I was listening to Can’t Catch Me Now from the newest Hunger Games movie and was struck by how gothic it is. Not in the musical sense, though it’s resemblance to traditional murder ballads does place it in the same family tree, but because of how well it conforms to gothic narratives and archetypes in storytelling.
Like the brutally present Rebecca the singer is made inescapable by her absence, permeating every facet of a life without her in it. In the book it’s left unclear if Lucy Gray Baird survived, or if Snow himself even knows the answer to that, and all three possibilities present a sort of choose your own gothic epilogue for listeners familiar with the story; is he haunted by the ghost of the woman he loved and killed, is she Bertha Rochester freed from the attic, coming when he least expects it, or does he even know which literary nightmare he’s living? For those without the original context informing their interpretation of the song the gothic possibilities are more open, and nebulous; all that’s certain is a mixture of loathing and passion, that ended in violence, and her presence like a curse even if she’s not really there.
I love narrative songs, especially if that narrative can be repurposed and fleshed out in different ways, to tell different but archetypically similar stories. It’s an easy way to help yourself break through a writer’s block, and also just fun to daydream with on the bus. But realising the gothic elements of Can’t Catch Me Now got me thinking about other non-gothic (musically) songs that contain gothic (literary) narratives and themes, and I decided to put together a playlist. This is what I have so far, and I’d really like to know your thoughts on it, and what you’d add to it yourselves. (Obviously there’s Kate Bush’ Wuthering Heights, but I think putting songs directly inspired by specific gothic works is cheating a little bit).
The Last Beautiful Thing I Saw — Paris Paloma
The Traitor — Leonard Cohen
Betsy Bell and Mary Gray (it’s a traditional folk song but I recommend the Steeleye Span version)
Blood Brothers — Iron Maiden
River Lea — Adele
Bones — Little Big Town
You’ve Haunted Me All My Life — Death Cab for Cutie
You’ve likely come across the story of the girl whose head is held on with a ribbon at some point in your journey as a horror fan, but what if I told you it has surprisingly dark origins? The roots of this tale go back to the French Revolution, and the urban legends and folklore that sprang up around Madame la Guillotine.
Alvin Schwarz’s version of the story, The Girl with the Green Ribbon, from the children’s anthology In a Dark, Dark Room, is the one most people are familiar with. In it childhood sweethearts Alfred and Jenny, who always has a green ribbon tied around her neck, grow up, get married and grow old together. Alfred keeps asking about the ribbon but Jenny refuses to tell him why she won’t take it off until finally she’s on her death bed and gives him permission to untie it, at which point her head comes tumbling down. It’s a surprisingly wholesome take on the story, at least up until the point when her head comes off, but it’s that dissonance between the two parts and the surprise of it that makes it such an effective piece of horror.
Schwarz’ adaptation has reached iconic status, entering contemporary English language folklore as a phenomenon all it’s own, detached from the historical context and narrative lineage that produced it. The original version of the tale, or at least the earliest version anyone can track down, is an urban legend and one decidedly not for children. In it a young German student, as in the similarly named The Adventure of the German Student by Washington Irving, was (bizarrely) hanging around near the guillotine after the day’s grisly work was done. While there it just so happened that he met the woman of his dreams, took her home with him, and, intending to live together going forward, went out again the next day in order to find a larger apartment for them both. On returning home however he found that the velvet ribbon she had worn around her neck had been removed, and she now lay there dead, her head separated from her body. Upon investigation by a member of the local constabulary it was ascertained that she was actually one of the victims of the guillotine from the day before, and that she had of course already been dead by the time the two of them met.
