Tension and Fear in The Old Nurse's Tale and The Red Room

2203 Words5 Pages

Examine how Elizabeth Gaskell and H.G Wells build up tension and

convey fear in two gothic short stories; The Old Nurse’s Tale and

The Red Room.

Gothic fiction emerged in the late eighteenth Century. A Gothic story

is a style of fiction characterized by the use of desolate or remote

settings and macabre, mysterious, or violent incidents. In most gothic

stories the writer challenges the intersection of the supernatural and

the rational and inspires dread and horror. In this essay I will

examine how the writers of both ‘The Red Room’ (H.G Wells) and ‘The

Old Nurse’s Tale’ (Elizabeth Gaskell) build up tension and convey

fear. I will compare both stories by examining the similarities and

differences between the two as well as using my personal opinion to

decide the most successful story which builds up the most tension and

most fear.

Changing the mood during a story makes it more exciting and less

predictable which captivates the reader’s interests and builds up a

great amount of tension. Both stories show evidence of significant

mood change, which created a successful amount of suspense when I read

them.

‘The Red Room’ effectively begins in medias-res, which is very

effective as from the very first sentence there is an immediate cause

for concern. It also effectively attracts the immediate attention from

the reader’s interest and from the very beginning we become aware the

story is gothic and are instantaneously caught up in the suspense of

the story. The story begins at a steady climax and rises up into a

state of absolute climax. Throughout the story it has many jumps of

suspense until the reader is left shrouded in it. There are

supernatural occurrences from the very beginning of the story and they...

... middle of paper ...

...se’s Tale’ ends

supernaturally and the ‘Red Room’ ends rationally.

Some parts of each story I did not like, for example, in the ‘Red

Room’ the old withered servants appear very old and extremely

exaggerated beyond the point of seriousness, and I did not like the

long-winded irrelevant points in ‘The Old Nurse’s Tale’. Overall I

think the most effective story for instilling fear, tension and

suspense is ‘The Old Nurse’s Tale’ as it was more easily

understandable and it left a more effective ending as it left the

supernatural occurrences left unexplained whereas the ‘Red Room’

provided a rational explanation for the events. I also found the story

more interesting and I found the supernatural events more intense. I

also found that ‘The Old Nurse’s Tale’ was generally more gothic than

‘The Red Room’ as ‘The Red Room’ was not gothic at the end of the

story.

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