Pondering Some Unwelcome Themes
Melissa Zilinskas
3/31/20262 min read
Madness
Ancestral curses
Physical and emotional isolation
Let’s examine three themes that often appear in Gothic literature. This is by no means a comprehensive list of Gothic tropes. However, all of the above are fundamental elements in Unwelcome.
We’ll start with madness—and the dreadful notion that one might not be truly experiencing what she thinks; that she may, in fact, have lost her senses. How often are we drawn into a dark story and left wondering—sometimes right along with the main character—if the character is really being haunted (or stalked, or victimized in any other way) or if she is simply mad? It is a theme as old as the genre itself. Take Turn of the Screw, for example. Has anyone ever been able to prove that the ghosts actually existed? It’s up to us to conclude whether the governess was mad or was really protecting the children from menacing ghosts. And not knowing is part of what makes the story so spellbinding. The book leaves us “in the dark”—left with an uneasy sense of doubt.
In Unwelcome, Molly Keane is overcome with a sense of urgency as she suspects their home is haunted and her family may be in danger. Yet, the fact that she alone has had strange experiences only exacerbates her anxiety, as she continually questions which is the more terrifying possibility: the haunting of her house or the loss of her sanity.
Our next theme is family curses. And I don’t mean patterns of behavior which repeat themselves across generations, like alcoholism. I mean actual curses, like when Noah cursed Canaan to a life of servitude after his father, Ham, exposed Noah’s drunken nakedness. Using another example from classical literature, in The House of the Seven Gables, Matthew Maule, before his execution for witchcraft, seemingly curses Colonel Pyncheon with the ominous phrase, “God will give him blood to drink.” Alas, Pyncheon is later found dead in his study, with blood on his lips.
Molly is troubled after someone mentions family curses. Was such a thing really possible? And if so, could it have happened in her family?
Our third theme is often an instigating factor in the first. An increasing sense of isolation can ultimately cause a person to doubt her sense of reason. Dwindling contact with the outside world and little emotional support make it all too easy to sink ever deeper into feelings of uncertainty.
For Molly, the move to the Kansas countryside might just as well have been a move to the moon. Her mother and friends are still back in Topeka, and while she used to hop in her car on a whim and go wherever the mood took her, now the drive is just too long. And with David away at work and Jason at school, the days are exceedingly longer, and the house seems even larger and more intimidating.
So, after a brief glimpse into how these themes—madness, curses, and isolation—come into play in Unwelcome, I hope you’re left with a clear grasp of my main character’s mental state and of the overall atmosphere of the novel.
Thanks for visiting, and happy haunting!