The manifold operations of the gothic double【翻译】

ABSTRACT
The gothic novel’s emergence as a dominant genre in the 19th century is
illustrative of a shift in popular ideology taking place in Western Europe
during this period. Competing viewpoints, particularly between opposing
classes, directly reflect the uncertainties, anxieties, and aspirations of a
continent undergoing a significant transition. Because the gothic draws
upon the tension between contending attitudes—spiritualism and
secularism, realism and romanticism, nationalism and imperialism, and
aristocratic and bourgeois—it exposes how ideology embedded in these
concepts either adds to or detracts from the greater good of the community.
The technique of doubling is utilized to locate divergent ideologies and to
demonstrate the complexity of reconciling them. The preferential treatment
of middle-class values in the gothic helped shift mainstream conceptions of
morality. In combination with contemporary critical theory, through the
treatment of doubles, this thesis aims to address how the gothic influenced
shifts in social and cultural trends.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction……………………………………………………………….. 1
Chapter I: The Grotesque and Phantom Double………………….. 6
Chapter II: Haunted by Histories and Memories…………………. 44
Chapter III: The Mimetic Qualities of Artifice……………………… 72
Conclusion……………………………………………………………….. 102
Works Cited.….………………………………………………………….. 104
DeMars 1
INTRODUCTION
The appearance of doubling in the gothic genre is a phenomenon that
creates uneasiness, anxiousness, and discordance when observed in the
narrative. Something about the double doesn’t feel right to us, and we
notice it fashions an environment wrought with tension, turbulence, and
trepidation. And rightly so: the double is a symbolic textual construction
designed to evoke an uncomfortable reaction through the simultaneous
deployment of mystical or supernatural subject matter that is fashioned to
appear coincidental and/or plausible. Whenever two separate entities,
whether characters, locations, or even objects, share unlikely or exaggerated
commonalities with one another, they should be viewed as sets of doubles.
The simultaneity of the magical with the plausible creates an illusory
moment within a text where the reader’s skepticism of the impossibility of a
paranormal moment is disarmed, as he or she encounters the double with
an entwined sense of curiosity and aversion.
The 19th-century gothic is saturated with incidences of doubling, and
the examination of the tendencies inherent in the double provide profound
insight into the lives, times, and culture of the individuals who wrote,
produced, and consumed the literature of the age. The occurrence of
doubling, or the overstated similarity between two characters or objects that
should appear unalike, primarily occurs when some facet of social order is
not working properly; it thus signifies a breakdown of cultural structures.
DeMars 2
The tension surrounding sets of doubles is the locus of conflict within the
gothic and is a primary mechanism through which the genre critiques
culture, society, and ideology at work in the world. Identifying instances of
doubling and correctly reading the tension between them is the key to
revealing veiled criticisms of contemporary institutions. The reading of the
subtext in sets of doppelgangers is vital to a comprehensive understanding
of the Gothic because the employment of this technique allows for a
subversive and allegorical critique of institutions and structures that would
have been taboo or unpopular to attack overtly.
In Power in the Darkness, Fred Botting discusses how the unfamiliar
settings found in the Gothic are typified as mazes, or labyrinths, and
function as doubles for spaces that contemporary readers would have found
morally, familiarly, and culturally desirable. The labyrinth setting is
typically evidenced in old cathedrals, castles, or other remote spaces and
displays the defunctness of the preexisting values associated with and
represented by these liminal spaces:
The desire for authority orients and drives the doubled strategy
of Gothic narratives. In relation to the negativization of the
labyrinth, though the divisions seem unbridgeable, the doubled
strategy of identification and differentiation produces a
condensation, a solidification of associations that are
antithetical to idealized social space. The labyrinth becomes a
DeMars 3
net in which to catch all forms of alterity and the site on which
authority exercises and affirms its position. (262)
In creating an environment where the traditions and values of the other are
derogated below those of the familiar, the gothic is able to reaffirm that the
bourgeois ideology it represents is, in fact, morally and culturally superior to
all other models of culture.
The Gothic double is a revolutionary construction that comes into
being during an intensely unstable historical moment, when commonly held
notions and class-based consciousness were being uprooted and redefined.
The emergence of an educated middle class created a new audience for the
arts and literature, and the Gothic is a prime example of this trend. The
tastes, values, and concerns of these newly empowered people are evidenced
in the narratives and themes of the 19th-century Gothic novel. In Nostalgia
for the Present, Fredrick Jameson argues that the tension between classes is
the central thematic conflict that extends through the gothic genre. Social
inequality becomes the catalyst for narrative tension. Competition between
the middle class and aristocracy to establish their values as the dominant
ideology is the source of gothic anxiety and creates a relationship where
each is distrustful of the other:
Gothics are indeed ultimately a class fantasy (or nightmare) in
which the dialectic of privilege and shelter is exercised: your
privileges seal you off from other people, but by the same token
they constitute a protective wall through which you cannot see,
DeMars 4
and behind which therefore all kinds of envious forces may be
imagined in the process of assembling, plotting, and preparing
to give assault. (235)
The age is characterized by an uncertainty about where Western Europe
was headed, how it was changing, and what these changes would hold for
the future. Europe in the 19th century was a continent in the midst of a
remarkable metamorphosis—it watched the rise of the middle-class to
cultural and economic prominence; it saw the unstoppable momentum of
the industrial revolution shifting into gear; it made rapid scientific
breakthroughs and advancements one after another; it clung to the
crumbling ruins of an unjust and decaying system of colonial exploitation
abroad and class exploitation at home; and it witnessed the violence of its
people in full fury during the French Revolution—and the anxiety, doubt,
and cynicism of this dynamic world is accessible at the rawest and most
uncensored level through the gothic.
This thesis will focus on the way that the double functions within the
context of the 19th century Gothic novel to unveil the occurrences of, and
causes for, hidden ideological practices during the Victorian period. The
first chapter focuses upon how doubling enlightens our understanding of
the appearance of ghosts and monsters in narrative, and the way that these
creatures signify psychological, emotional, and ideological dysfunction in
society. The second chapter will focus upon how doubling reveals
inconsistencies in the way that history is recorded and remembered over
DeMars 5
time and the way that the dominant cultures are able to silence fringe or
periphery accounts of events. The last chapter will investigate how doubling
extends beyond the interpersonal and can be applied to inanimate objects
and places, particularly with regard to the doubling of environment,
structures, and artifacts that appear in the narrative.

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