The Return of the Ancestors: Reading the Anglo-Irish Gothic

The Gothic tradition underwent a revival toward the turn of the twentieth century after a decline in popularity in the mid-nineteenth century. The new Gothic focused more intensely on the inner mind than the classical Gothic, as we see in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and Dracula (1897). This inward turn led to the eventual transformation of the Gothic into what I would call a ”narrative of haunting” in the twentieth century-two of the best examples being the works of Virginia Woolf and Henry James. But the Gothic also appeals to collective anxieties caused by urbanization and industrialization. In this paper I want to look into the uniquely nationalist dimensions of the Gothic with special reference to the return of the ancient father/mother in Anglo-Irish Gothic literature. The idea of ancestral return, after all, need not only be read in supernatural terms; it can also be read in (post)colonial ones, in the context of expatriation and repatriation. With the awakening of nationalist sentiments, as in late 19(superscript th)-and early 20(superscript th)-century Ireland, expatriates may find themselves increasingly alienated in their own ”homeland,” uncanny strangers in their own ”house.” Looking at the works of two Anglo-Irish writers, Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), I suggest that the expatriated or estranged Anglo-Irishman fantasizes the ”return” of his native (Irish) ancestor as representing the native homeland. Such a ”ghostly” fantasizing can be seen as both symptom and cure, and above all as an expression of the ambivalence of Anglo-Irish attitudes toward the return of their ancient, ancestral land.