19Th Century Horror Stories
A Study of the Characteristics of 19th Century Horror Stories
In this essay we will look at the Characteristics of 19th Century Horror Stories, commenting on: the structure of the story; the characterisation; the themes included in the story; the setting and the writer’s technique.
I will be looking into two texts in detail: “The Monkey’s Paw” by William Wymark Jacobs; and “The Signalman” by Charles Dickens, whilst making references to “Captain Rogers” – also by William Wymark Jacobs, and “The Engineer’s Thumb” by Sherlock Holmes.
During the Victorian period, the industrial revolution was in full flow, and the gothic styles of writing used in the stories of this period were extremely popular – featuring in many magazines of the time. Horror stories became almost an obsession for many people, who were drawn in by the unique styles of the writers such as Dickens, Poe, and Wilkie Collins. They were cheap, and widely available, with many of them being published in magazines. The availability of them meant that the obsession continued, as the people of that time were always able to obtain a new story.
One of the stories, “The Signalman” by Dickens, is a fine example of the horror stories of that day:
It begins by setting a gloomy scene, with the Signalman situated in a ‘deep cutting’, his figure ‘foreshortened and shadowed’. Using description such as this, the author can immediately let the reader understand the mood of the story – in this case, dark and depressing. This technique is also used in “Captain Rogers”, with the words ‘feeble’, ’painful’, and ‘forced’ being used in the first paragraph.
The ‘deep cutting’ in which the story is set, is later described as a ‘dungeon’, and at the end of the cutting was the entrance to a black tunnel, in which there was a ‘barbarous, depressing, and forbidding air’ – setting a negative semantic field around the piece.
The Signalman himself is described as a ‘dark sallow’ man, living in as ‘solitary and dismal...
View Full Essay