Raveneville's Use Of Gothic Codes And Conventions In A Gothic Setting Analysis

The imaginative text “Raveneville” is a gothic fiction that uses many of the code and conventions the audience expects in the Gothic Horror genre. When planning and creating ”Raveneville”, the following techniques taught in class were: creating a setting, developing a theme, using iconography, using features of a narrative and the creation of characters. (STINC)

The snippet from “Raveneville” follows the protagonist, Maeve Lamprey, who is desperate to fit in with a bunch of teenage girls from her new high school after a family tragedy. As upsetting rumors have already spread around the small town, Maeve decides to invite the head cheerleader, Abby Peacock, and ‘her’ best friends over to try and put to rest the gossip and lies about her.

It is typical for a gothic horror story to take place in the evening or at night, the weather is dark and ominous and in a location that is isolated or easy to get lost or trapped in.

In Raveneville, Maeve invites her guests to a party at midnight at her family’s manor. The isolated setting and her driveway being lined with trees helps to create the idea something mysterious or strange could happen. It is not clear yet, but perhaps it will be hard to escape this manor, which has many rooms, late at night and with dense trees everywhere when things start to go wrong.
These typical features of Gothic Horror have been used in my text to create the mood and setting. To help do this, I have used adjectives, adverbs and personification. See paragraph four and eight in the text to see examples.

To further create the scene of suspense, I experimented with different sentence types. Throughout the text, I used a variety of complex sentences to add details and I used short sentences for suspense. There she

It was a sneaky connection to vampires who also suck blood that I thought most readers would not pick up on. I created the antagonist, the popular cheerleader Abby Peacock, on my favourite mystery murder board game ‘Cluedo’ and also because people who have a very high opinion of themselves or show off are sometimes called peacocks. This suited the personality of Abby perfectly.

Throughout the text, based on my research, I dropped hints to who Maeve really was. For some readers, this might be obvious but for others this is not clear. This technique was to build up the mystery, sympathy and interest into Maeve’s character.
For example – Looking in the mirror wasn’t an easy thing for Maeve to do. This is because vampires can’t see their reflection.
Maeve was afraid of her own shadow. Vampires don’t have shadows so this line hinted Maeve was not afraid of anything.
When describing Maeve’s looks, I based this on my research on vampires and based the sentence style from an example I had seen from the text Dracula.
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