Elements Of Fear In Gothic Literature

The strongest emotion is fear, and the strongest type of fear is the fear of the unidentified. The gothic genre communicates the element of fear effectively, enhancing the reader's experience. The authors Daphne du Maurier, in Rebecca, and Alice Sebold, in The Lovely Bones, use certain motifs such as setting, high emotions, and supernatural activities to portray the fear of the unknown in order to get their audiences most involved within the story.
The setting is where and when the story takes place, it has a considerable contribution to the tone and mood in gothic literature, thus enhancing the fear element. In Rebecca, the story, as a flashback, takes place at Manderley, a stone, cold mansion, isolated in its own world where the narrator is harboring memories of that mansion. The

In Rebecca, as a ghost, she haunts the mansion, and her presence torments the heroine after her marriage to Maxim, the heroine’s wife. She was the ominous feeling lingering and wafting throughout the house. The narrator explains, “At any moment she might come back into the room, and she would see me there, sitting before her open drawer, which I had no right to touch," (Maurier, 86). The presence of Rebecca was very prominent in this moment that it was as if she was away on vacation about to appear, thus provoking shared fear between the heroine and the reader. In comparison, The Lovely Bones supernatural elements are similar since the main character is also a ghost. The narrator explains, “It was then that, without knowing how, I revealed myself. In every piece of glass, in every shard and sliver, I cast my face.” (Sebold, 64) After smashing up the ships in bottles, Jack gets to see Susie's face. It's then that he figures out that Mr. Harvey is her