Victorian Gothic fiction analysis

York Notes available on line. Better get hold of it soon.

I studied Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey as one of my A level English texts. This is a send up of the gothic novel. The first task our teacher set us at the start of the course was to write a chapter from a supposedly long lost Gothic novel, based on the information about these novels in Northanger Abbey.

It was great fun and a really good start to our course. Perhaps the OP and his friends could start by doing something like that. It would teach them a lot about how the effects of such a book are constructed and give him/her a guide to how the style is created.

We studied Jane Eyre, know to the class as Hairy Jane. I did that book again at uni.

It is so long ago I cannot remember.

DD was stuck with Jude the bloody Obscure and dreary Seamus Heaney for A Level. She'd have loved Dracula!

Yes I do.

Hmm

Better than plimsolls I guess

They do if they're on exam leave and mucking about instead of studying!

This is getting tedious. real students don't have time for pestering people on forums.

Did you finish your essay on Gransnet and get a good book. I hope you enjoyed Dracula as much

And for the avoidance of doubt, I am not quite old enough to have known Sheridan Le Fanu or Bram Stoker personally.

Ask your teacher to recommend study material on the subject of the Gothic novel. There should be plenty available. As for me - to quote Grumppa: "you couldn't possibly afford me".

Surely if they have got as far as A level they should know about study notes etc.

There are usually lots of good study guides available for set texts such as York notes and Letts guides. These may help.

Are you under the impression that we are of the same vintage as Dracula?

Surely you were given some guidance about Gothic novels before being let loose on Dracula? Refer back to your notes.

When I did English I was told to read everything I could find on a theme. The more you "read round the subject" the better the set book finds its place among others of the same genre, and the more you become attuned to the way it is written and the ideas behind it. Just getting our input and repeating it won't improve your own understanding much.

First follow *Grumpa's advice and read the actual book.
Watch the film? there are several versions.
You could Google "gothic novels" and find a page like this www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/themes/the-gothic which appeared well up the top page of results when I searched. There will be many more references.
You could read other contemporaneous novels in the same genre.
Discuss it with your classmates who are studying the same book.

Perhaps via t'internet you could ask others reading or have read same book, what they think.
How did you find your English GCSE.
Easy or difficult?
Have you done AS level English?

What are your teachers doing? Surely they give you some guidance?

We've read the book but we are struggling to find ideas to write about (stylistic analysis)

Possibly, but you couldn't afford me

One piece of advice for free: read the actual books before relying on other's opinions about them.