A2 English Literature Gothic Key Quotes

This is my list of quotes that I made for cramming literally a few days before the exam!

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!

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)

Frankenstein Quotes by Key Gothic Themes

“to curdle the blood and quicken the beatings of the heart” - Shelley

VICTOR

• beam of benevolence and sweetness that I never saw equalled
• generally melancholy and despairing
• My temper was sometimes violent and my passions vehement
• I have described myself as always having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature
• Had I right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations?
• The tortures of the accused did not equal mine; she was sustained by innocence [an example both of melodrama and Victor’s near-delusional selfishness]
• A thousand times would I have shed my own blood, drop by drop, to have saved their lives.
• I fell, never, never again to rise
• His fine and lovely eyes were now...subdued to downcast sorrow, and quenched in infinite wretchedness
• Must I then lose this admirable being? I have longed for a friend I fear I have gained him only to know his value and lose him
• Oh Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! What does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me?

THE CREATURE

• the daemon, as he called him, had pursued
• I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God!
• work of muscles and arteries beneath
• lustrous black [hair]
• pearly whiteness
• watery eyes
• shrivelled complexion
• straight black lips
• he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks
• my unhappy victim [near the beginning, Victor seems to take the blame for the Creature’s actions, whereas by the end he increasingly blames fate]
• remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel
• I was a poor, helpless, miserable wretch
• In my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers
• I thought (foolish wretch!) that it might be in my power to restore happiness to these deserving people
• And what was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant, but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property
• terrified when I viewed myself in a transparent pool!
• endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?
• I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition (Paradise Lost)
• His soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery and fiend-like malice
• seek the most northern extremity of the globe; I shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame...I shall die
• He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.

PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTORTION

• Unhappy man! Do you share my madness? Have you drank also of the intoxicating draught?
• The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream
• I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality
• I was absorbed by a gloomy and black melancholy that nothing could dissipate. The image of Clerval was forever before me, ghastly and murdered.

WOMEN

• pretty present for my Victor
• he shall have it
• promised gift
• looked upon Elizabeth as mine--mine to protect, love, and cherish
• all praises bestowed on her I received as made to a possession of my own.
• till death she was to be mine only
• Elizabeth was of a calmer and more concentrated disposition...I was more deeply smitten with a thirst for knowledge.
• Dear Victor, banish these dark passions.
• [Elizabeth] most of all...requires consolation
• the heroic and suffering Elizabeth
• whose existence was bound up in mine
• She was neither understood by, nor herself understood, the cottagers.
• my warmest admiration and affection
• alas! to me the idea of an immediate union with my Elizabeth was one of horror and dismay
• The prospect did not move me to fear; yet when I thought of my beloved Elizabeth - of her tears and endless sorrow, when she should find her lover so barbarously snatched from her -

EVIL/GOOD

• sweet laughing blue eyes (William)
• mixture of affection and reverence that knew no bounds
• I looked upon crime as a distant evil; benevolence and generosity were ever present before me
• evil thenceforth became my good
• You shall be my first victim...I grasped his throat to silence him, and in a moment he lay dead at my feet.
• my lovely boy...stretched on the grass livid and motionless: the print of the murderer’s fingers was on his neck

FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE

• You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did
• I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been
• you may deduce an apt moral from my tale
• ardent desire for the acquisition of knowledge
• learn from me . . . how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge
• how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow
• inner spirit of nature
• the mysterious soul of man
• the physical secrets of the world
• it was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn
• Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed?

HORROR AND TERROR

• Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay?
• I perceived in the gloom a figure...a flash of lightning illuminated the object, and...instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy demon
• Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful
• Thus spoke my prophetic soul, as, torn by remorse, horror, and despair I beheld those I loved spend vain sorrow upon the graves of William and Justine

• Devil...do you dare approach me?...Begone, vile insect! Or rather, stay, that I may trample you to dust!
• I saw an insurmountable barrier placed between me and my fellow-men; this barrier was sealed with the blood of William and Justine.
• I am the assassin of those most innocent victims; they died by my machinations.

