Unusually for the Gothic genre, the mood of “The Canterville Chase” is humorous and light. This mood serves the purposes of Wilde's satire: he clearly wishes to make the defining characteristics of Gothic fiction into humorous foibles, something he only achieves by keeping the mood light. By convention, Gothic fiction and its various derivative genres tend to maintain a darker, more somber, foreboding mood. The anticipation of supernatural events and the horrors that follow is often an important part of the plot in Gothic narratives; and for this to be the case, mood must often anticipate horror. In order to satirize the Gothic, one must infuse horror with humor. Moving from foreboding to humorous provides the necessary shift for the reader to be able to distinguish the author’s satirical tone.
Only toward the end of the story, when Virginia helps the ghost finally pass on into the ether, does the mood become slightly somber by comparison to the rest of the work. This momentary shift away from humor does not, however, signal an uncritical return to Gothic tropes. On the contrary, this passage develops an appreciative and mutualistic relationship between the human and spirit worlds, as opposed to a contentious one. Instead of recapitulating Gothic tropes by taking on a more serious mood, this passage upends those tropes.
