I just tried to find the most flexible, useful quotes I could that addressed most of the key Gothic themes.
They're not everything you need and I avoided most of the 'mainstream' quotes that I already knew ("Is this a dagger I see before me?" etc. - which are still very useful and not to be underestimated), but this list is great if you're really short on time! I prioritised Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights as my potential Part A texts so there's more quotes for those books.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Frankenstein
- like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines (immorality of work)
- a place befitting such work (Orkney islands, setting)
- desolate and appalling landscape (Orkney islands, setting)
- new and unlimited powers (scientific ambition)
- command the thunders of heaven (scientific ambition)
- in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder (scientific ambition)
- the tortures of the accursed did not equal mine; she was sustained by justice (Victor's bias)
- had I right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations? (morality)
- I fell, never, never again to rise (Victor, damnation)
- Oh Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! (Creature's sorrow at Victor's death, regret)
- I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel (heaven/hell, creation)
- his soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery and fiendlike malice (appearance showing character)
- my unhappy victim (Victor about Creature, responsibility)
- Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am alone and detested (Creature, isolation)
- do you share my madress? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? (Victor, insanity)
- Elizabeth was of a calmer and more concentrated disposition (women)
- I looked upon crime as a distant evil; benevolence and generosity were ever present before me (nature vs nuture, Creature's initially benevolence)
- evil thenceforth became my good (good/evil, nature vs nuture)
- a serpent to sting you, as mine has been (forbidden knowledge)
- believes his native town to be the world (safety of ignorance)
- aspires to become greated than his nature will allow (forbidden knowledge, ambition)
- beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful (fear, power, role reversal)
- devil...do you dare approach me? Begone, vile insect! (Victor to creature, nature vs nurture)
- the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts (forbiddden knowledge, sin, responsibility)
- I saw, by the light of the moon, the demon at the casement (supernatural)
- chord after chord was sounded and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose (obsession, ambition)
- when I thought of him, I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed (similarities between Victor and Creature)
- seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth (transcendence, power of nature)
- my spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature (transcendence, power of nature)
Wuthering Heights
- one bitter whirl of wind and suffocating snow (setting)
- her spirit has taken the post of ministering angel (spirituality, heaven)
- my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand! (horror, supernatural)
- intense horror of nightmare came over me (horror)
- terror made me cruel (fear, morality)
- rubbed it to and fro until the blood ran down and soaked the bed clothes (horror, violence, blood)
- uncontrollable passion of tears (extreme emotions)
- snow and wind whirled wildly through (pathetic fallacy)
- as dark almost as if it came from the devil (racism, sin)
- would it not be a kindness to the country to hang him at once, before he shows his nature in acts, as well as features? (appearance reflecting character)
- fine clothes and flattery (civilisation)
- instead of a wild, hatless little savage (wild, free, emotions)
- I wish I had light hair and a fair skin, and was dressed, and behaved as well and had a chance of being as rich as he will be! (class, race, wealth)
- never had power to conceal her passion (extreme emotions)
- irresistibly impelled by the naughty spirit within her (extreme emotion)
- double assault of falsehood and violence that his idol had committed (violence, sin, idolisation)
- he possessed the power to depart, as much as a cat possesses the power to leave a mouse half-killed, or a bird half-eaten (love, obsession, idolisation)
- he's doomed, and flies to his fate! (love, damnation)
- with the help of Satan, I will make you swallow the carving-knife (images of horror, cruelty, religion)
- heaven did not seem to be my home (religion)
- growling thunder (patheticl fallacy)
- the storm came [...] in full fury (pathetic fallacy)
- it was nothing less than murder [...] to stand up and contradict her rages (uncontrollable emotions, anger, morality)
- it was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckle, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn (pastoral metaphor, love, violence)
- the gunpowder lay as harmless as sand, because no fire came near to explode it (metaphor, uncontrollable emotions, anger)
- your presence is a moral poison that would contaminate the most virtuous (morality)
- painting on its white the colours of the rainbow (domestic violence, metaphor, horror)
- Mrs Linton, the lady of Thrushcross Grande and the wife of a stranger, an exile and outcast (isolation, class, civilisation)
- I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free (wild)
- while you are at peace I shall writhe in the torments of hell (attitudes towards death, death as freedom)
- we'll see if one tree doesn't grow as crooked as the other, with the same wind to twist it! (nature vs nurture)
- as his nephew resembled him in person, he would resemble him in mind (appearance vs character)
- smiling sweet as honey (peace)
- two such radiant counterances (love)
- last night I was on the threshold of hell, today, I am in sight of my heaven (love, attitudes towards death, religion)
- under that benign sky (setting)
- imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth (resolution (?), peace)
Macbeth
- nought's had, all's spent / where our desire is got without content / 'tis safer to be that which we destroy / than in destruction dwell in doubtful joy (regret, remorse, ambition)
- unnatural deeds / do breed unnatural troubles (immorality, psychological disturbance)
- I have almost forgot the taste of fears (unnatural, fear)
- but get thee back: my soul is too much charged / with blood of thine already (noble (?), morals, redemption?)
