CHANGES OF PERCEPTION IN GOTHIC LITERATURE. AN INQUIRY INTO THE EFFECTS OF READING GOTHIC

Abstract

[...]monsters, the representative figures of the Gothic, are "never created ex nihilo, but through a process of fragmentation and recombination in which elements are extracted from various forms and then assembled as the monster" (Cohen 1996:11) who claims an identity, which makes Gothic literature a premonitory device of what is to become future generations and their becoming something more. 2. The cyborg introduces the possibility of a new stage of evolution, posthumanism, and it is Hayles who offers a description of this evolutionary stage, seeing it as a stage that "[...] thinks of the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate" and "configures human being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines" because, in posthumanism, "there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulations, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals" (Hayles 1999:2-3). An act of reading entails a series of mental processes that form one's perception of the text and its characters, with a direct effect that is translated into the reader's reality and interactions with the world every time similarities between the fictional and the real world occur. [...]reading entails processes such as comprehension, visualization, identification of familiar constructs, as well as constructs that step outside the boundary of the known and alter the individual from the point of view of his/her rationalization of events and situations, or of his/her perception of the world. According to Beaumont, the secondary cortex is the part of the brain that interprets what the primary cortex records in terms of stimuli, be they visual, audible or of any other type, while the temporal lobes play a role in "governing correct perception of the self-located within an experiential framework" (2008:90); this would then complete Hakemulder's idea of the effect of role playing following the act of reading.

Headnote

Abstract: Starting from the idea of perception as it applies to literature, and taking into account the effect that reading can have over someone, I discuss the way in which perception of Gothic texts and monsters changes from dread and fear in the lo century Gothic literature to love in today's postmodern Gothic, as a consequence of the transformations that we have undergone, and that have resulted in radical shifts of mentality and an overt expression of everything that was once hidden, repressed and despairingly desirable, done through the use of words that leave no room for misinterpretation.

Keywords: dread, Gothic, monster, perception, reading

1. Introduction

One of the major characteristics of Gothic literature is that it has a ripple effect, over time and space, on our concepts of Self and Society, due to its being a distinct type of literature, with a function of psychological release, mediating the conflicts and sociocultural anxieties of the writer and of the reader, a literature defined by Kelly Hurley (1996:4) as "an instrumental genre, re-emerging cyclically, at periods of cultural stress, to negotiate the anxieties that accompany social and epistemological transformations and crises". These anxieties are expressed through the use of tools for the subversion of humanity such as robots, monsters and supernatural elements, all of which are expressed euphemistically and created through a process of deconstruction and reassembly into new constructs, whether by the merging of flesh with machine or by positive contamination as a result of a bite, a transfer of fluids or an external influence. Thus, monsters, the representative figures of the Gothic, are "never created ex nihilo, but through a process of fragmentation and recombination in which elements are extracted from various forms and then assembled as the monster" (Cohen 1996:11) who claims an identity, which makes Gothic literature a premonitory device of what is to become future generations and their becoming something more.

2. An outline of Gothic's progress

There are three major stages of evolution through which Gothic literature goes; I chose to see one of them as a transition period that paved the way to contemporary variants through the death of the divine and the creation of the figure of the ghost. All three main stages, as well as the transitional period, require further detailing if we are to set up a favorable context for the inquiries this paper proposes about Gothic literature. The 18th century was the time during which the idea of a representative figure of the Gothic style was being shaped, as this style of writing was beginning to become known. The Gothic tries to distance itself from Romanticism, which had encapsulated it as its darker Other, while standing as a comeback to the immoral aristocracy and the disappearance of the nobility, and is characterized by a moralizing tone, passing on some form of judgment of situations and/or characters; its representative figure is vice and corruption and its hero is the figure of the dispossessed, defined by Toni Wein as "models of manners and integrity", with "many conventional attributes of the romance hero [...]" which have been "robbed of their birthrights"(2002:9).

