ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the persistence and currency of Gothic tropes and aesthetic elements in films beyond those of the 1940s. Crimson Peak can therefore be seen as very faithful to the narrative template, or more negatively as unimaginative in employing it so straightforwardly, conforming with hardly any deviations to the Ur-text for the Gothic, the Bluebeard story. Crimson Peak assiduously makes use of the template and common elements of the Female Gothic, producing a text that taps into the Bluebeard story just as clearly as it recycles elements of the wartime genre. In the Bluebeard folk tale, after the hasty wedding that has joined the bride’s fate to that of her azure-whiskered husband, there comes the moment when the newly married couple arrive at Bluebeard’s mansion and he shows his new wife around the dwelling that is to be her home.
