The Erl-King

Summary 

-the heroin who speaks directly to the audience tells the story of the Erl-King

-it begins in a "cold day of late October"

-A teenage girl walking through a deserted, isolated forest is seduced by a wild man who lives there - The Erl-King (personification of the woods). She falls in love with this man and becones vulnerable unde rhis power and she is taken in by him. As he teacher her the ways of his woods, she realises that he is weaving her a cage to keep her in, along with the other birds which he keeps. The climax of the story is her actions following her realisation as she strangles him with her her own hair and sets the birds free. 

Gothic Features

Weather and Setting

• The wood is personified and isolated, "the wood swallows you up"/ "the woods enclose"
• initially more of a fairy-tale than gothic
• "withered"/ "discoloured"/ "dead bracken"
• "the silent, blackish water thickens, now, to ice."
• "vertical bars of a brass coloured distillation of light coming down" (shows her desire to be caught, light is a positive image yet it is creating cage-like patterns- link to gothic idea of confinement/ entrapment)
• "sulphur-yellow interstices in a sky hunkered with grey clouds" (sulphur is traditionally an element associated with hell and damnation- links to consequences of transgressing)
• "the candle flutters and goes out" (classic gothic theme, lack of hope and transgression)

Dominant Males                                                                                                    …