earthquake, fires, storms, conflict within the church, and finally, the witch trials. The narrator then introduces the peculiarities of colonial court proceedings and early Puritan leaders, Governor William Phips and Reverend Matthew Paris (based on Samuel Parris ). Paris

18760-441: Was expected to walk barefoot. These customs are mostly considered backward but still prevalent among Hindus. In some parts of South Asia , a woman is often accused of causing her husband's death and is not allowed to look at another person as her gaze is considered bad luck. Some Nigerians prefer a widow to drink the water her dead husband's body was washed in, or otherwise sleep next to her husband's grave for three days. In

18900-548: Was not merely in literature that a medieval revival made itself felt, and this, too, contributed to a culture ready to accept a perceived medieval work in 1764. The Gothic often uses scenery of decay, death, and morbidity to achieve its effects (especially in the Italian Horror school of Gothic). However, Gothic literature was not the origin of this tradition; it was far older. The corpses, skeletons, and churchyards so commonly associated with early Gothic works were popularized by

19040-518: Was productive of both Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), and Polidori's short story " The Vampyre " (1819), featuring the Byronic Lord Ruthven . "The Vampyre" has been accounted by cultural critic Christopher Frayling as one of the most influential works of fiction ever written and spawned a craze for vampire fiction and theatre (and, latterly, film) that has not ceased to this day. Although clearly influenced by

19180-449: Was published in Portland, Maine, in 1828, and never saw a second edition in his lifetime; it was first republished, by facsimile with an original introduction by John D. Seelye, in 1964. This was the first of Neal's major novels to be republished since Seventy-Six was republished in London in 1840. However, it was the fourth major work by Neal republished in the twentieth century, starting with American Writers in 1937. Rachel Dyer

19320-572: Was published unfinished upon his death in 1870. The mood and themes of the Gothic novel held a particular fascination for the Victorians, with their obsession with mourning rituals, mementos , and mortality in general. Irish Catholics also wrote Gothic fiction in the 19th century. Although some Anglo-Irish dominated and defined the subgenre decades later, they did not own it. Irish Catholic Gothic writers included Gerald Griffin , James Clarence Mangan , and John and Michael Banim . William Carleton

19460-603: Was the American Edgar Allan Poe , who wrote numerous short stories and poems reinterpreting Gothic tropes. His story " The Fall of the House of Usher " (1839) revisits classic Gothic tropes of aristocratic decay, death, and insanity . Poe is now considered the master of the American Gothic. In England, one of the most influential penny dreadfuls is the anonymously authored Varney the Vampire (1847), which introduced

19600-463: Was the first significant poet of the 18th century to write a poem in an authentic Gothic manner. Eloisa to Abelard (1717), a tale of star-crossed lovers, one doomed to a life of seclusion in a convent, and the other in a monastery, abounds in gloomy imagery, religious terror, and suppressed passion. The influence of Pope's poem is found throughout 18th-century Gothic literature, including the novels of Walpole, Radcliffe, and Lewis. Gothic literature

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