Within the Lighthouse was written as the result of extensive academic research and personal exploration. As a short-fiction piece, it employs historical and contemporary conventions to portray a modern rendition of the Gothic monster. My goal was to use utilise symbolic mechanisms of transgression and uncertainty to portray a monster in a macabre setting. In doing so, I discovered that the Gothic monster’s definition is still fragmented due to its everchanging renditions. Through scholarly resources and literature, I was influenced to form my own definition in order to complete the short story. This will be explored throughout this commentary.
Having taken the Contemporary Fiction module (221DEL), I was introduced to the fictional sub-genre of Gothic-Horror and in particular Stephen King ‘s Danse Macabre (1981) which alludes to the creativity within Gothic stories as ‘melodies of disestablishment and disintegration’ with a paradox of emotional outlet that constructs a story (27). I applied these themes to the short story I wrote in the module’s workshop: Innocence on the Brae, which took place in the abandoned ruins of a monastery. Learning about the popularity and constant companion of Gothicism in contemporary society acted as a collection of skills and understandings which formed the basis of my ideas for this portfolio’s short story.
Within the Lighthouse is based upon the South Stack Lighthouse on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales. There was a substantial lack of buildings, homes or public which drew me to the loneliness of it. I had learned from Paul Magrs to ‘think of notebooks as a way of capturing the things that go through your head’ (2019: 10) and noted how the lighthouse stood, empty, on the edge of a small island. With the overcast sky and sheer drop into the sea below, I was enthralled by the vast emptiness of South Stack. However, Magrs warned that ‘immersing in the tangents and detail really is like being underwater’, if you ‘skim surface’ then you will write ‘artificial’ words which hold little connection (10). With this in mind, I noted the colour of the paint, the movement of the water and the sound of the wind on my ear so I was able to recollect the emotions and apply them to Within the Lighthouse.
Further literary research included Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976) which is a story that follows a homodiegetic narrator through an epistolary narrative which is not reliable in recalling events. I did consider writing the story from Fionn’s perspective as he is a postgraduate apprentice whose childlike curiosity is reminiscent of young adults experiencing professional workplaces for the first time. After initially writing the story through a series of letters from Fionn as he sits in the Lighthouse, I found I could not grasp the bloody gore of the Lighthouse’s ‘fleshy’ existence. Douglas and Lamorna’s deaths had also become catalysts in Fionn’s fear which intensely focus on him and disregarded the pain of the other characters. However, I chose to adopt the young/old dynamic between Douglas and Fionn which enumerates Rice’s characters: Louis, Lestat and Claudia’s interactivity. The similarities and differences in their personalities emulate their social and political experiences and enforce a familiar difference between old and young generations in society.
It was not until I researched Stephen King’s novels that I considered using a heterodiegetic narrator. The omniscience of Cycle of the Werewolf (1983) intensifies the Gothic-Horror of the novel through geopolitical elements and character interactions. I re-drafted the story through a heterodiegetic narration and as echoed by peer review and used a chronological sequence to build up to the climax of the story. With prose descriptions, the narration follows a familiar Gothic form with locational changes (cliff, beach and cave) that accumulate to build a realistic environment around the antagonistic Lighthouse.
The beginning of the short story was written under the guise of Botting’s Gothic (1995) to accommodate neoclassical connotations and quasi-medieval elements. Lighthouses have an extensive British history and after visiting South Stack Lighthouse, I realised that contemporary society uproot artefacts which have been left abandoned buried for a reason. This made me question the morality of capitalising off the past and as neoclassical elements include antique simplicity, I sought to allude to the medievalism of the Lighthouse through descriptive analogies such as: “a needle skewered through the Earth…” which reflects the aged existence of the building.
The hybridity of the Lighthouse illustrates Botting’s investigation of postmodern Gothic monsters as they are able to remain visible and overlooked at the same time (1995: 158). Similar to Victorian Gothicism, especially Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with its hybrid monster, the Lighthouse exists as a hybrid of building and living creature. It is apparent that conventions of the genre continue into contemporary society and I believe this further demonstrates how prevalent fear and monsters continue to be. It would have been exciting to explore the Lighthouse completely rising out of the ground and moving like an undead creature, however, this would have disregarded the neoclassical antique minimalism of the Lighthouse being stuck in one place.