Starting with the 19th century, Gothic literature begins its exploration of boundaries, as short periods of time are stretched over many pages, and years are compressed to a few lines, chronology is dislocated and textual structures are suspended and new defining terms appear. This is a time when Gothic literature changes to such an extent that it can be seen as an Other of its previous version, due to new motifs present and new defining terms, as it moves away from the margin more and more to the center, from settings such as churches, graveyards, monasteries or other isolated locations, to drawing rooms, and inside cities rather than at their outskirts; it begins to deal with themes pertaining to science, philosophy, historical philosophy, politics, theology, biography and autobiography. Such texts are "filled to repletion with violence, imprisonment, torture, murder, parricide, sex, rape, incest and cannibalism", which makes them be considered as nothing more than "a numerous class of caterers to the public, ready to minister to any appetite, however foul and depraved" (McEvoy 2007:22). So we see that, from initially being considered merely a form of dark Romanticism, the Gothic style now becomes a bad case of sensation fiction, its only function being that of "exposing the reader's nervous system to a series of shocks strung on a hightension narrative thread" (Warwick 2007:31).

A modernist type of Gothic fiction is hard to define because of the period's instability, which makes it difficult to interpret. That is why, for all intents and purposes of this paper, modernism will be considered a period of transition for Gothic literature, being easily confounded with other types of literature or seen simply unfit for stable present day categorization, despite the fact that modernism was a period during which the focus was on the here and now, just as plots and settings of Gothic novels were very similar to those of the previous centuries, to the point of confusion of temporal placement. In its position as a bridge between previous and future forms of literary development, modernism has three points of interest which must be taken into account: the exploration of morality begins to reveal cracks and instances of failure, a phenomenon believed by Smith and Wallace to be due to the fact that texts in this period are "joined [...] by their fascination with the potential erosion of moral value, and with the forms that amorality can take" (2001:3). This could mean that any modernist text is a Gothic text, although we know that this is not the case; the crisis of the Self finds grounds for development during this time, as the body, Smith and Wallace (2001:3) claim, becomes "ghosted by a sense of something potentially alien and strange. Anxieties about the physical health of the collective body - human species, race, nation-state, culture - become anxieties about the idea of the self'; and, finally, pre-modem texts reveal the focus on the present, which will evolve into the focus on the Self later on, the best example for this being none other than Stoker's Dracula whose "[...] use of diary extracts, newspaper cuttings and letters evidences an interest in the material here-and-now" (Smith and Wallace 2001:2).

The liaison that modernism offered to the different stages of development of the Gothic, mainly the possibility of uttering the unspeakable by breaking the boundaries imposed by cultural limitations and challenging the notion of sanctity and divinity, as well as introducing the ghost, created a space for a very diverse postmodern Gothic, a Gothic of embodiment, at times, a symbiotic genre that is dependent on other forms of fiction with which it coexists inside the same novel, at times challenging in its availability for interpretation within the bounds of specifically Gothic tropes, defined by Theo D'haen (1995: 283) as

a particular kind of fiction, primarily but not necessarily contemporaiy characterized by a common set of techniques, conventions and themes (self-reflexiveness, metafiction, eclecticism, redundancy, multiplicity, discontinuity, intertextuality, parody, pastiche, the dissolution of character and narrative instance, the use of minor or popular genres, the erasure of boundaries, and the de-stabilization of the reader).

His definition of postmodern Gothic literature as an unstable genre points out one effect of literature on the readers, destabilization, an effect only possible because of a pre-existing factor in the persona of the reader that allows for this to occur. Steven Bruhm's argument for the necessity of a contemporary Gothic genre provides us with that pre-existing factor. He posits that elements such as the advances in science and the development of weapons, feminism, gay liberation movements, the civil right movement of the 1960s for African-American people, the many attacks on Christianity or the proliferation of the cult of the vampire started by Stoker's novel "attest to the powerful threat (and attraction) posed by our culture's increasing secularly", making us able to "conceive of superhuman beings unable to be destroyed" (Bruhm 2002: 260-261).

