Gothic Tropes: The Naif

Every evil plot needs an innocent victim.… The naïf is one of the core stock characters in Gothic literature. From the same French root as “naive,” the naïf is someone who exemplifies innocence and has not yet been corrupted or made cynical by their encounters with the outside world. This character serves as a foil to innate evil and is usually the main victim of the story’s monster or villain. In Gothic fiction, the naïf is generally a young woman, sometimes an adolescent, who has lived a sheltered life and is suddenly thrust into an unfamiliar and dangerous environment. Because of her lack of experience, the naïf tends to underestimate evil and often trusts the wrong people. The more passive incarnations of this character resemble the stereotypical “damsel in distress,” and need to be rescued by a gallant hero. But sometimes when the naïf loses her innocence, she gains experience and agency.

The prototypical naïf in Gothic literature comes from the very first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole. Isabella is a virtuous young woman who is content to do her duty and marry the young man her father has picked out for her, Prince Conrad. While her father is off fighting the Crusades, Isabella is left to stay with her new family-to-be at Castle Otranto, where her sweetness quickly earns her the love of her future mother- and sister-in-law. However, Conrad’s tragic death on the morning of their wedding leaves Isabella in a vulnerable position. Lord Manfred summons Isabella to his side, and she rushes to comfort the grieving father, never suspecting that he might have malicious intentions. When he insinuates that he plans to take his son’s place as her groom, despite already being married, it takes Isabella a while to understand before she finally reacts with shock and confusion—insisting on the immorality of the proposal as if Manfred could possibly be unaware. Isabella manages to flee to safety, thanks to supernatural distractions and the help of a young man named Theodore. The young hero comes to her rescue several more times as Isabella continues to be pursued by the lustful Manfred, and after Theodore is revealed to be the long-lost true heir of the castle, he and Isabella are granted a happily-ever-after ending (give or take some lasting trauma).

The naïfs in the early works of Gothic literature that succeeded The Castle of Otranto tended to be similarly one-dimensional characters, whose defining traits are their perfect virtue and piety. Not all of these characters had their righteousness rewarded with fairy-tale endings, however. Fifteen-year-old Antonia is the principle naïf in Matthew Lewis’s Gothic novel The Monk (1796). She arrives in Madrid after a sheltered childhood spent alone in a castle with her mother. In this unfamiliar city, she is set upon by the corrupted monk Ambrosio, whom she trusts implicitly as a man of faith. By the end of the novel, Ambrosio succeeds in his plot to rape and then murder Antonia. The lack of justice in Antonia’s fate adds to the sense of horror that The Monk seeks to elicit.

An example of a naïf that may be more familiar to modern audiences is the character of Christine Daaé from Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera (1909), and its subsequent stage and film adaptations. The basic premise of this novel is similar to The Castle of Otranto in that a young woman is pursued by a lustful villain before ultimately marrying the dashing hero who comes to rescue her, but there are several important differences. Christine is an orphan and a soprano at the Paris Opera House. When she hears the Phantom’s voice speaking to her, she initially believes him to be the Angel of Music that her father told her about and allows him to mentor her. Like Isabella, Christine is in a vulnerable position and approaches the villain from a place of trust. Unlike Isabella, however, Christine is given a bit more character depth. Though not as cartoonishly pious, Christine’s central character trait is compassion. This compassion, however, extends even to the villain of the story, and Christine is able feel real sympathy for the Phantom, even after he abducts her, tries to force her to marry him, and threatens to kill her lover, Raoul. It is the Phantom’s gratitude for this compassion that ultimately saves Christine, when Raoul’s heroics could not.

Another complex example of the naïf is Jane Eyre from Charlotte Bronte’s 1847 novel of the same name. Like Christine, Jane is an orphan, but she doesn’t have the sheltered idyllic childhood typical of this trope. Instead, incursions into Jane’s innocence start early, beginning with the abusive treatment she suffers from her aunt and cousin and continuing with a deadly typhus outbreak at school that kills Jane’s only friend. By the time she arrives as a governess at Thornfield Hall, she has already experienced pain and loss, though her sense of morality has only grown stronger. Jane’s is not the self-sacrificing sort of virtue that leads Isabella to worry more about the disrespect Manfred does to his wife than the immediate danger to herself, or that compels Christine to offer herself up to the Phantom in exchange for Raoul’s freedom. Instead, Jane makes the radical choice to extend her compassion not just to the man pursuing her but to herself. Rather than a “villain,” this story has Mr. Rochester, a man that Jane genuinely loves but who misguidedly attempts to marry her while secretly still married to someone else. More than simply escaping his advances, Jane must resist her own temptation to give in to them. And she succeeds! Though what remains of Jane’s innocence is shattered by this betrayal from someone she loved and trusted, she develops instead a sense of agency and integrity, refusing to back down from her moral principles. It is only once Jane goes out into the world, gains some power for herself, and returns to find Mr. Rochester humbled and the moral objection to their relationship rendered moot by his first wife’s death that Jane and Mr. Rochester are able to have their fairy-tale ending.

There are many other naïfs throughout Gothic literature—can you think of some other examples? What are your thoughts on this trope? Let me know in the comments!