Victorian Novels and Gothic Modifications

 A new thesis:

Wuthering Heights and The Picture of Dorian Gray: Victorian Novels and Gothic Modifications

by Olivia Balogh

This thesis includes a textual examination of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, as well as background information on social norms and customs in England during the Victorian era. This time period is generalized today as a time of upright morals and near-prudish modesty from the English upper-class. That is, these socialites generally kept up a façade of being restrained and moral, despite whether or not those things were actually true. Beneath that surface, however, many of the intellectual aristocracy engaged in amoral activities and other vices to cope with the changing society. Victorian Gothic novels, like Wuthering Heights and The Picture of Dorian Gray, contained themes of psychological terror, the supernatural, brutal violence, the return of the repressed, and others. This type of content was somewhat, but not entirely, rebellious amongst the prudish society it was published in. I have examined the texts of Wuthering Heights and The Picture of Dorian Gray as well as multiple sources that review them. In this thesis I evaluate multiple scenes in the novels, considering what makes them “Gothic,” and I find that although both of these novels caused a bit of an uproar upon their releases, the Gothic itself is not quite as subversive as one might think.