Gothic literature uses terror as a plot device within a mystical setting or with supernatural elements at 🌟 play to comment on social, political, and religious tensions (and anxieties) of a certain time period or community even if 🌟 this is done subtly. There is also usually a romance or romantic element involved.

Gothic novels have conventionally been 🌟 divided into the schools of terror and horror, schools which have often been neatly grouped under the names of Ann 🌟 Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis. Terror seeks to evoke by suggestion, by dreadful suspense; horror displays in the hopes of generating 🌟 revulsion.