Throughout the Gothic Novels that we have studied, certain consistent patterns seem to arise; many of these patterns revolve around two polar extremes. For example, the forces of good vs. Evil from a religious point of view, or conservative vs. Liberal from a political point of view. There are infinite numbers of opposing forces evident throughout the novels we have studied and for this reason we by no means endeavour to present all the polarities present. Instead, we will concentrate on a few that we found to be particularly significant and see how they interact to enforce and often exult their effect. It appears that a lot of what drives this genre of novel is the obscurity that arises from the interaction of antagonistic pairs. For this reason, we have decided to explore the relationship and resultant instability of these opposing forces. Many of the problems that the protagonists of these novels encounter seem to be the result of clinging too tightly to one of these extremes, or swaying too violently from the middle "safety zone". Issues of inflexibility, unbalanced philosophies and seeing things as black or white as opposed to the more true to nature combination of the two are often responsible for the characters' downfall. We have prepared a chart in which we have tried to visually depict the phenomenon we are trying to explain. Basically, the "good" extreme of a given polarity is depicted in white; conversely, the "bad" extreme is black. Obviously, many categories were nearly impossible to categorise in such a manner -- these "neutral" categories are shaded. We wanted to display our chart on grey paper in order to accentuate the obscure instability that surrounds these various forces -- unfortunately none could be found so you'll have to imagine it. The coloured lines correspond to the colour of the outlined novels to suggest that the phenomenon are interrelated in the novel.

[NB. Comment on each of the novels examined was also supplied.]