FROM “URBAN GOTHIC” TO HAUNTED HOUSE AND MINDS: THE GOTHIC IN OLIVER TWIST AND LITTLE DORRIT

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to analyze the development of Dickens’s use of the Gothic by examining one early Dickens novel – Oliver Twist - and one later novel - Little Dorrit in order to contrast the historical and geographical dimension of the Gothic in Oliver Twist with the combination of commercial and psychological elements in Little Dorrit. In the early novel, the Gothic elements - the “Urban Gothic” (Mighall, 1999, p. 31),3 that is, the motif of the city or parts of the city as dangerous and criminal labyrinth, as well as the ancestral curse, and the Gothic villain – help to