Gothic Horror: Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” “The Signal-Man,” and “The Trial for Murder”

Abstract

This thesis focuses on Gothic horror in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” “The Signal- Man,” and “The Trial for Murder”. It attempts to explore how Charles Dickens has embraced the Gothic in these stories, contributing to Victorian Gothic. He uses some basic elements of Gothic to stimulate horror in these works, and presents the encounters of his characters with mysterious and supernatural experiences. His stories are coloured with mystery and suspense which evoke the atmosphere of dread and horror, and deal with Gothic themes like isolation, fear, supernatural, uncanny, uncertainty, gloom, revenge, mystery and suspense. The thesis is based on theoretical perspectives, chiefly, of Sigmund Freud, and Edmund Burke, as well as Gothic studies.