Due to the fragmentation of Gothic literature as a relatively fixed construct, its representative figure also underwent a separation, provided by the freedom of thought and scientific progress specific to this secularity invoked by Bruhm, in the Cyborg and the Other as Self. As a hybrid of human and machine, the cyborg stands as the representative for the boundary of corporeality's being transcended. Katherine N. Hayles is one of the theorists of man's transformation into a machine, of the possibility of transferring one's consciousness to a computer; thus man becomes pure information, transcending limitations such as time, space and materiality. She says that "we all experience ourselves as embodied creatures, living in specific times and places and limited by the biological, cultural, and historical inheritances that define us", but "contemporary technology, especially informatics, has given us the sense that we can transcend these limitations and live a disembodied, free-floating existence" through the possibility of "transfer of information from one point on the globe to any other" (Hayles 1990:394); however, she also acknowledges the fact that by losing the body of flesh, we lose the link with emotions and sensory experience, because "if becoming information allows us to escape the hazards of embodiment, it also usurps the joy that comes with physical well-being; if it bestows control, it takes away connection with direct sensory experience" (Hayles 1990:395-396). The cyborg introduces the possibility of a new stage of evolution, posthumanism, and it is Hayles who offers a description of this evolutionary stage, seeing it as a stage that "[...] thinks of the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate" and "configures human being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines" because, in posthumanism, "there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulations, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals" (Hayles 1999:2-3).

The second postmodern representative, the Other as Self, is the result of the fact that perception of the Self becomes unbound. Elements such as ethical inquiries, self knowledge or repressed emotions and desires are under heavy attack during postmodernism and, in literature, the expression of the hidden parts of the Self through the use of the unheimlich makes the postmodern Gothic thrive. A conflict occurs between the Self as one knew it, and the Other, which begins to exert a stronger attraction, to the point of no return, when one begins to believe that s/he has lived as an Other whose Self has been hidden all along and is now brought out to light. Homosexuality or issues pertaining to the transgender stand as the best examples of such cases when the Self vs. Other becomes the Other vs. Self, at a time when "it may be difficult for postmodern readers to recuperate adultery, premarital sex, prostitution, cross-dressing, rape, and even celibacy as deviance, as threatening not only to social standing but also to identity itself' (O'Malley 2006:5). Such cases of role reversal are what, I posit, lead to the survival of Gothic literature and its adaptation to contemporary time and space, so as to accommodate any means of expression of anxiety. At the same time, this survival of the genre points at the reader of such literature and the writer, both of whom have a more rational approach to it, a more self-conscious standing and a radically altered perception of what is threatening and dreadful and what is desirable and soothing in terms of monstrosity.

3. Why read Gothic literature?

An act of reading entails a series of mental processes that form one's perception of the text and its characters, with a direct effect that is translated into the reader's reality and interactions with the world every time similarities between the fictional and the real world occur. Thus, reading entails processes such as comprehension, visualization, identification of familiar constructs, as well as constructs that step outside the boundary of the known and alter the individual from the point of view of his/her rationalization of events and situations, or of his/her perception of the world. Jèmeljan Hakemulder (2000:18) offers a great basis for the change that occurs in readers of fiction, seeing reading as "a thoughtexperiment" in which readers "try out certain roles and reflect on the consequences of these roles". The best way to convey this change is to think of both previously acquired sets of information and new ones, contained in the text being read, as dots that lead to the formation of an image. Each act of reading is a performative act, leading to the creation of microcosms one inside another, i.e. each series of connected dots forms an image that becomes a dot itself, leading to an endless creation of new images.

Oxford English Dictionary defines perception as "the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses, [...] the neurophysiological processes, including memory, by which an organism becomes aware of and interprets external stimuli" or "the way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted". Applied to the act of reading, perception means an awareness of something triggered by stimuli, which is then interpreted through the mental process of connecting that which was read to that which one already knew, that which had been perceived before, a pre-existing quantity of information which reacts to exactly the same or similar stimuli as those the text contains. Neuropsychology has taught us that perception is a physical phenomenon occurring in the secondary cortex, which "produces perception and the integration of sensory and motor behaviour" (Beaumont 2008:41). According to Beaumont, the secondary cortex is the part of the brain that interprets what the primary cortex records in terms of stimuli, be they visual, audible or of any other type, while the temporal lobes play a role in "governing correct perception of the self-located within an experiential framework" (2008:90); this would then complete Hakemulder's idea of the effect of role playing following the act of reading.

There are several elements of perception in the act of reading that should be further detailed in order to determine the factors that lead to the change this paper proposes: comprehension (mediated by sensation and attention); cognizance (brought on by visualization, reasoning - understood as judgment - and accessing former representations); apprehension (brought on by access to memory and preexisting representations and seen as both an act of understanding, of grasping something, and as "anxiety or fear that something bad or unpleasant will happen", as defined by the OED); interpretation (which is achieved through role playing and role taking); temporary defamiliarization (and thus willing suspension of misinterpretation - also temporary - and identification with the character, the situation, etc.); and change of self-concept (as a result of judgment - understood as a conclusion and subjective - and reflection on what was read).

