My Favourite Gothic Classics
Gothic Literature is a wonderful place to start reading classics. It explores familiar themes and often has engaging plot lines. Whether this is a suspected haunted house, a roaming ghost or a dark past, there's a big change these gothic classics will entertain you.
What I often look for in a gothic classic is a fine line between comedy and grotesque. Yes, I adore the intens emotions of women falling fatelly in love. Sometimes the novel has a more serious issue where the darkness of the gothic is used to guide the reader towards the underlying truth. All these elements I adore and they all have a place in my favourite gothic classics.
Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë
Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine’s father. After Mr Earnshaw’s death, Heathcliff is bullied and humiliated by Catherine’s brother Hindley (read more...)
Beloved
by Toni Morrison
It is the mid-1800s and as slavery looks to be coming to an end, Sethe is haunted by the violent trauma it wrought on her former enslaved life at Sweet Home, Kentucky. Her dead baby daughter, whose tombstone bears the single word, Beloved, returns as a spectre to punish her mother, (read more...)
Rebecca
by Daphne du Maurier
On a trip to the South of France, the shy heroine of Rebecca falls in love with Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower. Although his proposal comes as a surprise, she happily agrees to marry him. But as they arrive at her husband's home, Manderley, a change comes over Maxim (read more...)
Dracula
by Bram Stoker
Thus Bram Stoker, one of the greatest exponents of the supernatural narrative, describes the demonic subject of his chilling masterpiece Dracula, a truly iconic and unsettling tale of vampirism. (read more...)
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë
She is forced to battle against the exigencies of a cruel guardian, a harsh employer and a rigid social order. All of which circumscribe her life and position when she becomes governess to the daughter of the mysterious, sardonic and attractive Mr Rochester. (read more...)
The Haunting of Hill House
by Shirley Jackson
Alone in the world, Eleanor is delighted to take up Dr Montague's invitation to spend a summer in the mysterious Hill House. Joining them are Theodora, an artistic 'sensitive', and Luke, heir to the house (read more...)
