Victorian Gothic Literature Scientific vs. Medieval...

Victorian Gothic Literature: Scientific vs. Medieval Thinking Creatures of the night have always held a fascination and horror for people in all cultures. The English fascination with sensational and gothic literature came to a peak, after slacking slightly following the Romantic period, in the late Victorian period with such works as Dracula, The Strange Adventures of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Picture of Dorian Gray. The literate populace avidly devoured this type of literature. While most publishers merely churned out serial horror stories en masse, such as Varney the Vampyre, many serious writers used this genre as a means to force their audience to think about their beliefs. Serious Victorian Gothic literature plays†¦show more content†¦Even though the Victorians werent sure what to believe yet, they knew truth was out there somewhere. All they had to do was find it. For many Victorians, the obvious answer was to turn to science. Science was methodical, made sense and was rapidly improving the quality of life. Trains were speeding up travel, many goods were produced more easily and cheaply because of factories and doctors were discovering more efficient ways to deal with disease. Moreover, science provided a system of dealing with the world that left very little in doubt. Where faith required blind belief in abstract and elusive things, the scientific method presented a way of examining the world that produced definite, provable answers. Victorians turned to science as a way to rediscover Truth. The Victorian era was one of transition, and it was this transition, the removal of old beliefs, to be replaced in new, that resulted in the lack of something definite to believe in (Houghton 2,14). The Victorians believed they were breaking with the medieval world, yet at the same time they idealized it. In fact there were a few extremists who, according to Matthew Arnold, hoped to retain or restore the whole system of the middle Ages (Houghton 2). In an England that was continually pushing forward, expanding its boundaries and dabbling in the science and