Why Gothic? Conversations With Lisa Greer Part 2

In which Lisa and I continue our discussion about why we write what we write.

I, too, find that Victoria Holt's work lacks in spooky atmosphere, but the story lines are interesting and even controversial at times. I do like that aspect of her work. I can also relate to what you say about archetypes and journeys in Gothic Romance, and perhaps the introverted and cerebral nature of the heroine's journey is what appeals to me as well. I was quiet, studious, and a bit melancholy in my pre-teen and teen years, and so were many of the heroines that Phyllis A. Whitney, Barbara Michaels, Victoria Holt, and other masters of the genre wrote about. The innocent heroines are definitely thrust into frightening situations at the point where they are coming of age or are at some great turning point in life. Their isolation only adds to the fear factor and stakes for them. The journeys they take are often ones where they survive by their intelligence and wits, rather than by their great beauty which also is quite attractive to many women, I'd wager.

And yes, I do like the Wicked Mother archetype, don't I? I didn't realize it until after I'd written each work, but it does show up in my books quite often. In some of my upcoming works, I've explored the Wicked Father a bit which was fun. Other types that show up often in gothic romance--at least when I write it now-- are the Satanic figure (perhaps also the Wicked Father), the Wise Old Man and the Seer (gypsies and such). I know that I've seen the Trickster in your work as well. I'm thinking of The Haunting at Blackwood Hall and Banoub Bahktu, the creepy charlatan character.

As far as your writing, Barrymore, where do you think it falls on the spectrum of Gothic Romance to Gothic to Gothic horror and why?

That’s a tough question and one that I struggled with as I pitched Night of the Pentagram to agents. But once I had Black Valentines and The Haunting at Blackwood Hall under my belt, I’ve come to a better understanding of what is emerging in my work. In one respect they are Gothic Romance, because of the template they follow. From a marketing standpoint, I don’t think readers who pursue Gothic Romances for the romantic element will be satisfied, because in my stories the romantic relationship is doomed from the start. That doesn’t eliminate the possibility of a satisfying romantic subplot in a future work, but my own world view is far too cynical. There are so many psycho-emotional nuances to real world relationships that happy endings in fiction just don’t work for me. Look at two of the greatest contributions to the pantheon of Gothic literature, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. What emotional turmoil! And what do we have when we’ve reached the end of these stories? In Wuthering Heights everybody dies, only to continue their co-dependant relationship beyond the grave, and our fair Jane may have gotten her man, but at what a terrible price for everyone involved.

So I lean toward viewing my books as Gothic Horror, in part because they are trussed up with so much supernatural window dressing, which makes them horror, but they are more about the psychological experience of the characters than the sort of Grand Guignol horror that we have come to expect from Stephen King and Clive Barker and their descendants. I’ve been fascinated for years with psychology in general, and personality types as they appear in Jungian thought and Tarot work in specific, all of which has been a major influence on the characters I create.

Doomed relationships have always been a major theme in Gothic fiction, but social taboos also play a large part in the early Gothics and even some of those today. Wuthering Heights comes to mind in terms of these taboo themes. Heathcliff and Catherine as "siblings" who are in love and who have a romance as pre-teens and teens, even though he is adopted, is an interesting theme in its own right. All one has to do to see that such non-genetic sibling or familial relationships are considered incest or incest-lite and thrilling or forbidden is take a look at the bestsellers list for erotic romance. Of course, Poe's Fall of the House of Usher is an extreme example of the taboo of incest in the Gothic genre.

Another theme that comes into play in Wuthering Heights and other novels is that of falling in love with "The Other." Heathcliff is a dirty gypsy, or The Other, a dangerous outsider who upsets polite society. Catherine's unraveling and Heathcliff's too is that they ever meet and fall in love. The whole course of things is changed for them and for many of the characters in the novel.

Finally, another taboo theme from that novel and many others since is that of necrophilia. It is hinted at when Heathcliff digs up Catherine's body and tells others of it. Though he does not embrace her, he is obsessed with how she looks the same even in death. An interesting aspect of the taboos in this novel is the lengths that many fans and critics will go to deny that they exist. This website, for example, put together by a fan of the novel, is adamant about how incest and necrophilia are not part of the work.

However, I would argue that Bronte meant to shock readers and raise these themes. There are too many of them to ignore.

What do you think, Barrymore? I know in your novels, incest plays a role. In my second Gothic Romance, Moonlight on the Palms, it does as well when the heroine's own mother sleeps with the hero. It is sordid and meant to make the audience squirm and question what lies beneath polite society and why we fear the things we do.

My strict Christian upbringing forbade so many things that it is no wonder my writing is filled with characters with unhealthy obsessions. Not only were many things taboo for me as a child and teenager, as an adult I learned that some of those things that were preached against were actually occurring under our own roof. I think one of the most shocking moments in television history was the revelation of relationships in the Palmer family in the cult hit Twin Peaks. I think that was a major turning point in popular entertainment. Incest is a dirty subject, but it has happened to more families than we will ever really know.

In one of my books, a character that was abused by her father not only grows up to marry a man who reminds her of him, but winds up murdering them both! A tragic crime to be sure, but who can blame her. I think it is cathartic for people to read or watch stories where this type of deplorable crime is avenged. And there we have yet another theme in Gothic fiction, vengeance and revenge for crimes from the past.

To be continued...

Lisa Greer has four contemporary Gothic Romance novels under her belt including the just released Secrets of Summerspelle, available from Musa Publishing, as well as numerous short stories and novellas available for the Kindle through Amazon. My second novel, The Haunting at Blackwood Hall, will be released in June, 2012.

