Here we will understand that what makes a realistic text a gothic one, is how characters respond to reality. The authors lead the reader to question what is reality, and to what extent a gothic element can be considered not realistic. The essay will explore how Charlotte Brontë manages to insert a ghost and a telepathic communication in her realistic text, how the grotesque's description of Dicken's characters, especially the one of Miss Havisham, makes them gothic, and the connection between human hybrids and the Victorian anxiety on vivisection matter. This paper will analyse the relationship between Victorian Realism and the Victorian Gothic in three distinct novels: Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, and The Island of Doctor Moreau. The difficulty of mixing two motives so different lies in making something uncanny and fantastic, in something real. These seem to be opposite genres, but they do have a solid relationship with each other and, more than one text, fuses these two styles. Serious attempts to portray changes to reality have more in common with realism than they do with, say, fairy tales. Le Guin herself has argued that serious science fiction is a mode of realism, not of fantasy. On the other hand, "gothic speaks of phantoms" 2, and has to do with the uncanny. The fabulist parable of Omelas is not operating in the (relatively speaking) realistic mode of A Game of Thrones. 515525852 George Elliot, reviewing John Ruskin's book, affirms that realism is "the doctrine that all truth and beauty are to be attained by a humble and faithful study of nature, and not by substituting vague forms, bred by imagination on the mists of feeling, in place of definite, substantial reality" 1. The genres are different because Gothic Literature focuses more on the topic of fear, horror, suspense, death, and gloom, while Magical Realism focuses on surreal elements, dreams, and fantasy. Analyse the relationship between Victorian realism and the Victorian Gothic, with reference to at least two texts from the course. While Magical Realism and Gothic Literature are similar in certain aspects, they do have their differences.
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