It’s easy to see where this comes from. At the height of The Terror the guillotine claimed as many as 30 people a day, with the vast majority of victims being pulled from the ordinary citizenry of France rather than the nobility or clergy. Anyone perceived as a threat to the Jacobin’s hold on the government, from poets to feminists to political philosophers who challenged their totalitarian approach, were summarily murdered without trial, and the impact on the population’s psyche was immense. In the wake of The Terror women who were part of the fashionable Marveilleuse subculture wore red ribbon chokers around their necks, as an act of memorial and rebellion, while wild bals des victimes were said to be breaking out all over Paris; parties where people wore mourning garb or dressed as victims of the guillotine, greeting each other with sharp, jerky nods that resembled the moment the blade came down and heads came flying off. There’s some question as to whether these parties were an urban legend themselves, but even if they were, their existence as a story the people of Paris were telling about themselves says something important about the collective psychological state of the city.
From this the image of the Marveilleuse who is actually a victim of The Terror emerges. Her short hair, scanty clothing, and bare feet aren’t a political-fashion statement but because this is how women were sent to the guillotine. The red ribbon around her neck isn’t a metaphor commemorating the dead or her own narrow escape but camouflage for the real thing, as well as a wholly inadequate bandage quite literally holding body and soul together just a little bit longer (perhaps the knowledge that heads seemed to survive a few moments after decapitation played into this). She could be anyone, passing unseen amongst the living, because so many were killed in that time how would you know them by sight? She’s another beautiful face that ended up in a basket at the end of a long, bloody day, and now she’s in your bed, the ribbon come loose in the night, throwing all of your survivor’s guilt into your face.
Over time the story takes on new forms. Gothic writers like Alexander Dumas and Irving wrote their own literary versions. It reached America and started shifting for a different society with different needs, guilt, and fears. The ribbon changes colour, to black, white, then green. The underlying evil in the story changes, from indiscriminate state violence to patriarchal, and the demands husbands and lover’s place on women and their bodies — there are some fabulous feminist adaptations out there and I suggest reading them when you get the chance. Jenny and Alfred’s story is relatively benign, they live a long and happy life together, with only the ending, a sharp twist to thrill children, adding horror to the mix. The stories that came before, and after it, are something else entirely.
If you’re following along with Dracula Daily then you may have ended today’s instalment wondering about the “London Cat’s Meat” that Jonathan wrote about in his diary. Surely it must just be a pejorative name given to a cheap street food? Right?
“Robber steak”- bits of bacon, onion, and beef, seasoned with red pepper, and strung on sticks, and roasted over the fire, in simple style of the London cat’s meat!’ — Dracula, Bram Stoker
Wrong, but don’t worry, no cats were harmed in the making of London cat’s meat. Quite a few horses, but no cats.
The Victorian era saw cats transition from primarily working animal, serving as pest control everywhere from warehouses to pubs, to beloved pets. While the gainfully employed members of the feline population could largely feed themselves, that is, if they were doing their job right, the diet of their bourgeoisie cousins needed a little supplementation — and that’s where the cat meat vender came in.
With their hat, apron, and barrow full of pungent, miscellaneous meat, the cat meat vender was a common sight in Victorian London. Having identified a vital gap in the city’s chain of supply and demand these enterprising men and women rushed in to fill it; buying up meat deemed unfit for human consumption from knackers yards and abattoirs and repurposing it into the first commercial pet food of the modern age.
This meat would be cut into pieces and set onto skewers for ease of portioning — hence Jonathan’s fascination with the robber steak. For someone who’d only ever seen skewered meat in this context, foul smelling and often dyed an alarming blue or green to make sure it wasn’t upsold as a working man’s dinner, the robber steak must have been something of a paradigm shift. Jonathan, the adventurous foody that he is, doesn’t seem to have been put off by it however, merely delighted by the novelty.
The cat meat trade was a hard one, requiring intense physical labour for little profit, with venders fiercly defending their patch from newcomers trying to muscle in. That said they were known for being a soft hearted crew when it came to cats, often knowing all their furry customers by name, keeping track of whether any of them were missing or looked unwell, and slipping the occasional bite to hungry strays. They also sometimes helped those strays find a loving home, on one occasion with no less a person the Duchess of Bedford, though I’m not clear how such a meeting across the classes could have happened.
