ABSTRACT
In the gothic world, art is hard to distinguish from life, a fact that has concerned its critics, worried lest its readers extend this confusion into their own lives. The rational lovers Raymond and Agnes similarly conjure up a fictitious figure that takes on a life of its own, and suddenly find themselves caught up in a truly gothic plot. By placing the revelation of the cause of Ambrosio’s selfalienation at the centre of the text, Lewis seems to suggest that it is a privileged insight into the true nature of things. In a dark version of the female gothic’s reunion of mother and daughter, the daughter’s story comes full circle back to her own source. In a world in which art is associated with fraud and deceit, artistic creation is destructive. The only art that reveals any truth is the one that unveils its own falseness and gothic tendencies.
