So “otherness” is not only monster with super power but can also be people around us. Those isolated settings like old castle, dark dungeon or desolate graveyard are places that can amplify the dark side of human beings and make them monsters. “Otherness” is no longer something outside our society, instead it is among us and it becomes more real. These works reflect complicated relationships between human beings, which includes religious conflict like The Spectre Bride (Ainsworth, 2003) or suppression of females like The Fall of the House of Usher (Poe, 1903). Authors of gothic literature exaggerate the dark side of human beings and create many “antichrist, vicious aristocrat, bad father or beast” (Botting, 1996, p.178). All of them are human beings even though their strong emotions and insane behaviors are quite abnormal to other people. For example, the cruel parricide in The Parricide’s Tale (Maturin,2002), the desperate lover in The Raven (Poe, 1992) and the insane character in The Tell-Tale Heart (Poe, 2004). At this time, main figures in gothic literature are more likely to be “abnormal” human or monsters with human characters rather than pure “monsters”. Then the concept of “otherness” focuses more on the “excess” of human emotion and power. The relationship between people is simple and it is likely that people will regard those evil or unknown things as outsiders of their small community. Also, the industrialization and urbanization haven’t started yet, so most people still live in small villages and know each other quite well. Under this condition, supernatural power is used to justify phenomena that could not be explained. This perception of “otherness” might be a result of people’s limited knowledge about nature and themselves. “Otherness” like them possess power and magic that people don’t have. For example, the evil witch in Hansel and Gretel (1989) who allures children into her house and eat them, and the dwarf Rumpelstiltskin (1993) who wants the queen’s baby. In early fairy tales and monster stories, “otherness” usually refers to something that doesn’t belong to human beings. The geographic distance between “other” and “us” has become much shorter while the feeling of strangeness still exists. My argument is that with the advance of technology, development of psychology and evolution of human society, “otherness”, which used to live in dark forests and isolated castles, have gradually walked into people’s home and even people’s mind. Therefore，when conducting research on “otherness”, we can also clarify how we look at ourselves and our relationship with others, with nature and with the whole society.
My passion in analyzing the concept of “otherness” and its evolution rests on the belief that we people define ourselves by defining what is not “us”, or “otherness”. However, from my point of view, the concept of “otherness” always exist in Gothic literature and other literary works, but their forms might have evolved with time goes by.
In literary works, representations of “otherness” are always used to express writers’ or the whole society’s concern about certain things or phenomenon, usually things that could not be understood or controlled.Īccording to Fred Botting (1996), Gothic has come to an end since the monster is not the absolute other anymore. This concept can refer to any person or anything that is perceived by the in-group as not belonging, as being threatening, or as being different in some fundamental way. Otherness is an important concept in Gothic literature, which usually represents how one group often views another.
For my project，I will write a research paper to discuss how the concept of “otherness” has evolved in literary works especially in Gothic literature.
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