4 Gothic Novels For The Spooky Season

that are not Frankenstein or Dracula

Pumpkin spice latte szn is upon us!! I don’t like PSL, but I DO love autumn. Also, Halloween is creeping up, and I know this because (1) Halloween costume and snack ideas have begun infiltrating my For You pages on social media; and (2) Vanessa Hudgens has begun her yearly Instagram black-and-white revamp.

I’m suffering from a severe case of FOMO, since Halloween isn’t a huge deal here in tropical Singapore. So, to celebrate, I shall talk about the only thing I know how to: BOOKS 😁 To be specific, a subgenre of literature that has my entire heart and soul: GOTHIC FICTION.

In last month’s newsletter on Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, I talked about how Shakespeare’s Hamlet isn’t just about unhinged characters and the Lion King shenanigans, but also about grief, ghosts, and being. Well, that’s because amongst the other dozen things he pioneered, Shakesy was writing Gothic stories before Gothic was even a thing.

The word itself brings to mind overcast skies, looming castles, and crazy, cackling scientists with some inhuman creature strapped to a table, or maybe vampires and ghouls, if you fancy. And while that’s pretty much accurate, a story perfused with supernatural elements does not necessarily a Gothic novel make.

Gothic =/= ghost stories!

A marked difference between the Gothic and your run-of-the-mill ghost stories is the lingering presence of The Past — either literally or through metaphor, allegory, and symbolism — which torments the present, and is usually what drives characters to their doom. They don’t even necessarily have to have monsters.

Most of us are probably already familiar with some of the world’s most famous Gothic works, such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. These stories have withstood the test of time and have permeated popular culture so much that they’ve become the icons and staples of Ho we know it today.

That is likely because, like the works of Shakespeare, they’re not stories simply made up to scare little children at night. Their immortality can be attributed to greater, less tangible themes like grief, ill-fated love, and Othering, which still resonate with society today, and will continue to do so, until the world is inevitably over by robots (*eyes Boston Dynamics nervously*).

So, in light of that, and to kick off the chillier months (here in Southeast Asia nothing much changes, tbh), I have cobbled together a list of my most beloved Gothic novels. These are short and very readable, and though they may not fall under the stereotypical ‘creature’ story, are definitely worth a place on your shelf!

1. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

I know you thought of the 1996 Disney animated film when you read that title. Or, I hope you did, because that film is one of THE most underrated from the Disney Renaissance era. Seriously, the song God Help The Outcasts isn’t talked about enough, which is ironic, since it sums up The Hunchback of Notre Dame perfectly.

Really, these are some top-tier elite lyrics. Argue with the wall.

The film’s source material, published in 1831, is a heart-wrenching story about the deformed Quasimodo, bellringer of Notre Dame and slave to the evil Archdeacon Claude Frollo.

When Frollo, A WHOLEASS, FULLY GROWN MAN, falls in lust with the SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD Esmeralda, he asks Quasi to kidnap her. The attempt is foiled by Captain Phoebus, who, unlike his Disney counterpart, is a detestable fuckboy who gives off massive small dick energy. This sets off a chain of outrageous events that ultimately end in utter disaster (when I tell you the plot is MESSY🍵).

Quasimodo, theoretically, checks off the ‘monster’ box in this Gothic tale. His appearance is described in great detail, all humps and bumps and grunts. Hugo wants us to know the poor sod is UG-GLAY. He is treated horribly because of his appearance by not just his caretaker, but the common citizens of Paris. Funny thing is that Quasi is probably the kindest character in the whole story.

Aside from bullying Quasi, the other characters also wrestle demons from their own pasts: Esmeralda wears a small bag of green silk on her neck, which carries a shoe from when she was a baby; Gudule, an old hag, bears an immense hatred towards the Romani for allegedly abducting her infant daughter; and Frollo is estranged from his wayward younger brother, Jehan — all of which come back, in the end, to drag their asses to hell. AS THEY SHOULD.

