In Chapter 1, the narrator describes the members of the Otis family. Wilde does not state outright that he intends these characters to defy Gothic tropes typical for their roles, genders, and ages, but it is quite clear in the included descriptions that juxtaposition was intended. Take, for instance, the narrator's description of Miss Virginia E. Otis, whose demeanor he outlines using both allusion and simile:
Miss Virginia E. Otis was a little girl of fifteen, lithe and lovely as a fawn, and with a fine freedom of her large blue eyes. She was a wonderful amazon.
Interestingly, the simile and allusion in this passage provide somewhat contradictory visions of Virginia's particular brand of athleticism. Through allusion, she is compared to an amazon, one of the powerful female warriors from Greek mythology. Amazons were not delicate or traditionally feminine, as one might expect a heroine in a Gothic novel to be. While the simile comparing Virginia's litheness to that of a fawn also emphasizes her athleticism, this bit of figurative language portrays her as delicate, perhaps in contradiction to the Amazonian characterization.
Regardless, both the simile and allusion in this passage are intended to emphasize the physical fitness and capabilities of the young woman in question. These descriptions run contrary to those typical of female characters in gothic/horror fiction of the time (or in earlier decades), who were often described as pale, fainting creatures with nervous mannerisms. Athleticism or physical strength were not attributes common to Gothic heroines.
In the following passage from Chapter 3, Wilde employs a wide range of figurative language, including imagery, personification, and simile, to evoke aspects of the Gothic for the reader. Each instance of figurative language in this sentence emphasizes the agency of the natural world, at times above or in contrast to the agency of human actors:
The owl beat against the window panes, the raven croaked from the old yew-tree, and the wind wandered moaning round the house like a lost soul; but the Otis family slept unconscious of their doom, and high above the rain and the storm [the ghost] could hear the steady snoring of the Minister for the United States.
Both the owl and the raven in this passage appear as portents of the ghost’s malicious midnight activity. Their presence is an important contribution to the Gothic imagery of the scene: often, in this literary tradition, the actions of animals—birds, in particular—parallel the actions of supernatural figures. In this passage, the ghost emerges as these animals emerge. Their nocturnal hijinks coincide with his own.
Even aspects of nature not commonly thought of as having life or agency take part in this Gothic nocturnal emergence. The wind, for instance, is personified in this passage through simile, with Wilde writing that it "wanders" like a "lost soul." Contrasting this agency of both natural and supernatural elements, the Otis family is passive, asleep, and little suspecting their "doom" (or so the ghost thinks).