When I started to plan the portfolio, I primarily focused on defining an accurate and understandable definition of a gothic monster. One of my core texts, Hogle’s The Cambridge Companion to Gothic (2015) puts forth that the Gothic monsters contain fragmented conventions of sensationalism, regression and controversy (1). I sought to stabilise these conventions by focusing on two main characters facing a hostile antagonist. According to Hogle, monsters are strictly symbolic and appear in the form of uncanny abjections (16). Antagonising the Lighthouse follows Hogle’s strict form; it is familiar to the audience but becomes the sensationalised unfamiliar by its uncanny ability to consume human beings. Hogle’s work was influential in my decision to include a cave leading into the Lighthouse as he also believed monsters: “rise from below the threshold” (14) which inspired me to use a basement as a symbolic hell existing beneath the characters and ultimately being their demise.
With Douglas and Fionn, as the two protagonists of the story, arriving as outsiders to the Lighthouse, I introduced Lamorna as the Welsh native to geographically outline the story. Lamorna’s name was purposely chosen for its seaside heritage and meaning: Valley of the Sea. Her physical possession of the key to the attic is metaphorical of how disconnected non-native people are to environments that are symbolic to native populations. Her respect for the attic is alluded to: ‘having not strayed more than a meter in the room’ which infers she is uncomfortable with how Douglas and Fionn are acting. However, there is an ambiguity in her character as, at the end, she chooses to explore the basement, unable to resist the temptation proposed by Douglas. The juxtaposition of her values acts as an allegory of human nature and its fragility to be influenced.
Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black (1998) further alluded to themes of locational horror and trespassing as Arthur Kipps traverses on Alice Drablow’s land to attain documents needed for monetary settlements. The familiar tones of disrespect are mirrored in my story to frighten the reader and question whether possessions of the deceased are morally right to take.
In regard to geographical choice, the location remains strictly prohibited around the lighthouse to create a sense of entrapment for the characters. As mentioned in my literature review, Jackson’s exploration of monsters in real-world environments puts forth that they create an enticing but horrifying sense of otherworldliness (1981: 47). The realism present in the story lures the readers under the guise of familiarity which mirrors the characters’ journey into the Lighthouse. I allude to this through the narrator’s simile: “she looked like a fly held between the jaws of a venus trap…”. The physical capture of Lamorna materialises the animalistic horror of the Lighthouse’s abilities. Describing the leaves of a plant as jaws acts as an antithesis as they are naturally spindly and hold no threat to humans. This rhetorical device situates humans in the position of prey and further antagonises the Lighthouse into the role of a predator.
The Lighthouse’s monstrous consumption of humans is in favour of one of Eve Sedgewick’s gothic conventions: the ‘aesthetic of pleasurable fear’ (1986: 13). Such a peculiar display of deformity inspires fear and desire as the reader is enthralled to experience an entity which is so far removed from the human condition, yet familiar in a perverse manner. Sedgwick’s pleasurable fear refers to a physical body which articulates a foreign physiognomy just like the basement of the lighthouse which is described as: ‘red flesh slowly pulsating’. I decided to make the inside of the lighthouse a denomination of living anatomy to create a macabre undertone.