Why Gothic? Conversations With Lisa Greer Part 1

I met Lisa Greer in the early fall of 2010 when I was surfing the internet and landed on her Gothicked blogspot. One of the first things I liked about Lisa’s reviews was that, while she clearly had a love for the vintage Gothic Romance novels that were all the rage in the 1960s and 70s, she didn’t take them or her reviews too seriously. I’ve read numerous blogs and message board posts where readers of these books raved without restraint. Not so with Lisa. When a book disappointed, she wasn’t afraid to say so. She also wasn’t afraid to venture into other forms of Gothic fiction, namely Southern Gothic and Gothic Horror. When we realized that we were both writers finishing the first drafts of our first novels, and that we were working on opposite ends of the Gothic spectrum, the friendship was sealed.

I have a clear recollection of seeing my first Gothic Romance paperback novel. I was eight or nine years old which would be about 1968, and a guest in a large, classic Victorian house. On the book shelf in my room I found a paperback with a picture of a dark mansion with an orange light in a solitary window like some ogre’s watching eye, with a frightened woman fleeing from the house, most likely peering back over her shoulder in fear. I just knew the house harbored terrible secrets and something bad would happen to this poor young woman if she could not escape. Lisa, how did you first discover Gothic Romance and was it in a way that you knew you had stumbled on something truly special in your life?

Barrymore, this is really great. We've talked so much about Gothic Romance and the Gothic genre over the last year. It's a pleasure to do it now. I feel a special kinship with you because of our love of the genre, one that is overlooked in my opinion.

I guess my first inklings of gothic romance happened with Nancy Drew books. Many of them have Gothic overtones, for sure, and the covers qualify as gothic romance in some cases. 

I remember reading my first Barbara Michaels gothic romance in early adolescence. I loved how smart these novels were. Around that time, I also came across Wuthering Heights for the first time. That novel still fascinates me with its mixture of the macabre, desire, and obsession. I'll never forget learning the word solipsism with regard to the novel as well. I was hooked on the Gothic genre from then on, and my love expanded beyond Gothic Romance as I got older. Gothic romance, though, is my first love.

In 1970 I saw a made for TV movie starring Barbara Stanwyck called The House That Would Not Die, probably my first exposure to a ghost story for grownups. I caught the "based on the novel, Ammie, Come Home by Barbara Michaels" line and the next day made a beeline for the library down the street.  I agree that it's not a large leap from Nancy Drew mysteries to the types of mysteries that we discovered between the covers of these thin paperbacks with their deliciously spooky covers. Ammie, Come Home is now considered a classic ghost story, and no small wonder that it has never gone out of print since first published in 1968. Do you remember which Barbara Michaels title was the first that you read? What elements of her writing kept you coming back for more, and more importantly, have stayed with you over the years and ultimately influenced your own writing?

I think Wait for What Will Come was one of the first that I read, and I loved the merman legend and the hero/dancer in it, as well as the spooky ending. The elements of her writing that kept me coming back for more were and still are her sharp wit and willingness to take on religious and social. To me, she does so much more than write a great ghost story. She writes about the real world and how the injustices that are perpetuated lead to disturbances we don't always understand. In my own writing, I try to do something similar. I want to write about things that matter, at least to some extent, even as my books work as entertainment. I tend toward controversial themes, at least for some subsets of my readership. Just like Michaels tackled racism in Patriot's Dream, I tried to do that in an open way in Magnolian. I guess it worked. I've had folks tell me they wanted so and so to read it but were worried about her reaction to the mixed race relationship. I think that by making my characters sympathetic, it opens minds. I've had people who I thought would really dislike the novel say they enjoyed it, so I hope it does, anyway.

How about you, Barrymore? Which authors in the Gothic genre most influence your work, and why? How does that influence manifest in your novels?

I’d have to say the early novels of Victoria Holt, especially in my second book, The Haunting at Blackwood Hall, although reading them as an adult I’ve come to think that they are more romantic mysteries than Gothic Romances. Holt doesn’t seem too concerned with creating atmosphere in her works, and atmosphere is a huge deal for me. I think the Gothic template in general has stuck with me for the past forty years. My first two novels begin with this template: due to circumstances beyond her control, an innocent woman is forced to enter a sinister house which triggers a descent into her subconscious where she encounters various dark and light aspects of herself in the form of other characters, and no one is ever quite who they seem. The climax is usually some sort of face-off with the Wicked Father (and in the case of your first two books and many other Gothic Romances, the Wicked Mother). It’s not much different than The Hero’s Journey as outlined by Joseph Campbell and explored over and over in our more popular hero myths from Arthurian legends to Star Wars. I think a primary difference between Gothic and Fantasy Adventure is that the Gothic mindset is highly introverted. The action is more cerebral than physical.

Beyond that, my stories are chock full of any number of paranormal shenanigans from séances and ghosts to Ouija boards and Tarot cards. Again, going back to my childhood in the late 1960s, Astrology and the Occult were all the rage. It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius after all. I grew up in a Christian household where these types of things were highly taboo, so of course that made them all the more appealing. As I grew into my teen years I moved from reading Gothic Romance to Gothic Horror, Rosemary’s Baby, The Mephisto Waltz, Burnt Offerings, The Other, all of which heavily influenced my first book, Night of the Pentagram.

In future installments, Lisa and I will continue our exploration of why we are entrenched in this business of writing Gothic fiction. We will continue to examine the archetypes as they appear in Gothic tales, with a juicy discussion on the use of taboo, along with plenty of shameless self-promotion and, you guessed it, more adoration of Barbara Michaels.

Lisa Greer is almost single-handedly reviving the Gothic Romance one book at a time. February saw the release of her third full length novel, She Walks the Shore, as well as the first chapter in a new Gothic Romance serial entitled Menace atMistwood (with an awesome cover by the multi-talented Barrymore Tebbs.)