Gothic Doppelgangers

"Those providences of good and ill which divide and compound man's dual nature." - Dr. Jekyll

"Doppelganger - A ghostly counterpart of a living person" - Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (www.m-w.com)
 

In Gothic literature, not all doppelgangers are ghosts or duplicates of a person. Some are merely the two sides of a single character, or the darkside of an entire idea. In the following rooms the idea of the gothic doppelganger is built upon and expanded. The first room to the left looks at the light and dark sides in terms of submissive and commanding personalities of Rosario and Matilda from Matthew Lewis' The Monk. The next step leads to Lucifer and Satan, who add the sense of good and evil to the two sides of a doppelganger. The third door contains Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde who look at the two sides in terms of rationality versus violence. The last room to add to the idea has only one character, Dracula, who embodies only the darkside of the doppelganger, but brings that side into a new realm of 'the outsider'.


Created November 7th 2006, Meagan Lillich
Read the Rationale here

English 113 Gothic Novel & Horror Fiction (Fall 2006)