Tropes We Know and Love in Gothic Literature
There’s something deliciously familiar about the tropes that define Gothic fiction. Maybe it’s the thrill of recognizing them as they appear—twisted corridors, tormented minds, darkly romantic obsessions. We know them, we expect them, and we love them all the more when a novel uses them well.
Isolation and Alienation
From the very beginning, Gothic literature has made isolation its playground. Think of Victor Frankenstein, holed up in his lab, or his Creature, abandoned to a world that fears him. In Mademoiselle Frankenstein, Océane’s lifelong pain after her mother’s death becomes the emotional anchor of the novel. Every loss she suffers intensifies her estrangement, making her eventual quest into the Arctic an act of existential despair. The landscape around her—vast, frozen, and unforgiving—is a mirror of her internal exile. She’s not just alone; she is emptiness.
The Supernatural and the Uncanny
Classic Gothic fiction loves its ghosts and ghouls, but what really sticks is the feeling of not knowing where reality ends and something stranger begins. The Castle of Otranto gave us cursed helmets and haunted halls. Mademoiselle Frankenstein gives us science brushing up against magic. Océane, as a child, sees lightning strike a man dead… and then sees him live again. That moment rewires her sense of what’s possible. It doesn’t matter whether it’s rational or mystical—the effect is the same. Something unknowable has opened up, and she’s mesmerized.
Decay and Ruin
Whether it’s crumbling mansions or rotting ideals, decay is a hallmark of the Gothic. Poe made it visceral in The Fall of the House of Usher, where even the house seems to rot from within. In my retelling of the Frankenstein tale, it’s not just buildings—it’s a whole country in upheaval. The Revolutionary War sets the stage for physical destruction. Océane’s ruin is quieter and more intimate. She and her Creature are both changed by what they try to do and by what the world does to them in return. Loss leaves a residue, as does war.
The Doppelgänger
There’s always a double somewhere in Gothic fiction. A self you don’t recognize, a mirror you can’t quite trust. Wuthering Heights plays with this through its tangled characters, where love and cruelty twist together. In my novel, the doppelgänger dynamic plays out between Océane and the being she brings to life. He reflects her power and her pain, her longing and blind spots. They are not the same—but they are bound.
Moral Ambiguity
Maybe this is my favorite thing about the Gothic: no one is wholly innocent, and no one is entirely damned. In Dracula, the villain is seductive, persuasive. You can’t look away. In Mademoiselle Frankenstein, morality is never simple. Every decision Océane makes stems from love, grief, or some raw desire to heal the unhealable. And yet—people get hurt. Lines are crossed. The reader is left asking: how wrong was she?
These old tropes endure because they speak to fears we carry now—loss, failure, guilt, loneliness. We keep returning to them not because we’ve run out of ideas, but because each writer, each era, finds something new inside them.
Which modern Gothic novels do you think handle these tropes best, or break them in thrilling ways?
