With Halloween only a week away, it’s time to really start bringing out the spooks and scares. If you’re wondering how to celebrate this spooky season, The Gothic Library already has you covered with ghost stories to read and scary movies to marathon. Another traditional Halloween activity is visiting haunted houses. This week I’d like to take you on a tour through some of my favorite haunted houses in literature: Continue reading Haunted Houses in Literature
Tag: creepy housekeeper
Gothic Tropes: The Creepy Housekeeper
It goes without saying that one of the defining characteristics of Gothic fiction is a creepy setting—a castle falling into ruin, a haunted manor, or some mist-covered moors. But what’s a creepy setting without some creepy inhabitants? One of the most iconic of these, particularly in mansions and manors, is the creepy housekeeper. The creepy housekeeper is usually an older woman with personal ties to the manor itself or its previous inhabitants. Her primary role is generally to make the young female protagonist feel anxious and out of place as a newcomer and to provide either threats or warnings of danger.
Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers looms behind the nameless narrator in Hitchcock’s Rebecca.