E. Gaskell’s Short Story “The Crowley Castle”: Traditional Content in a New Sensational Form

Abstract

The article deals with the short story "The Crowley Castle" by E. Gaskell (1863). The use of elements of sensational poetics in the artistic depiction of the extinction history of a noble family is investigated: crime, mystery, the ruins of an ancient castle, which is new in the work of the writer in the 1860s. Attention is paid to the author's analysis of the causes of the crime: rational and irrational, the psychology of the criminal. The emergence of a new negative heroine, brought to the fore by Gaskell, is revealed. The commonality of the plot elements of Gaskell's story and the novel by Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace" in the inability of the heroines to manage the surging feelings due to inexperience and life circumstances. An appeal to the traditional for the writer themes of motherhood and the need to follow moral Christian values within the framework of sensational poetics is analyzed.