The Monster in the Closet: Representation of Homosexual Desire in American Gothic Literature

Abstract

Gothic fiction, as of late, has been associated with having homosexual connotations. In this paper, this phenomenon will be explored profusely through the analysis of three short stories by three different authors of the Gothic movement. These will be the Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe; Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne; and Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville. Thanks to a previous literary review on the Gothic movement and the devices used on that period that have come to be interpreted as having homosexual undertones, the different instances of homosexuality inside the three narratives have been detected. To complete this examination, the most important characteristics that have been found on the short stories are those of “the unspeakable”, the “male gaze”, the space, and the journey, as well as the idea of “homosexual panic” and the overall context and male relationships. Concentrating on identifying all these elements, plenty of homosexual undertones have been encountered on the stories. What these findings have uncovered is, not only the homosexual subtext of the stories, but also how that subtext also expressed a homophobic sentiment, as for, in the Gothic period, every sign of homosexual desire hid a homophobic connotation within it.