FAMILY AS THE SOURCE OF TERROR IN PATRICK MCGRATH’S NEW GOTHIC NOVELS

Abstract

This thesis will attempt to explain how the modern age subverted the conventions of gothic literature and Patrick McGrath’s contribution to the gothic genre by taking his New Gothic works as the focal point to discuss. Patrick McGrath not only contributed to literature by writing novels and short stories but also with the term "New Gothic" that he coined in the preface of The New Gothic: A Collection. By adding a modern setting and showing the unreliability of the most trusted institutions such as family, hospitals, and characters such as father and doctor, McGrath brings a different way to create terror. Gothic literature, compared to other genres, has always been underestimated. Although its supernatural themes, characters, or creatures got attention from readers, it would be naïve to claim that academically it has been seen noteworthy. It can be suggested that from Horace Walpole to Edgar Allan Poe, the Gothic was a mixture of romanticism and horror. With Poe’s arrival, the destiny of the Gothic changed to a darker and more brutal direction. Poe introduced terror in a different way from his predecessors by focusing on the inner world of the characters. It might be claimed that until him, the Gothic had been occupied by the supernatural. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Poe did not leave the supernatural behind but added psychology to it. Hence, Edgar Allan Poe’s works can be taken as a crucial point in Gothic Literature. Poe’s impact upon the following writers is undeniable. Even today, his voice can be heard from contemporary authors such as Patrick McGrath. McGrath is known for his dark, pessimistic, grotesque, and transgressive works, which make him a modern Edgar Allan Poe. The symbols of terror have had a metamorphosis from outside to within in recent times. There is no more need to present terror as a wild beast. In the 20th and 21st centuries, and gothic literature took advantage of such improvements in order to narrate its particular theme of terror adequately. xii

This thesis will analyze four Patrick McGrath novels Asylum, Spider, Port Mungo, and Trauma, which take family as the source of the terror from the lenses of the psychoanalytic approach.