Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

“Rats is bogies I tell you, and bogies is rats”: Rats, repression and the Gothic mode

Crofts, Matthew; Hatter, Janine

Authors



Contributors

Ruth Heholt
Editor

Melissa Edmundson
Editor

Abstract

Rats are inherently Gothic animals—uncannily intelligent, cannibalistic, constantly present, often unseen but constantly watching. As a single entity, or as part of a pack, the rat is a powerful vehicle for delivering horror in the popular Gothic imagination. In this essay, Crofts and Hatter examine how the social commentary showcased in James Herbert’s The Rats (1974) has its roots in the treatment of rats in the Victorian popular press. This rhetoric is rearticulated into Gothic fiction in Bram Stoker’s ‘The Judge’s House’ (1891), ‘The Burial of Rats’ (1914), and Dracula (1897), demonstrating that the rat is not mere background vermin but a potent signifier of past crimes and repression. Rats in these texts produce a sustained commentary on society’s failings as they act as signposts to the poverty society wilfully ignores, undertaking a vital role in exposing, not causing, the horrors of deprivation.

Citation

Crofts, M., & Hatter, J. (2020). “Rats is bogies I tell you, and bogies is rats”: Rats, repression and the Gothic mode. In R. Heholt, & M. Edmundson (Eds.), Gothic animals: Uncanny otherness and the animal with-out (127-140). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34540-2_8

Acceptance Date Apr 4, 2019
Online Publication Date Dec 11, 2019
Publication Date Jan 2, 2020
Deposit Date Jul 2, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Publisher Palgrave Macmillan
Pages 127-140
Series Title Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature
Series ISSN 2634-6338 ; 2634-6346
Book Title Gothic animals: Uncanny otherness and the animal with-out
Chapter Number 8
ISBN 9783030345396 ; 9783030345426
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34540-2_8
Public URL https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/2096390

Files




You might also like



Downloadable Citations