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ELAINE
HARTNELL
Liverpool Hope University
Abstract
What may be identified as the “Gothic of the Normal”
necessarily dovetails into conventional critiques of the Gothic.
Yet it entails a very different way of looking at the Gothic
text as it focuses upon the significant presence in the text of
the mundane. For, whilst Gothic literature foregrounds the
purportedly deviant – whether sexual, sacrilegious or otherwise
– it exhibits an equally Gothic focus upon the normal. More
specifically, it depicts anxiety about what may be termed the
“will to normalization.” But what is meant by the “will to
normalization”? By way of an analogy, we may look at Foucault’s
conception of the “will to truth”: the pragmatic creation of
“truths” in a given society that fit the age and at least some
of the needs of that society. The posited “will to
normalization” runs along similar lines. A society is structured
by, and functions upon, notions of the normal. The resultant
demonization of deviancy places the individual subject in an
endless state of self-violence as she or he constantly questions
whether or not she or he is “normal”. As readers we want to read
about Gothic villains because their lives are so much more
exciting than our own. However, we also want to read about
ourselves. This we can do when we read fictionalized accounts of
the less spectacular characters in a Gothic text and their
relationship with the “will to normalization”. The “Gothic of
the Normal” is illustrated through a discussion of three of
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories.
Keywords: Gothic, “Gothic of the Normal,” “will to
normalization,” Foucault, Hawthorne, mundane, deviancy,
normative
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