Fictionalising the unspeakable: Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak (2015) as a trauma narrative

Abstract

Neo-Victorian narratives of trauma display a temporal duplicity in addressing nineteenthcentury traumas that still prevail at present, including natural catastrophes, wars, or more personal and insidious traumas, such as domestic violence and oppression, or child and sexual abuse. In this article, I argue that Guillermo del Toro’s neo-Victorian film Crimson Peak (2015) is constructed as a trauma narrative that exploits the trope of «the uncanny» (Freud 1919) and its main representations –i.e. the double, the return of the dead and repetition compulsion– to address the traumatic experience of gender violence and its impact on both Victorian and contemporary women. Furthermore, I contend that the film functions as a symbolical space where the audience can bear witness to and reflect on the multitemporal trauma of gender violence. That way, viewers can bear witness and develop empathy towards survivors of this traumatic experience.