There’s even an account of a vendor named Old Tom who’d trained his furry customers to wait in an orderly line while he gave them their food one by one. As an experienced cat owner whose watched the feeding frenzy that ensues when you try to feed multiple cats at the same time, sometimes requiring one particularly egregious offender to be locked in the bathroom until her brothers are done, that’s something I would pay to see.
Despite the inherent romance of the genre it’s slim pickings when trying to find a husband who won’t murder you or lock you in an attic in the world of gothic literature. Here’s a selection of gothic menfolk, should you find yourself trapped in some Jasper Fford-ian literary nightmare, ranked by husband potential.
8. Heathcliff
Quintessentially the worst husband in gothic literature. Intentionally so. Heathcliff aspired to break new ground in the field of being a terrible husband and succeeded even beyond his own wildest dreams. While he’d likely have less motivation to persecute other wives the way he did poor Isabella he’s still a violent misanthrope who vents his anger on everyone around him. Unless you’re Cathy, and you’re not Cathy, being married to Heathcliff would be a nightmare.
7. Rochester
Even if you believe Rochester’s self pitying version of why there’s a wife locked in his attack — which I don’t — he still tried to trick a vulnerable young woman into believing she was married to him because he was lonely, horny, and entitled. Not to mention all the gaslighting and manipulating he did along the way. The only reason he doesn’t score worse than Heathcliff is his typical rich boy lack of follow through; at least Heathcliff is dedicated and committed in his evil doing instead of wibbling out at the last minute.
6. Dracula
Obviously Dracula was a very bad man. But as far as gothic husbands go you could do a lot worse. Sure, you’ll have to share him with a harem (potentially a positive). Sure, he’s a tyrannical monster who drinks the blood of children. But at least he’s upfront about his monstrosity, and as long as you leave him alone and don’t mess with his plans he’ll shower you in jewels and all the babies you can eat.
5. Erik (The Phantom)
Similar to Dracula, Erik is a bad, bad man. Truly. But, if you actively chose to marry him (maybe you’re into all that dark romance stuff, we don’t judge) because you wanted to be on the receiving end of his unhinged obsession you’d probably have a great time. Yes, he’s controlling, manipulative, diabolical, and also a Jigsaw style serial killer, but with all that he’d treat you like a queen. Everything you’ve ever wanted, fine jewelry, starring roles, the bodies of your enemies, would be laid at your feet, still warm and bloody. Plus there’s no way he isn’t diabolical in other, much more fun ways too. You might not survive but that’s just how it rolls sometimes.
4. Dr. Jekyll
A workaholic with strange, unmentionable vices, Dr. Jekyll is most likely to forget you exist, which is probably the best outcome really when it comes to the average gothic marriage. As long as you have some cash squirrelled away and manage to stay out of the way of Mr. Hyde when he’s out and about there’s a very reasonable chance that you will survive this and can go on to have a quiet life elsewhere.
3. Viktor Frankenstein
The problem with Viktor is his lackadaisical approach to both scientific ethics and fatherhood. If you can get that under control, either by convincing him to appropriately nurture his monstrous offspring, or maybe avoid playing God in the first place, things should be fine. He’s got a castle and a tendency towards Romantic devotion so if you can avoid being killed by his hubris (big if) there’s a solid future for you there.
2. Dorian Gray
Weirdly I think Dorian could be a pretty good husband as long as you understood what type of marriage it was going to be going in. Dorian was never going to be faithful, even if you got him early enough he was still capable of falling in love, but that was about what you’d expect from a society marriage. Approaching your union from a business partners and friends perspective, as a lot of happily married Victorian aristocrats did, would give you a lot of money and time to spend on whatever you wanted; just as long as you didn’t embarrass him (aka get caught). Host good parties, provide a decent alibi when asked for one, and Dorian could make an excellent platonic life partner. Just don’t think too hard about his personal life.
1. Jonathan Harker
Obviously the best husband in literature. Certified gothic heroine Jonathan Harker was willing to fight god and walk backwards into hell for Mina, all while respecting her intellect, personhood, and occasional shirking of Victorian gender norms in a surprisingly modern way. If Dracula was written today the author would be slammed for his being “anachronistically modern” and probably “woke dei nonsense”, and yet there he is, malewifing it up with implacable devotion and a giant knife.
