https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i3.030
From Physical to Psychic Doubling: The Reimagining of Gothic Doubling
DRISHTI ANIL
Department of English
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
Amritapuri, Kerala
drishtianil02@gmail.com
ASWATHY DAS K V
Department of English
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
Amritapuri, Kerala
aswathydaskv@am.amrita.edu
Abstract: Gothic literature, with the good-versus-evil trope at its core, employs mirrors, haunted bodies, and doubles—the splitting of one’s identity—to externalize the internal conflicts of characters and reveal their antagonistic energies.
Gothic doubling has historically functioned as a narrative device for representing internal conflict and fragmented identity. This paper traces the evolution of Gothic doubling from Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to its contemporary adaptation in Stephen King and Joe Hill’s In the Tall Grass. Drawing on Sigmund Freud’s concept of the uncanny, Carl Jung’s shadow theory, and Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, the study examines how doubling shifts from a clearly defined moral and physical dichotomy in Stevenson’s novella to a more diffuse and spatially mediated phenomenon in King and Hill’s text.
While The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde presents the double as a manifestation of repressed desire and Victorian anxieties through the literal existence of a second self, In the Tall Grass reimagines doubling through fractured subjectivity, haunted space, and unstable perception. The paper argues that the contemporary Gothic double subverts traditional binary oppositions and emerges instead as an omnipresent state of being that is both psychologically and existentially disintegrating, thereby reflecting modern anxieties and uncertainties.
Keywords: Gothic Double, Doppelgänger, Modern Gothic, Identity, Repression, Gothic Literature
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