The Gothic Romance: Mystique & Mystery

Mystique

I have been looking into the origins of the Gothic Romance girl-meets-house-type cover illustration. I didn't think there were any covers of that type in the original run of Weird Tales (1923-1954), but I looked anyway. The closest thing I found is Margaret Brundage's cover from May 1943 illustrating "John Cawder's Wife" by P. Schuyler Miller.* That cover, shown below, illustrates a convention of the Gothic Romance, namely the gallery of family portraits. I didn't find any of the girl-meets-house-type cover. I think that type was a convention that started later, possibly around 1960. One of the problems in this search is that a lot of Gothic Romance paperback book covers posted on the Internet lack dates of publication.

In thinking more about all of this, I wondered about the timing of things. If the Gothic revival or the increased popularity of the Gothic Romance began in about 1960, well, what else happened then, specifically, what happened regarding women? Why were fictional young women of the 1960s running from houses? And if they were running from houses, what did those houses represent? One possibility is that the Gothic Romance became popular at around the same time that second-wave feminism began, and that women were running from houses so as to escape from the traditional roles of wife, mother, and homemaker. Remember that there usually isn't the figure of a villain or antagonist in the girl-meets-house-type illustration. The house itself appears to be the villain. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan was based on surveys conducted in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was published in late 1963. Chapter 1 closes with these words:

We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: "I want something more than my husband and my children and my home." [Emphasis added.]

Another possibility in all of this is that young women were simultaneously drawn to and afraid of or apprehensive about taking on traditional roles. They were conflicted. They may have wanted those roles at some level, but there was fear nonetheless. Maybe their fear was expressed in an outward way: they were afraid of the past and tradition, fearful for their own futures, but they turned their fears outward, towards the house and what might happen there, versus inward, where they might cause psychic damage. That sounds like a Freudian interpretation. I'm not sure how accurate it might be. In any case, an outward conflict is more dramatic, is more easily turned into fiction, and provides for the possibility of a final, satisfying, and concrete resolution. Inward conflicts--woman against herself--are murkier. They may exist only in the abstract, and they may not be resolved fully, finally, satisfactorily, or at all.**

I think of the romance as a conservative genre, for it is about the past. But maybe there is actually a spectrum of romances, with some romances being conservative, if not reactionary, and others being less so. Alternatively, "on a spectrum," may not be the right way to look at it at all. Spectra, after all, are linear. "Weblike," "diffuse," "oceanic," or something similar might be a better expression, and it might better describe the feelings and the state of mind of the romantic heroine caught in her story. I should point out here that many Gothic Romances were written by men using feminine pseudonyms. I'm not sure that was really appropriate, except for possibly in the case of "Marilyn Ross"--Canadian author Dan Ross (1912-1995)--who wrote the Dark Shadows paperbacks. Remember that Dark Shadows was a television series, meaning, it was linear and moved in sequence, even if its storylines were sometimes in webs. I once read a Gothic Romance written by a man writing as a woman who did not have the reading needs of women in mind when he wrote. I have to tell you, it wasn't a very pleasant book nor a pleasant reading experience. Romances are probably better left to women writers, although I would not rule out a romance about a man, written by a man, and written from a man's point of view. Notice that men's names--Barnabas Collins, Quentin Collins--are in the titles of most of the Dark Shadows paperbacks. The show and the paperbacks began with Victoria Winters, but she soon faded.

So maybe the Gothic Romance really is an expression of the young woman's desire to be free from the past and traditional roles by her running from the house and everything that it represents regarding marriage and family. Sadly, the freedom that women have gained in the real world since the 1960s has not resulted in greater happiness, at least according to various studies (which should always be taken with a grain of salt, for people are real and individual, and are not statistics, data points, or data sets). Here, for example, is the first sentence of an abstract from 2009:

The lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years by many objective measures, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women's happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. 

Citation: Stevenson, Betsey, and Justin Wolfers. 2009. "The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 1 (2): 190–225.

Of course young women in the period 1960 or 1963 to 1974-1975 could not have known that would happen, if that is indeed what happened*** I'll close this part of today's entry by saying that I don't know very much about Gothic Romances (I would like to find out more) and that what I have written here is mostly speculation, or the proposal of a hypothesis. What this discussion needs is more reading, thinking, research, and discussion. More than anything, it needs the opinions and input of women readers.

Mystery

Another possible source for the girl-meets-house type cover illustration has occurred to me, and that is the Nancy Drew books of the 1930s through the 1950s. I haven't found just the right illustration, but there are plenty of Gothic elements on those covers, such as the hidden staircase and the crumbling wall. One difference is that Nancy Drew always goes towards the house, whereas the Gothic-Romantic heroine usually runs away from it, or faces it with fear or apprehension. But then Nancy Drew, as a girl detective and of pre-marriage age, is not acting out a traditional role, and so there is nothing for her to run from and nothing to fear. The solution to the mystery lies within the house, and that's where she eagerly goes.

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Notes

*P. Schuyler Miller died in 1974 at the site of an old mansion. The date and type of place are coincident with the subjects of today's entry.

