#severance procedure

Power politics, identity and inheritance.

The grim reality of Victorian medicine, with its visceral focus on the dissection of bodies and the exposure of human vulnerability, provided fertile ground for Gothic narratives that blurred the line between scientific inquiry and horror.

It need not be emphasized that the skull is a Gothic prop.

Broadly, the Gothic depicts transgressions, both of behavioral norms (sexual deviance, gender subversion, moral wrongdoings) and of seemingly fixed boundaries (self and other, life and death, past and present, man and monster).

Gothic literature delves into our depths to disclose the darkness within: the acts we believe ourselves incapable of, the feelings we hope to bury and ignore.