“Berenice” is a prototypical Gothic short story. Gothic literature developed in the 18th century, originating with Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto and spreading swiftly across Europe. The genre is characterized by a general sense of terror that permeates the given narrative, along with certain common elements such as gloomy settings, dysfunctional families, death, illness, madness, and feelings of intense dread or suspense.
Poe brought Gothic horror into the Victorian age, building a reputation for stories that featured haunting (and haunted!) castles and manors, morbid romances, crazed characters, and gruesome violence. As one of Poe’s earliest short stories, “Berenice”—which was written in 1835—demonstrates one of his first attempts at the genre. In this story, Poe incorporates many elements for which his writing would later become known: a slow-building, overwhelming sense of terror, an isolated ancestral home, stomach-turning gore, twisted romance, the psychological exploration of his central character, and experimentation with the line between life and death. All of these aspects are quintessential elements of Gothic literature, bringing to mind the dark intensity of famous novels like Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights or Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, though it's worth noting that "Berenice" is perhaps even more violently haunting than these seminal Gothic works.
