| Description |
The formulaic, Walpolean Gothic was a staunchly upheld tradition throughout 18- and 19th-century Gothic literature. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein rose to great popularity due to its categorization as a Gothic novel, but on closer analysis, Shelley purposefully refuses each conventional step of Walpole's system. Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves echoes both the Walpolean Gothic and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein but entirely explodes any and all systemization that could categorize it. Both novels structure themselves around the active deconstruction of their own narratives and the deconstruction of the Gothic villain, whether that be a ghost or a tyrannical father. Through evaluating Derridean textual deconstruction as well as postmodern postcolonial subaltern studies, I examine the lack of objective truth and binary-driven villainous characters in these two books and how the authors decolonize the language of good and evil throughout their texts. I argue that Shelley's Creature, enfolded in multi-layered perspectives, staunchly refuses otherization and inhumanity and explain how this works to deconstruct the subaltern subject. Subsequently, I describe how Danielewski's Derridean refusal of a defined central narrative and a personified evil rejects and critiques the Gothic Other. I conclude that each work deconstructs the subaltern character and that Danielewski drew from Shelley's novel to refine her deconstruction of the Gothic. |