He’s not going to marry anyone but Mina though. Sorry. You’re going to have to go with somebody else off the list.
A little while ago it occurred to me it might be fun to create tea pairings for gothic novels. A cup of tea and a book are classic combination, but what if you carefully selected your tea to match the aesthetic and vibes of whatever you were reading? Think of me as your tea sommelier, helping you create an even more immersive experience.
“Dracula” by Bram Stoker
Not the original, but in many ways the most significant gothic vampire story, Draculatells of the Count’s attempt to relocate to London, and the people he ate along the way – before his defeat at the hands of a co-dependent group of himbos and the woman who holds all of their brain cells.
For this I recommend Russian Caravan, a blend of different black teas that tastes like it’s been smoked over a campfire. It hasn’t, but it does contain lapsang souchong which is dried over a pine wood fire during processing, and that flavour is brought out by the addition of the other tea varieties. Traditionally Russian Caravan is drunk unsweetened, with the addition of milk a matter of individual choice.
Alternatively you could pair it with a cup of English breakfast tea, milk, no sugar, in recognition of the Count’s desire to become a proper Englishman.
“Carmilla” by Sheridan Le Fanu
The original Sapphic vampire novel, Carmillais the story of a an ancient vampire noblewoman who preys exclusively on young women, sometimes falling in love with them even as she drains them of their blood and lifeforce over time. To accompany her I recommend a black tea with almonds in it, with perhaps a touch of milk to soften the edges. A refined, delicately scented choice with just a hint of cyanide underneath the sweetness.
“The Vampyre” by Dr. Polidori
Poor Polidori. Basically a tale about how Byron was a soul draining monster who ruined lives everywhere he went with his seemingly preternatural powers of seduction. It says a lot that the two staples of the modern horror genre were created in direct response to spending a summer trapped indoors with Lord Byron, but I digress. For The VampyreI recommend an Assam with cinnamon; strong flavoured, stimulating, and seductive. Drink it black to bring out the note of bitterness underneath.
While the links I’ve included above are bookshop.org affiliate links for print copies of the novels, because these are all out of print classics they are also available to read online for free and can be accessed at the following links;
Gothic literature has a timeless appeal. As long as people are horrible to each other in grand, sweeping ways, as long as there are unbalanced power dynamics and people willing to exploit them, as long as people decide to psychologically torture each other instead of going to therapy, gothic literature will be there — offering catharsis, or at least, to make the horrors sexy.
Maybe you find yourself with a sudden need for that catharsis. Maybe you’ve recently encountered the gothic and it’s ignited something feral and greedy inside you. Maybe you’re already a fan of more recent gothic works and looking for a deeper understanding of the genre as a whole. Whatever brought you here, one of these novels will be the right one to start your descent into gothic literature’s early depths — and I’ve included links on where to read them for free at the bottom of the post.
“The Castle of Otranto” by Horace Walpole
The original gothic novel, if you want to understand the origins of the genre then The Castle of Otrantois the place to start. It does have the benefit of being a pretty fast read, however…
It’s also an objectively bad novel. The pacing is erratic, the plot is full of holes, and its genuinely hard to believe Walpole had ever so much as spoken to a woman in his life just going off the way he wrote his female characters. Its still worth reading because of its impact on later work, and so you can understand the references other author’s both in and outside of the genre make to it, but its a disaster of a book. On the other hand it’s a fairly entertaining disaster, in the deliberately watching a bad movie sort of way; especially if you make it a group activity and take it in turns to read it out loud with a group of equally unfamiliar friends.
“Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte
Often recommended to teenagers, Jane Eyreis one of the most accessible of the early gothic novels, so if you tend to struggle with the prose in older works she’s a great entry point to the genre. One of the most influential of the gothic romances, Jane Eyre established the figure of the governess as an archetypal gothic heroine. Filled with familiar gothic tropes like the brooding hero, mist filled countryside, and looming, isolated mansions, the story manages to be surprising (at least, if you haven’t had it spoilered for you) and is a pretty enjoyable read.
“Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte
Wuthering Heights genuinely has something for everyone. There’s romance, tragedy, horror, analysis of oppressive social structures, drama, and the gloriously gloomy scenery of the moors standing behind it all. No-one in this book is remotely likeable, so if you’re someone who needs a relatable protagonist, or at least one you don’t want to strangle, this probably isn’t the place to start. However, if you’re someone who lives for the drama, and watching two people commit to making each other worse is your idea of a good time, then this is the one for you.
Be warned though; animal cruelty and domestic violence feature, so if those are topics you don’t want to engage with you might want to avoid.
“The Phantom of the Opera” by Gaston LeRoux
This might be a great entry point for fans of the musical. I say might because in my experience there’s a fifty fifty chance they’ll absolutely love or utterly hate the book, and the same goes for book fans encountering the musical for the first time. Still, it’s got the lush, romantic aesthetics and grimy reality of the Parisian opera, intense psychological horror, and a truly terrifying villain. The overall vibes are histrionic, in an entirely enjoyable way, and the plot has twists you won’t see coming even if you are intimately familiar with the musical. The Phantom of the Operais a great gothic starting point for readers who generally lean towards horror, enjoy social history, or fantasise about being a 18th century artistic type in France.
“Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley
If you’re someone who enjoys science-fiction, existential questions about the nature of humanity, and monster as metaphor for man’s own monstrosity, then Mary Shelley’s genre spanning opus is for you. A novel that leans hard toward the horror and away from the romance in gothic fiction, I didn’t find Frankenstein frightening when I read it, just incredibly, incredibly sad. It’s definitely horrifying, but not in the jump scare sleeping with the lights on way, at least in my experience. It may make you sit with uncomfortable philosophical questions in the middle of the night, which is it’s own sort of horror I suppose.
The above links are bookshop.org affiliate links, so if you purchase through them you’ll be helping me and my favourite small local bookshop. Because these novels are all out of copyright however they can also be read easily online for free at the links below;
I can feel the lit snobs bristling from here, but it’s true; Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and a lot of gothic classics all fit the brief for dark romance. What’s more, the moral panic that dark romance has inspired is the exact same one that played out over gothic literature in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The belief that women will be corrupted by reading scary, sexy things, that they can’t tell fiction from reality or know their own minds is an old and frustrating one. The fact that many of those hand wringing now will gush about the Brontë’s novels, because they’re part of the literary canon and therefore above reproach, just adds a level of sad irony to it all. Someone is incapable of reading critically here, and for the most part it’s not the ladies devouring mafia romances.
Alright, sure, some of you are probably saying, I can see how Wuthering Heights fits the bill. The whole point is that Heathcliff and Cathy’s love is so toxic it ruins lives for multiple generations, and Heathcliff is so creatively horrible that he’d probably scare Byron himself, at least a little bit. A lot of early gothic novels have the hallmarks of dark romance to them, but Jane Eyre? To which I say, especially Jane Eyre.
The thing about Jane Eyre is that Jane herself tricks you into thinking everything going on is a lot more reasonable than actually it is. She’s got such a practical, pragmatic voice that you end up forgetting you’re even in a gothic novel at times, and nodding along when she tells you the ending is a happily domestic one. But let’s look at Rochester. The man imprisons his wife in the attic and pretends she doesn’t exist in order to trick a vulnerable woman with no support structure or financial resources into believing that she’s marrying him. This is classic dark romance behaviour.
Impersonating a fortune teller to try and convince her that he’s the one for her? Setting up a fake wedding and somehow persuading a priest to go along with it? Literally imprisoning his previous partner in an attic? Rochester is a dark romance love interest. He’s a sexy villain willing to do anything to acquire the woman he loves, no matter the harm it causes her, or anyone else. He lets her go when she discovers his secret, but then he’s already got one captive wife who hates him, he doesn’t want another. He wanted Jane to continue being her sweet, domestic self, adoring him and grateful for his elevating her to the status of wealthy wife, or mistress — adding another Fury to the attic would defeat the purpose. Though I’ll admit that his choosing not to do that does take away, at least a little, from the dark romance element — I’m not sure Heathcliff would have cared.
