4 - Honeymoon gothic

Summary

Although I have talked about literary honeymoons in the context of larger cultural imperatives toward transformation and conjugality, I have not yet looked closely at literary representations of the wedding journey on their own generic terms. Despite the prevalence of the Victorian marriage-plot novel and its traditional ending at or soon before the wedding, Victorian novels depict honeymoons with surprising frequency and intensity. I discovered, as I sifted through the (usually grim) honeymoons of the literary canon as well as through the mass of less canonical texts, that most of these depictions have in common three important elements: narrative reliance on honeymoons as extended opportunities for the revelation of character; the imbrication of that revelation in narratives of secrecy, deceit, and violence; and the location of that secrecy, deceit, and violence in the language and landscape of the gothic. Many novels and shorter pieces, in other words, use the honeymoon as a time and place to explore the limits of the ideal of conjugal knowledge. It is no wonder that honeymoons in many works of Victorian fiction feature the insistent sounds, sights, and themes of the gothic, from haunted mansions to portraits, from enclosure to danger and death.

The origin of the gothic honeymoon might well be traced to Évian and to an unnamed house where Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein and Elizabeth Lavenza break their wedding journey in the shadow of what was to become one of the landmarks of the Victorian honeymoon: the dome of Mont Blanc.