But of course, Hunchback wouldn’t be the iconic Gothic novel without mentioning the titular cathedral itself, which is really the pièce de résistance of the novel. At the time, Notre-Dame de Paris had fallen into disrepair and was being neglected in favour of newer buildings. Hugo, who was highkey obssessed with its cavernous vaults and prickly spires, penned Hunchback as a sort of angry love letter to anyone who would listen.

Fun fact: Hugo wasn’t very happy with the title of the English translation, the original French title being Notre-Dame de Paris. He asserted that it places greater emphasis on Quasimodo than the building. Which, to me, is a slightly weird gripe to have, but I suppose architects might relate?

Anywho, I think Hunchback provides great insight into the concept of Othering, and the phenomenon of treating someone based purely on how they look (a.k.a ‘pretty privilege’). Also, not gonna lie, the language can be a bit convoluted, so if that’s not your thing, try an abridged version!

Trust me, it’s a wild ride from start to finish. 10/10 would recommend.

I plan to do a deep dive into certain aspects of this novel so stay tuned!

2. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

I first read Dorian Gray when I was a child and kind of forgot about it — I mean, what would a ten-year-old understand about the relationship between beauty and terror? Then twenty-six-year-old me gave it another whirl, and it immediately shot to the top of my all-time-favourites list.

We follow the hot, young Dorian Gray from teenagehood to adulthood, and how experiences from the former influence the latter. Because of certain ideas put into his head by the hedonistic Lord Henry, Dorian becomes terrified of growing old, and kind-of-sort-of-accidentally-on-purpose makes a deal with the Devil, which allows him to remain young and beautiful for the most part of his life, while the sins he commits are reflected in a painted portrait of him.

Unlike Hunchback, in which Quasi has a kind heart but is judged externally by the masses, Dorian is, for most of the book, beloved by society and his friends. He keeps the cursed portrait locked up, so he is the one singular person who witnesses the slow decay of his soul — a clever inversion that turns the erroneous but common belief that “beauty = goodness” on its head.

Though Dorian Gray isn’t technically a romance, there is a lot of speech extolling some very whimsical, nebulous notions of love, lust, and beauty. What I love about this is that we actually get to see the dark consequences play out. *evil laugh*

Character motivations are clear, and the character arcs are sensible, and the plot is tighter than my finances this month. Every character also subscribes to entirely different — sometimes opposing — philosophical views, which makes for nail-biting tension and dramatic arguments.

Not only is the prose incredibly beautiful and skillfully executed, but the ideas presented within the story are also definitely worth contemplating over, especially if, like me, you tend to spiral into occasional bouts of existential reflection.

While some lines can be pretty on the nose…

He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, and more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. He would examine, with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age.

…it works within the novel’s context, thanks to Wilde’s supernatural command of language. How he managed to cram a smorgasbord of themes, symbolism, poetry, and social discourse into such a short story remains one of the world’s greatest unsolved mysteries.

The book’s short length, combined with vibrant prose and mixed with just the right amount of murder and debauchery, makes Dorian Gray the perfect softcore horror, and a great entry point into classic novels in general.

P.S. I have been wanting to watch the film adaptation starring Ben Barnes, but I can’t get over the fact that Dorian is supposed to be BLOND with BLUE EYES, like the BLONDEST, MOST BLUE-EYED MAN EVER. HE IS SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE HIS LAST NAME IS MALFOY. Was it so difficult to get an actor who fit this description?? 😒

End rant.

MOVING ON.

3. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Arguably one of the greatest modern classics, Rebecca is an understated horror story about old money, power, and feminine wrath.

It begins with the narrator meeting the dashing Maxim de Winter, a rich English widower. Swept up in a whirlwind romance, the two get married, and he carts her off to his fabulous Cornwall estate called Manderley. (God, when is it my turn??) I would have been envious of her, until we discover that not all is right in the house.

Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, is a crusty old cow who constantly makes snide remarks to the new Mrs. de Winter, comparing her to her predecessor Rebecca, who was apparently perfect and infallible in every way possible, and gaslights her into oblivion. This, and other strange happenings around the house and its staff, quickly make our heroine feel isolated and out of place.