As mentioned before, more contemporary forms of Gothic fiction began to allow space for interpretation of the same novel through different sets of critical approaches. For example, a dystopian novel depicting a war between humans and clones/androids, in an after-Earth age, can be interpreted both as a science fiction novel, appealing to the innocent readers looking for sensation eliciting texts, and as Gothic fiction, in the case of more experienced readers seeking alternative translations of fears, anxieties and secret longings during contemporary times. In the same way, a homoerotic novel populated by vampires can be read as both erotic horror literature and as a type of literature which mediates or advocates against present day anxieties of the homosexual community fearing discrimination, which again fits the pattern of the Gothic.

We can thus claim that, for contemporary writers and readers of the Gothic, this type of literature acquires redeeming properties for the individual's psyche and opens doors to the Self. Gothic literature and its reception as well as the perception of its inner mechanism and representative figures has advanced to the point where we see that, whereas the first Gothic texts were sought for the temporary thrill that they gave through the image of a normal world invaded by monsters and supernatural elements - being a kind of fiction read in the shadows, a type of literature fit only for the lowest and most lacking in dignity, contemporary texts are sought for the escape from the normal world into an alternative reality, where the supernatural is the norm and the thrill is more permanent. The vampire, the werewolf and the witch become the day to day people of our lives and that is the main pattern one recognizes when reading the text. What remains is the average human being who feels left behind, having no supernatural traits; the subsequent reactions s/he has are the identification with the reality of the text, the feeling of being a prisoner bound by normality, and a conviction that s/he is a suitable candidate for a transformation into something else, something more, something to which s/he lays claim as his/her own Self to which s/he is entitled, having lived so far as an Other.

The most important part of the process of perception, without which it could not occur, is empathy; this plays a crucial role in the connection between reader, text,and what the text speaks about and is a primary component in determining the response, or lack thereof, to the text, the story inside it, the circumstances portrayed, etc. Hakemulder (2000:69) identifies three components of empathy, of which the third applies best to the act of reading, namely the experiential component [my emphasis]; this in turn contains three subcomponents: the experience proper, in which the reader becomes aware of his/her connection to the character(s), the correction and redirection of the affective reactions according to appropriateness, and the generation of affective reactions, or role-taking, by recollecting past pleasant or unpleasant feelings, which s/he projects onto the character(s) as if responding to their situation.

Another element without which perception cannot occur is that of truth inside a work of fiction, because "words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality'" (Poe 1938:108); this supports the claim that the success of fiction relies on the element of truth because, as Hakemulder (2000:10) explains, "the expectation that the truth content of literature goes beyond mere facts has given rise to certain opinions about the effects of reading, for instance that literary texts affect readers' ideas about probability". The importance of Gothic fiction is thus sustained by the effect it has on the perception of what is real, what is not, what can become real and what we wish was real.

For the Gothic fiction of the 18th and the 19th century, the emotional response of dread, of fear of the uncanny relied deeply on the subconscious fear that the horrible facts described in the story could really take place, whether in a nearby or distant future; nowadays, this has become a conscious longing, an expectation even, ultimately causing one to seek such texts for the rush of experiencing, in a fictional plane of existence, the reality of the uncanny described in the text. In reading fiction, we put ourselves in the shoes of the characters, or of the one character we identify ourselves most with, and we experience what would happen if a certain chain of events unfolded. But in doing so, we also connect to the writer who conducts an experiment as he writes, which reminds us of John Gardner's idea of a moral laboratory, further developed by Hakemulder who says: "A sequence of events presented in a story affects readers' beliefs about causality: 'action a leads to consequence ZV" (2000:11).