- life's but a walking shadow, a poor player / that struts and frets his hour upon the stage (attitudes towards life)
- my hands are of thy colour; but I shame / to wear a heart so white (cowardice, bravery, guilt, remorse, gender roles)
- upon my head they placed a fruitless crown / and put a barren sceptre in my gripe (monarchy, guilt, kingship)
- now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in / to saucy doubts and fears (fear, paranoia, guilt)
- the very firstlings of my heart shall be / the firstlings of my hand (action, immorality)
- not in the legions / of horrid Hell can come a devil more damned / in evils to top Macbeth (damnation, sin, religion)
- O nation miserable, with an untitled tyrant, bloody-sceptred (kingship, sin, violence)
- before my body / I throw my warlike shield (defence or pride?, soldier, bravery)
- dead butcher and his fiend-like Queen (character types, tyranny)
(Note: I already knew a lot of the key parts of Macbeth from studying it at GCSE, so the vast majority of famous lines etc are not on this list)
The Bloody Chamber - The Bloody Chamber
- seventeen and knew nothing of the world (innocence, naivety, chronological change)
- only a baby (youth, innocence)
- dark leonine shape of his head (threatening male, animalistic)
- dark mane (animalistic)
- waxen face (unnatural, frightening)
- like an extraordinarily precious slit throat (beauty and pain, wealth, excess, violence)
- as if he were stripping the leaves off an artichoke (humour?, objectification, sex)
- instruments of mutilation (horror)
- gleamed as if they were sweating with fright (fear, tension)
- an armful of the same lilies with which he had filled my bedroom (sex and death)
- subterranean privacy (hell, underworld)
- my little nun (sex and religion, worship of sex)
- prayer-books (dark humour, sex and religion)
(Note: Again, these are only quotes for the opening of TBC - I knew most of the quotes from the end by this point!)
The Bloody Chamber - The Erl King
- the woods enclose, then enclose again, like a system of Chinese boxes (entrapment, lost, mystery, tension)
- the Erl King will do you grievous harm (isolated line, tension, danger, foreshadowing)
- he is the tender butcher who showed me that the price of flesh is love; skin the rabbit, he says! (objectification, violence and sex)
- I feel your sharp teeth in the subaqueous depths of your kisses (violence and sex, animalistic)
- how sweet I roamed, or rather, used to roam (lost innocence)
- his touch both consoles and devastates me (oxymoronic, lust, love, fear)
- I feel my heart pulse, then wither (love and death)
- eyes as green as apples. Green as dead sea fruit. (danger, death, natural world)
- his embraces were his enticements, and yet, oh yet! they were the branches of which the trap itself was woven (entrapment, male dominance, danger, tension)
- then she will open all the cages (freedom, escape)
- I will strangle him (strength, danger, tension, violence, role reversal)
- each with the crimson imprint of his love-bite on their throats (violence and sex, ownership, scarring)
The Bloody Chamber - The Lady of the House of Love
- my darkness (nature, sin, darkness)
- I thought, perhaps, you might irradiate it (love, light, purity, darkness)
- immune to shadow, due to his virginity (purity, innocence, virginity)
- the blood on the Countess' face will be mixed with tears (moral conflict, danger, emotional anguish)
- the bridegroom bleeds on my inverted marriage bed (role reversal, gender roles, blood, sex and death)
- their swooning odour, that breathes lasciviously of forbidden pleasures (excess, sex)
- too many shadows (darkness, menace)
- now you are at the place of annihilation (danger, tension)
- both death and the maiden (mixed characterisation, oxymoronic)
- beautiful and ghastly lady (mixed characterisation, oxymoronic)
- I am condemned to solitude and dark; I do not mean to hurt you (nature vs nuture, damnation)
- two-wheeled symbol of rationality vanish into the dark entrails of the mansion (rationality against supernatural, occult)
- no-man's land between life and death, sleeping and waking (liminal state)
- I will vanish in the morning light; I was only an invention of darkness (darkness, supernatural, mystery, transformation)
