Madness also comes up repeatedly in Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), with Melmoth seeming to spread it wherever he goes.īut Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps the author most responsible for making madness an integral aspect of the gothic genre. His madness is usually mentioned in conjunction with his rage or lust, and it motivates him to perform acts of violence he never would have considered before. In Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796), the titular clergyman is described as being “worked up to madness” right before he murders a woman.
Madness in early Gothic literature tends to be depicted in connection with the moral failings of the antagonist. I present it in this post as one trope, but madness is explored in many different ways in both the victims and the villains of Gothic literature, and the way it is presented has changed over time. Perhaps this is why insanity crops up as one of the most common themes in Gothic literature. Its intangibility means that it cannot be fought, and its irrational nature makes it nearly impossible to understand. And in some ways, it is the most terrifying monster of all. Madness is the monster that lurks inside our own minds. TheGothicLibrarian on Podcasts to Check Out If You Love This Blog!.
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