The Reading Cravings of Pandemic Times
As the pandemic set in and we all sunk into the reality of long-term social distancing and the many ways our world was slipping sideways, I saw a lot of chatter of people escaping into romance.
I get it. A good romance story is like potato chips. You just start snacking — one chip, and another, and another — and suddenly you’ve ingested the entire thing, without even thinking. They’re just fun. I’ve picked up more romance reads than usual myself lately, and their pace and heart have been refreshing.
But. Even more than romance, I seem to craving an escape into horror. Especially gothic.
I started working my way through the TV show Hannibal and added a number of gothic titles to my TBR. On the FANTASY+GIRL podcast, our fall miniseries will focus on women in horror, so I’ve queued up some additional titles for that.
Why is my brain craving horror when the world is already so horrific?
Look. Some questions are better left unasked. I’m sure the depths of my subconscious is trying to work something out, but we’re going to let it do that work in peace.
But while dwelling in this dark, musty, creepy space of gothic, I stumbled onto the birthady of Ann Radcliff, one of the great minds of gothic literature. It was July 9, sorry, we missed it, but it got me on a kick to write about her for BookRiot all the same. While that’s in the works, a few highlights from my notes.
Radcliffe first started writing novels because her husband worked long hours, and she needed something to keep herself busy. And thank goodness she did. Her approach to describing the supernatural in her stories drew unprecedented popularity to the gothic genre in the 1790s. She reached a level of undisputed celebrity.
Yet, she only published five novels, over a span of eight years, and then just … stopped. It was never really clear why. Much like the terrible tales she wrote, some said Radcliffe had gone mad and was locked away, while others said she stopped writing due to sensitivity to the criticism that came with it. A sixth novel was released after she died.
In addition to her haunting descriptions, Radcliffe was known for her trademark conclusions — in the end, the strange occurrances of her stories were given elaborate rational explanations that brought everything to light. You know. Like Scooby Doo.
But, *perhaps* of greater significance, her influence is easy to trace on the pages of many other notable classics, from Frankenstein to Jane Eyre to Wuthering Heights, and beyond.
And thus, Radcliffe’s influence continues to haunt literature today, her shadow in the margins of a great tradition of gothic tales that still embraces abandoned mansions, secret rooms, glowering portraits, and wailing from down the hall.
While it wasn’t true to all gothic literature (see: Dracula), the genre’s motif was frequently used to explore women’s rights and the restraint of societal expectations, so it’s fitting that one of it’s greatest creators was a women herself.
Further Reading
- Scream Queens: The Women Who Pioneered Gothic Literature
- Feminism and the Gothic: A Brief History
- More Thrilling than Fiction: The Real-Life Heroines of the Early Gothic
- Not Your Scream Queen: The SFF Girls Podcast Horror Film Series