We see thus that Gothic literature forces audiences not only to think of the context, the consequences and the motives of the protagonist in a text, but also of the deeper meaning behind it all, of the outer conditions of life, the internal struggles of humanity, causing people to open their eyes and either run in horror, or reconsider everything they thought they knew, inside a new, enriched view of the world, because reading "enhances the ability to make psychological inferences about the emotions, thoughts, and motives others have in certain situations" (Hakemulder 2000:13). What is more, Gothic literature alters perceptions, creates new ones, and filters our conscious and subconscious mind, and if "reading narratives enhances insight into human character, this would indirectly improve the quality of our ethical inquiries, at least on measures used in the social sciences" (Hakemulder 2000:14), then, also, our ability to express anxiety through the healthy, harmless, laboratory of writing or reading, would be developed. In its most general form, Gothic literature asks the questions 'Who am I?' and answers it with the answer to the question 'Who do I want to be?'

The change that occurs in the reader projects directly onto the way s/he interacts with the world, which provides him/her with a situation in which his/her norms are both shaped and challenged. Following an act of reading, the individuals' response to the text "is influenced by their self-concept and norms, and vice versa: their self-concept and norms are affected by their response to the text" (Hakemulder 2000:70), and this is due to the fact that reading "may produce a new understanding of oneself, a genuinely new conception of one's values and prejudices" because rather than "merely reliving old emotions from the past, readers bring them forward in the present and apply them to new contexts" (Hakemulder 2000:86).

The effect on the reader of the Gothic was expressed in rather noteworthy terms by Angela Carter in her short story collection, when referring to Edgar Allan Poe's literary style. She says that his style of writing "deals entirely with the profane. Its great themes are incest and cannibalism. Character and events are exaggerated beyond reality, to become symbols, ideas, passions. [...] It retains a singular moral function - that of provoking uncase" (Carter 1997: Kindle Locations 9023-9027).

Poe's fiction was satiated with his madness (he was presumed to be suffering from some mental disease), and this literary madness is a crucial characteristic without which the works of writers like him would have been forgotten. However, this triggers a series of questions about both writer and reader of the Gothic. If this characteristic speaks volumes about the author of such a text, what does it say about the reader of such texts? What kind of localized madness must one possess to guide him/her in the direction of such reading? And, finally, what similarities are there between the expressed madness of the writer and the tormented one of the reader who finds solace only in the acquaintance of another's sorrow? As "access to the half-way region of phantasy is permitted by the universal assent of mankind, and everyone suffering from privation expects to derive alleviation and consolation from it" (Freud 1973:1954), we can establish a connection between writer and reader, as determined by Freud, who described the former as an introvert bordering on neurosis and turning to phantasy in order to satisfy some hidden desire. He removes from his phantasy elements that pertain to an identification of his self, making it thus universally available, and comes out on the other side, into reality, having acquired the necessary tools to achieve what he could only achieve in phantasy. The reader shares all the traits of the writer, except the ability to create a stable phantasy which could satisfy his/her desires; and s/he thus needs the writer to provide him/her with that in order to achieve the same satisfaction and acquire the same set of tools needed to make what was only possible in phantasy succeed in reality.

The writer becomes then an enabler, his conflict with the world being a pathway for himself and the reader through the use of Gothic fiction. But the relationship between the writer and the rest of the world leads one to determine several other types of relationships: between writer and the world (the person as Self, moulded and born in its most authentic individual shape, and the Other, resulting from the influences of society, family, entourage, background, stressing factors, personal as well as national history, etc., resulting in the Text); between text and reader (Other vs. Self, as the reader initially fears becoming monstrous, later feeling like an Other without a Self of its own. The effects of such an event are irreversible, as they awaken a sense of Self always incomplete); and between both writer and/or reader and himself (confronting the text, both will come to the realization of a shortcoming, and the way each perceives himself will be altered).

4. Conclusion

The moral laboratory of the Gothic can save lives and provide answers about the Self. Originally, the Gothic expressed the anxiety of society; its author, as described by Freud, was the representative of the people in expressing it. As time went by and the focus shifted more and more to the individual, with everyone having an equal opportunity to express anxiety, the monster became connected with personal anxieties, frustrations and desires, making the Gothic much more complex in its intricacy and possibility for topics to demonize.

A radical shift occurred as people came to terms with their attraction towards the monster more and more, and thus ended up seeking it, and undergoing transition from dread to love. The reader remains dependent on the writer, just as Freud described it, but now he is not afraid to admit his/her desire for reading about his/her most intimate anxieties and repressed feelings in the book of another; he even demands that he is given such a book to read.

References

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