Jane is convinced he’s reformed at the end but then, has he? Or is he just no longer capable of enacting all the villainy he wants thanks to his injuries from the fire? Yes, he got them risking his life to try and save Bertha — or so he tells Jane at least, we’ve only got his word for that after all — but having qualms about letting your prisoner burn to death does not signify a total personality change. It just means that there are limits to his depravity, and trying to keep the woman you’ve held captive in your attic from burning to death is a low bar, even if she did set the fire herself. Jane thinks he’s changed, but in reality he’s just dependent on her thanks to his injuries, he’s still the same deceptive, possessive man with a cruel streak we met right at the beginning. And with his eyesight returning at the end of the novel it’s entirely possible he’s going to return to his old ways soon after the final chapter closes.
Jane Eyre can be read for free here, but if you want to purchase your own copy then you can support me and a small independent bookshop through this affiliate link.
Did you ever read any of the gothic classics when you were too young to really appreciate them? I have no idea if either of these books were formative in any way, as all I really remember about either is intensely disliking the experience of reading them; its possible my later adoration of everything gothic developed independently (thanks largely to the Sisters of Mercy, and, later, Byron), but I suppose it’s equally possible they slithered down into my developing psyche, laying gothic snares for tween and teen me to stumble into.
The first gothic novel I ever read was The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I did not enjoy the experience, which I think everyone could have predicted given I was about seven, but I was also stubborn enough I was determined to get all the way through it anyway. I distinctly remember my grandmother saying “Are you sure?” and trying to gently inform me it would be nothing whatsoever like the (I think Disney?) cartoon riffing on it that we’d just watched and which had inspired me to ask, but again, seven year old me was stubborn. (This was also how I ended up reading Animal Farm the next year, which definitely was a formative experience for little me). I genuinely remember nothing of the actual contents of the novel, just an all pervading sense of darkness and my own deep frustration — which I think may actually be an appropriate response to it after all. I do have a very clear memory of the cover, and reading it aloud in the back seat of my grandparents car though. I think I should probably try reading it again now that I’ve typed all this out, but I’ll have to get through my inner seven year old’s protests first.
The next one was Frankenstein. I was eleven and had just watched a film adaptation with my grandmother. Once again we did the are you sure dance but she supported my reading development and got me a copy anyway. Once again I did not enjoy myself, though I suspect my dislike of the experience was because I actually got the point of the novel (instead of just being a small child) this time, and wasn’t quite ready for that level of anger and misery in my reading matter. I liked fantasy novels a lot at that age and wanted there to be a nice, straightforward, happy ending. Given the movie we’d just watched had been a pretty faithful adaptation, at least to the spirit of the novel, and I’d found it thoroughly depressing I don’t know what I was expecting. Probably something more fun, in line with my parents Hammer Horror collection, but in fairness, my grandmother did tell me it wouldn’t be.
Which leads me into an embarrassing confession. At time of writing I still haven’t finished reading Dracula. Have you ever absorbed so much information about a book or a film that you just kind of forget you haven’t actually read or watched it? Yes, that was me and Dracula. In fairness to myself my Dad has a thing about Dracula film adaptations and one of my best friends has a deep and powerful obsession with the book, so I think I just spent so much time listening to the two of them talk about it that it just started to feel like I’d read it too. Then last year I realised I actually hadn’t. My wife and I are planning to read it out loud together, which is why I still haven’t read it yet, because we have a tbr pile to get through first. Still I’m considering shuffling the pile so it comes out near the top.
Are there gothic novels you read when you were way too young to appreciate them (or possibly came away scarred from the experience)? What about books you passively absorbed so much about you forgot you hadn’t read them yourself? I’d genuinely love to know. (I can’t be the only one).
Gothic Auntie 