If you
think that gothic writers have to be careful, I do not know whether you are
right or wrong. Gothic writing poses two controversial issues: the language vs.
the content, and the function vs. the form. To me, in gothic narratives as in many others, language would be
equal to the function each linguistic sign has one after another, whereas
content would be the form we give to the gothic narrative after having seen all
the functions that the language, we are reading, has built through the text.
This issue
may seem to be simple, nonetheless it is rather problematic. Is there harmony
between form and content in the gothic narrative? Or is the form against the
content? Well, if one speaks from a formal point of view, there must be
coherence between both since we need a beginning, followed by a liminal part leading
up to the end of the story, (all covered by a plot). In this sense, so to speak, our
expectations perfectly fit within the belief that there is harmony, or a kind
of balance, between form and function.
However,
the gothic narrative will always have an element of “otherness”. And it is the otherness
what makes the text “gothic”. Do we have a cause and an effect? Of course we
do. From the very beginning that the narrative starts (x = cause), it may
multiply the narrative space (x1, x2, x3 …) and Y would be “the effect”. Would
be these lasts concepts equal to the form that we give to the story we are
reading? Would they overlap with the function of it? I actually believe that
one cannot be read without the reading of the other and vice versa. There is no form if there are no functions and there is no effect if there are no causes. We should read between the
lines of the narrative when reading gothic. Its otherness is what we may call
the unknown. The unknown is what leads us to the mystical, to the endless
circle of the terror and the horror of the gothic text. And it is the otherness of some characters in the gothic that we do not know when it is going to end. In this sense, there must be a lack of cause but not of effect since we do not know why the ghost is always scaring people. We are only conscious of the effect but not of its origins. From this point of view, one could say that the gothic claims the presence of a missing element within the narrative.
In a nutshell, how
should be the gothic genre read in terms of rationality? This problematic
question can lead us to infite problematic answers. The point one should
make when talking about gothic is more a matter of “why” rather than “when or
where”. We already know when the action takes place, or where it occurs but not
why. We may not be able to give a specific answer to “why some characters are
trapped in the same circle always and forever”. We should be rational about our
analysis, if we speak about structure (also from Propp’s view), but we may be illogic
when talking about why ghosts are trapped in eternity.There is no why if there is no "where" and "when" and there is no "where" neither "when" if there is no why.
