Gothic Villains in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables and Toni Morrison's Beloved.

Abstract

Nathaniel Hawthorne and Toni Morrison deal with the Gothic figure of the villain in their novels The House of the seven gables and Beloved. They delve into the two archetypes of this emblematic character of Gothic fiction: the tyrannical satanic paternal figure and the Faustian scientist-artist. The traditional character of the villain is at the core of their meditation on evil in the Puritan world and in the institution of slavery, respectively. Through the Gothic villain, both writers question the white Western capitalist order, the oppressive male-female relationship, the unethical use of science and the dysfunctional patriarchal family.