**Maybe the Gothic Romance is the woman's version of the man's adventure story, i.e., a woman's adventure, an outward conflict, and her ultimate test. In all of this there is a distinct resolution. The opposite genre, that of the static and forever-unresolved inner conflict, might be the possibly non-existent Girl-Meets-Therapist story or something similar. Here I'm reminded of Iris Owens' novel After Claude (1973), which is very funny but ultimately very sad. I'm also reminded of Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner (1975). These may be examples of the anti-romance: the romance that has gone horribly awry, or stories of women's lives breaking down and flying into pieces, or of lives and romances never getting started at all. Note the dates of publication. If there is a flip side to these two novels, it might be Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (1973), which is also very funny but doesn't end so sadly. The heroine survives and is intact. She goes on living past her crisis. I should add that 1973 was the year in which abortion became legalized in the United States. The Gothic Romance may have run its course in the period 1960 to 1974-1975, but legalized abortion may have provided a real-world way out for the fictional heroine caught in her life's dilemma, and for her readers, admirers, and followers. If the Gothic Romance faded in the mid seventies, after abortion was legalized, was that just a coincidence? Or was it a culturally or historically significant development?

***Nineteen sixty is my approximate beginning year for what I have called the Gothic revival, while 1963 is the publication date of The Feminine Mystique. Nineteen seventy-four would have been the beginning year of the 35-year period referenced in the study in American Economic Journal, while 1974-1975 is a possible end period, or close to it, of the Gothic revival of the 1960s and '70s. Gothic Romances continued to be published after that. I guess they're still being published now, but that might just be another case of our picking through the ruins of a previous greater civilization.

We'll never again have what we had before. One reason is that mass market paperbacks are no longer being printed, or at least distributed in America. What a disaster. Another is that cover art is so absolutely terrible now. If it isn't already being made by AI, it soon will be, and the prose will follow. Or, any reader can prompt an AI to "write" a Gothic Romance for her, and she can even customize it to include herself as its heroine, with all of her own imperfections removed (such as a slight limp, such as in Looking for Mr. Goodbar). Readers will no longer have to go looking for their fantasies. They will simply make their own. They will in the process no longer be in touch with or have to be in touch with other minds and other lives. Fiction will become completely solipsistic. (Robert A. Heinlein was, in his fiction, prescient.) There will no longer be bestseller lists because every book will sell exactly one print-on-demand copy, and that will be for its "author." If people even talk to each other anymore, everyone will say to everyone else, "Why would I read your book when I have my own?" The parallel in men's adventure has already been reached: men no longer read, but they can live out their fantasies in computer games or video games involving lots of shooting, car chases, and so on. That living out of fantasies for men is a moment-by-moment interactive story of physical adventure. The equivalent video game for women might involve a moment-by-moment interactive romance, or a story of relationships, which would be a lot harder for a computer system or AI to carry out. And how satisfying could that possibly be for the female consumer/fantasist?

Further notes on years and ages:

First, a woman who was twenty years old in 1960 would have turned thirty-five in 1975, thus she would have gone from her very young adulthood to the cusp of middle age in that period. If reading goes in cycles, then maybe the Gothic revival or the popularity of the Gothic Romance was just following the law of cycles. There are lots of "ifs" in all of that.

Second, thirty-five years is half the allotted threescore-and-ten of a person's life. I can't say whether there is any significance in that. However, by the time she turns thirty-five, the symbolic conflict in the Gothic Romance would have been resolved in a woman's life. More "ifs." Parallels in a man's life as he ages from his early twenties into his mid thirties might involve sports, combat, or other kinds of outward conflict or adventure. If he hasn't done the things he once dreamed of by age thirty-five, he will probably never do them. He might experience a loss at that point. It might cause him grief equivalent to a woman's grief. One more thing: a pregnancy at age thirty-five or after is considered a geriatric pregnancy. Don't yell at me. That's how medicine sees it.

Third, if Jane Smiley was right in her novella "The Age of Grief" (1987), then the thirties are the age of grief and a time when people's lives change from youth into age. The concerns of the young Gothic-Romantic heroine no longer apply at that age, although part of the plot of "The Age of Grief" involves a woman's running away from her husband, family, and home to be with her unseen and unnamed lover. In the same year that "The Age of Grief" was published, a TV show called Thirtysomething made its debut. The largest cohort in American history turned thirty years old in 1987. Nineteen forty-seven was also a peak birth year. The large cohort born in 1947 would have aged out of their thirties during the first season of Thirtysomething.

Fourth, a baby born in 1974 would have turned thirty-five in 2009 when Ms. Stevenson's and Mr. Wolfers' study was published, a study in which the authors recorded a decline in women's happiness during that period. In other words, the statistical baby born in the mid 1970s had a decreasing statistical chance at statistical happiness as she aged. Of course people and happiness are not statistics, and statistics are not fate or doom. Happy people are happy and unhappy people are unhappy, regardless of year, age, or circumstance.

Fifth, now, seventeen-and-a-half years later, or one-fourth of our allotted threescore-and-ten, very large numbers of Americans, women more than men, are taking drugs for anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses. I don't think those large numbers are necessarily an indication of greater unhappiness, for the theory and culture of drugs has become all-pervasive. Everybody is taking more drugs for everything now. Our country has become awash in drugs. People are gobbling them up as if they were candy and every day were Easter or Halloween. But if taking drugs is a sign of greater unhappiness, including among women, then what has all of the change and the agitation for change really done to make people's lives better? Could it be nothing?

Text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley