Gothic Roots: Vathek and The Old English Baron in 18th-Century Fiction

Introduction: Gothic Fiction and the Enlightenment

The rise of Gothic fiction in English literature coincided with the advent of the Romantic Era at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century. Gothic masterpieces such as Shelley's Frankenstein, Lewis's The Monk, and Stoker's Dracula would capture the imagination by fueling it with the flames of horror, suspense, otherworldliness, and mystery. These elements are significant because the Age of Enlightenment had been characterized by a cold, objective, analytical focus on nature and humankind. It had been based on the concept that reason was sufficient to explain all events in the world and, indeed, all of creation. Yet as Shakespeare's Hamlet reminded readers, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (Shakespeare 1.5.167–168).

Part of the growing interest in the Gothic was inspired by tales from the Orient, which serves as the subject of Beckford's Vathek. Another part of this interest was a reaction to the Puritanism of the times: the Gothic genre represented the mystery of iniquity and sin that lurked just below the surface of people and events, simultaneously attracting and repulsing them — urging them to look and yet frightening them into wanting to run. This paper relates Beckford's Vathek and Reeve's The Old English Baron to the early development of 18th-century English Gothic fiction and shows how the two works represent these two distinct strains.

Orientalism and Realism in Early Gothic Writing

Vathek is a story of supposedly Arabian origin. Its Orientalism roots it in the same kind of mystery and otherworldliness found in Brontë's Jane Eyre — the latter's mad woman locked in the attic, a common Gothic motif, conveys elements of Orientalism, as does the "gypsy" who arrives at the Hall to read everyone's fortune (Zonana 592; Bardi 31). The Old English Baron, meanwhile, takes the Gothic elements of The Castle of Otranto and provides a more realistic treatment of them, as was Reeve's stated intention (Bartolomeo 100). In both cases, there is a desire on the part of the Gothic writer to set the tale in a setting that is at least somewhat realistic.

It is, in fact, the mixture of realism and the fantastic that gives the Gothic genre its inherent power to thrill. Were it wholly fantastic, its allure would not be as powerful: the charms would be obvious, and the suspension of disbelief required to maintain a reader's attention would be too great. By placing the realms of the fantastic squarely within reality — as Stoker does in Dracula by bringing the demonic presence home to London — the reader is given the sense that horror, the supernatural, the shock of murder, obsession, envy, sin, guilt, and revenge could all be found just below the surface of real life, if one were so inclined to look.

The Gothic as Reaction to Enlightenment Ideology

The Old English Baron is certainly an attempt to illustrate that fact. Reeve herself felt that Otranto had gone too far in its fantastical elements: "the machinery is so violent, that it destroys the effect it is intended to excite. Had the story been kept within the utmost verge of probability, the effect had been preserved, without losing the least circumstance that excites or detains the attention" (Bartolomeo 100). This admission by Reeve that the point of Gothic fiction is to excite indicates that the reading audiences of the late 18th century had grown tired of the rational, realistic epistolary works of popular fiction and now wanted something that spoke of those more sinister urges that were not discussed in polite society.

The Age of Enlightenment had, in other words, had its fill of reason and now wanted to remember what it meant to feel something. The Gothic was giving rise to Romanticism and attacking the ideology of Puritanism at the same time. As the Age of Enlightenment rejected the concept of sin — adopting a more naturalist view of reality — readers turned to Gothic fiction, which gave them the "sin" that Enlightenment rationalist philosophers had denied them (Jones 187). If the medieval world was practically cut off from them, at least they could encounter it in Gothic fiction and thereby find a reflection of the real reality they felt and knew existed, in spite of the propriety, manners, and rational discourse of the 18th century.