Writing a short story, in itself, is an excellent opportunity to explore narratives in a condensed and strict set of words. However, my portfolio was initially going to be two stories; equally 2500 words. I wanted to portray several kinds of Gothic monsters such as witches and ghosts as there has been a contemporary revitalisation of Paganism and Wicca which I am enthralled by. However, the lower word count meant I rushed through the narratives and could not accurately characterise or portray Gothicism correctly. With retrospective feedback, I focused entirely on Within the Lighthouse. With 2500 words available, I introduced more description to the location and characters and added dialogue between Douglas and Fionn to allude to their relationship back in Oxford. According to Halberstam, Gothic is “a narrative technique” which “transforms the lovely and the beautiful into the abhorrent and then frames this transformation with a humanist moral fable” (1995: 22). The transformation of the Lighthouse is an example of a mundane place being Gothicised as, at first, it is expressed as melancholic and abandoned. However, the surrealist location and Keeper’s paintings are radicalised as they are revealed to belong to the Lighthouse. An issue I discovered was overexplaining certain elements such as the details of the Lighthouse. This familiarised the reader; taking away the fear or anxiety that was meant to be evoked. Therefore, I removed the overexplanatory concepts and simply capitalised Lighthouse to illustrate its importance.
Characterisation was a concern which arose around Lamorna as she appears later than Fionn and Douglas. Their interactions were short and flimsy which did not work well as Lamorna and Douglas drank wine and played a card game within hours of knowing one another. In order to solve this issue, I added more dialogue between them and insinuated Fionn had taken a romantic liking to Lamorna. As a realter, her motivation to be there was to sell the building to the highest bidder which she openly discusses and makes known to the reader as well as the Lighthouse. It was necessary to keep Lamorna’s character as her demise portrayed the relentless nature of the building.
Upon re-writing, I detailed the company Fionn and Douglas worked for as well as the auction they had been hired to curate. Their goals are supressed to make the reader see them as they see one another; it would have been uncharacteristic for them to directly say what they hoped to gain from the trip. According to Crow, if the reader is able to understand the ‘consciousness of a character’ then they would be invested in the significance of the narrative (20153 355). There is a frequent imperative mood throughout the story which alludes to the job they have to complete: “Grab what you can from the attic…”. The command portrays Douglas’s greed and his desperation to complete the job.
Despite the Lighthouse being the antagonist of the story, I wanted to allude to other monstrous forms which influence contemporary Gothicism. As put forward by Mills in The Routledge Creative Writing Coursebook (2006) “the fiction writer will inevitably be more interested in developing the message of a piece…’ (116) which, arguably, I am. I wanted to infer there is a moral lesson in the story; you cannot be disrespectful and expect to be respected in return.
This humanistic morality is reminiscent of Halberstam’s ideology as explored in my literature review. The conventions of monsters require human signifiers which leads him to conclude that monsters are ‘metonyms of the human’ (7). Therefore, the Lighthouse’s acknowledgement of Fionn’s apology, when he is allowed to wake up in the cave and escape again in the third act, demonstrates its paradoxical ability to forgive which mirrors the complexity of human emotions.
With each character being a member of a business, there is an underlying inference to class and capitalism. The manic events of the final act are the result of monetising a dead man’s belongings and vocally disrespecting his home. I wrote this as synonym for my own fear of being exploited through capitalism. Fionn and Douglas become victims of their workplace as their desperation to return with expensive art infers they will lose their job if they fail; mirroring how the workforce in contemporary society will place themselves in harm’s way to keep their job. This aspect seems particularly prevalent with the COVID-19 response whereby some businesses continued to force their workers to attend despite their health being at risk.
Ultimately, Douglas’s demise is an extensively severe metaphor for the workforce physically pushing their workers to the brink of death. Fionn, being young, has the chance to escape and it is symbolic of modern generations rising up against the institutions which plagued their ancestors and supressed them.
Although I am pleased with how Within the Lighthouse was written and finalised, I would like to transform the short story into a novella as I feel there is a broader history behind the Lighthouse’s existence. Fionn’s ambiguous ending leaves a melancholic and frustrating desire for more from him; how his childish nature has been subverted and his friendship with Douglas made a memory. However, I feel the ending was conventionally Gothic due to the chilling unknown of Fionn’s future. I greatly consider the decision to have one short-story a good one, as I could detail themes of capitalism and monstrous forms. Overall, researching for this project taught me there is a fragmented definition of Gothic monsters because the genre adapts and morphs with each societal fear and political influence. I digress that the fragmentation is symbolic of the genre following its own jarring and frightening rules.