Mrs. D*nvers then takes advantage of her mentally-weakened state and attempts to cajole her into committing suicide by jumping out the window, when they’re interrupted by a commotion from a shipwreck at the beach — they found Rebecca’s sailing boat (!!) and Rebecca’s decomposing body on board (!!!).

This means Maxim wrongfully identified the body that washed ashore previously as his wife. HMMMM.

Okay, so Rebecca may not be top-of-mind when listing our favourite scary books. Being more of a domestic kind of tale, it doesn’t even seem all that remarkable when compared with other popular horror stories; or perhaps you aren’t too convinced because my brief synopsis doesn’t do it justice. Either way, its many stage and film adaptations beg to differ (1940 Alfred Hitchcock version > 2020 one starring Lily James. Sorry Lily, I still love you).

The multi-faceted story offers alternative views about the roles of women, especially of that era. On the surface, Rebecca — or her spirit, rather — is the ‘angry woman’: a jealous, petty entity exacting revenge by tormenting her husband’s new lover. But is Rebecca the real villain, or her husband, who, under a different lens, is domineering and plain sexist?

Rebecca is of a specific strain of Gothic novels that attempts to make you think more than invoke fear. It quite reminds me of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, an 1892 short story about a woman who is implied to be suffering from postpartum depression, and is locked away in a room by her gaslight-y doctor husband.

Gilman wrote Yellow Wallpaper as a protest against the patriarchal society of the time, and its mishandling of women’s mental health. Many also regard it as a Gothic novel, and it tackles very similar themes to Rebecca, such as powerlessness, agency of self, and madness.

That said, horror elements are definitely present in this book, and the eerie Manderley and its weirdo staff will definitely unsettle you — all in all, the perfect companion for a stormy night in.

4. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

This list wouldn’t be complete without an entry from the literary god of horror, Edgar Allan Poe. He’s perhaps most well-known for his poems like The Raven, Annabelle Lee, and short stories like The Tell-Tale Heart. But the one I wanted to spotlight today is slightly longer in length, and waaay more creepy, in my opinion: The Fall of the House of Usher.

Basically, an unsuspecting narrator arrives at his friend Roderick Usher’s house. Roddy lives with his ill sister, Madeline, in a dilapidated country house that is just straight up not the vibes.

When Madeline dies, the two friends agree to entomb her body, because he’s… ‘afraid her body would be exhumed’.

I mean, this just sounds like unhinged behaviour, but I suppose at the time this would’ve been a valid concern.

Anyway, after entombing Madeline, the two men start hearing and seeing things around the house, and at this point, you already know shit’s gonna go down. And whaddaya know! shit does, in fact, go down. But I don’t want to spoil it too much, so you’ll just have to read it for yourselves.

House of Usher, though quite short in comparison to ‘proper’ novels, is more fleshed-out than Poe’s other short stories. It is more aligned with textbook horror conventions, and is outfitted with all the horror trimmings: graveyards, ghosts, and lunacy (the Great Illustrated Classics version of this kept me up for nights as a child).

The atmosphere throughout the novel is downright unsettling. The Devil’s lair house itself seems like a living, breathing entity, always ‘watching’ the characters through its “eye-like” windows. One might say it is cursed, and has in turn cursed its inhabitants. Even the narrator’s Spidey senses were tingling, right in the first paragraph, when he first claps eyes on that godforsaken place:

I know not how it was — but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible.

Admittedly, the story is quite campy, especially towards the end, but trust me when I say that it is in the best possible way. I don’t know how to describe how I felt reading it other than, it feels like walking through Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios.

One other unique thing about House of Usher is that it is framed somewhat like a detective novel, in which the characters aren’t really aware that they’re involved in a mystery. Every detail matters and is connected somehow, so if you like playing Sherlock when reading books, you’ll definitely have a lot of fun with this one!

I hope you liked this list! The books on here have a very special place in my heart, since I read most of them when I was younger. Revisiting them today has been such a blast, and I’ve definitely gleaned way more than I was able to back then, now that I have the proper resources and context.

I also have a couple of contemporary Gothic faves, so I might consider doing another list some time in the future.

Let me know if you read these books/have read them, and also please tell me your other horror faves, I’d love to check them out for Spooktober!