Exaggeration, Sensuality, and the Figure of Vathek

In spite of Reeve's claim that the Gothic genre should be more rooted in reality than Walpole made it seem in Otranto, the text of Vathek begins with an almost exaggerated sense of the main character's power — particularly his wrath — to the point that the reader may feel the narrative is aligned with a tall tale. For example, Vathek's angry eye is described as being "so terrible, that no person could bear to behold it; and the wretch upon whom it was fixed, instantly fell backward, and sometimes expired. For fear, however, of depopulating his dominions and making his palace desolate, he but rarely gave way to his anger" (Beckford 29). The humorous manner in which Beckford concludes this description indicates that the Gothic author was not averse to providing readers of the genre with a sense of fun. Indeed, the Gothic was designed to give pleasure in a way that early 18th-century English literature did not: it focused on the sensational, the emotional, and the imagination-rousing capacity of words to create whole new worlds within the here and now.

Vathek's origin in the Orient does what Stoker achieves in Dracula — a bridging of settings, one local and one foreign. While Vathek is set entirely in the Middle East, the fact that it is read in English is enough for the reader to feel simultaneously transported and anchored within his own region. The story itself is a window into another world: unlike Reeve's Old English Baron, however, it has no cause to be set in England.

The exaggerated nature of the Gothic genre that Walpole launched is instinctively picked up by Beckford, as everything about Vathek is an exaggeration: he has not one palace but five, each dedicated to one of the five senses and the pleasures that each can provide. This obsession with pleasure and feeling is a dominant part of the Gothic, pushing hard against the grain of Enlightenment ideology, which emphasized the mind over emotion. For Vathek, it is not enough to be sensually gratified; he also wants to be enlightened and thus pursues scientific aims — especially those concerning the mysteries of the universe, which is why he builds a tower to study astrology.

In this sense, Vathek is a carbon copy of what Europeans since Galileo had been doing throughout the Enlightenment — studying science, nature, and even dabbling in alchemy. Vathek is, in a way, the embodiment of Enlightenment man, cast in the mold of a caliph so as to seem mysterious and foreign, yet really no different from any contemporary of Beckford who put on a veneer of science and learning but underneath harbored all the same impulses, urges, desires, and cravings that the medieval world had attributed to Original Sin (Laux 47). In Gothic fiction, the English reader could identify himself and the true nature of reality — even if the texts themselves contained exaggerated forms and figures.

Conclusion: The Moral Foundations of Gothic Fiction

Most importantly, these early Gothic works — Vathek and The Old English Baron — reinforce a moral principle that the Age of Enlightenment had to some extent lost. Vathek ends up in hell for his pursuits, just as Don Giovanni ends up there as a result of his refusal to repent, and Beckford tells the reader plainly that Hell is for those who lose Hope: "Their hearts immediately took fire, and they at once lost the most precious of the gifts of heaven: HOPE" (Beckford 97). For Reeve, the moral principle also embraces hope, as well as loyalty and charity. Looking to the coming years, Sir Philip tells the Baron: "You hold it in trust for a future grandchild, whom I hope to live to endow with it" (Reeve 133).

These words indicate that the moral principle underlying the Gothic narrative is what allows the genre to really exist in the first place: it acts as a reinforcement of the ideas and principles that the gargoyles and catechisms of the Old World's Gothic churches once gave the people in stone and symbol. Now, in 18th-century England, novelists were giving those principles to the people in the form of the written word.

Both Vathek and The Old English Baron helped develop the 18th-century English Gothic genre by steering readers away from the Enlightenment Age and toward an era that would more directly embrace the idea of something beyond human reason running not just through the world but through the hearts and minds of human beings themselves. These writers touched on the moral, the spiritual, and the sensual, depicting in an almost epic manner — like a Baroque work of art — the battles between good and evil that take place within the human soul. Vathek loses the battle and ends in Hell; Edmund wins the battle, retains life and hope, and has a future to look forward to.

Works Cited

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Beckford, William. Vathek and Other Stories. Penguin PDF.

Jones, E. Michael. Libido Dominandi. IN: St. Augustine Press, 2000. Print.

Laux, John. Church History. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1943.

Reeve, Clara. The Old English Baron. Oxford PDF.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. The Literature Network.

Zonana, Joyce. "The Sultan and the Slave: Feminist Orientalism and the Structure of 'Jane Eyre'." Signs, vol. 18, no. 3 (Spring 1993): 592–617.