• the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts.
• By the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window shutters, I beheld the wretch. The miserable monster whom I had created.
• On looking up, I saw, by the light of the moon, the demon at the casement.
• A ghastly grin wrinkled his lips as he gazed on me.
• lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down, and her pale and distorted features half covered by her hair...her bloodless arms and relaxed form flung by the murderer on its bridal bier.

AMBITION

• Do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose? (W)
• I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path (W)
• success shall crown my endeavours (W)
• What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man? (W)
• chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose.
• pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.
• I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.
• Think not, Walton, that in the last moments of my existence I feel that burning hatred and ardent desire of revenge I once expressed
• seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition

DRAMATIC TENSION

• Remember me with affection, should you never hear from me again (W)
• So strange an accident has happened to us that I cannot forbear recording it (W)
• Hear me - let me reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips.

MONSTROSITY

• I pursued my undertaking with unremitting ardour. My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated….almost frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation.
• My abhorrence of this fiend cannot be conceived.
• When I thought of him, I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so thoughtlessly bestowed.
• superhuman speed. He bounded over the crevices in the ice, among which I had walked with caution.
• Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind.
• for the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom, and I did not strive to control them.
• A grin was on the face of the monster; he seemed to jeer as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my wife.

FATE/DAMNATION

• innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by heaven whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me.
• destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction
• chance - or rather the evil influence, the Angel of Destruction, which asserted omnipotent sway over me
• such were the professor’s words - rather let me say such the words of fate, announced to destroy me.
• some destiny of the most horrible kind hangs over me
• the apple was already eaten
• you throw a torch into a pile of buildings; and when they are consumed you sit among the ruins and lament the fall. (W to C)

SCIENCE

• my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature
• the labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind
• I do not ever remember to have trembled at a tale of superstition or to have feared the apparition of a spirit.
• they have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows. (Waldman)
• in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder
• darkness had no effect upon my fancy
• from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm.
• this was indeed a godlike science, and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it (Creature, books)
• How dare you sport thus with life? [condemnation of Victor’s negligence]
• I had conceived a violent antipathy even to the name of natural philosophy...the sight of a chemical instrument would renew all the agony of my nervous system.
• I feared the vengeance of the disappointed fiend, yet I was unable to overcome my repugnance to the task which was enjoined me.

THE SUBLIME

• the land of mist and snow (W)
• I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight (W)
• there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined within all my projects (W)
• the starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. (W)
• it was augmented and rendered sublime by the mighty Alps, white and shining pyramids and domes towered above all
• The blue lake, and snow-clad mountains, they never change; - and I think our placid home and our contended hearts are regulated by the same immutable laws
• Ruined castles hanging on the precipices of piny mountains...formed a scene of singular beauty
• the leaves began to bud forth...my spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature...the future gilded by bright rays of hope (C )
• by degrees the calm and heavenly scene restored me
• It had filled me with a sublime ecstasy [one of many examples of how nature affects Victor’s mood]
• For in sleep I saw my friend, my wife and my beloved country

LIMINALITY

• Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.

ISOLATION/LONELINESS

• I have but one want … I have no friend, Margaret
• I desire the company of a man who could sympathise with me; whose eyes would reply to mine...I bitterly feel the want of a friend.
• solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all the other apartments
• Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested
• You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being.
• The picture I present to you is peaceful and human, and you must feel that you could deny it only in wantonness of power and cruelty
• the mainland, which was about five miles distant

SETTINGS

• like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any unwholesome trade
• black and comfortless sky
• a place befitting such a work
• desolate and appalling landscape
• [Switzerland’s] fair lakes ... when troubled by the winds, their tumult is but as the play of a lively infant, when compared to the roarings of the giant ocean.
• be swallowed up in the immeasurable waters that roared and buffeted all around
• I desired that I might pass my life on that barren rock, wearily it is true, but uninterrupted by any sudden shock of misery.

NOTE: I didn't learn all of these for the exam, neither should this be considered a total, complete list. Just a handy selection of quotes that I found covered most of the main themes of Frankenstein!