‘Violence, either implied or explicit, is a key ingredient of Gothic fiction.’

Hi Zara!

The fun thing about that one is it's sort of broken things down for you a little bit! Definitely take implied violence and explicit violence and ask yourself if your answer is the same for each of those! But here are some things I'd do:

• Break down the word "violence". What kind of violence are we talking about (physical, sexual, state or social violence, linguistic)
• Consider what it means for something to be a 'key ingredient' - does it mean it features heavily in Gothic fiction or do we mean that it needs to be core to the plot/narrative/character motivations?
• Subsidiary question: 'Who is defining what counts as violence?' Gayatri Spivak coined a term called 'Epistemic Violence', which would often not be considered to be a form of violence for most white people during the colonial era, for example (which is when a bulk of the Gothic literature was written), but would absolutely be considered violence for marginalised people! Do we have to come to terms with the fact that, actually, even the things not considered violent, such as who is deemed a monster and who isn't, are actually violent?