Sarah Perry’s Melmoth and the Implications of Gothic Form

Abstract

ABSTRACT I read Perry’s Melmoth through the lens of memory scholar Michael Rothberg’s 2019 The Implicated Subject, which provides a conceptual framework for moving beyond the victim/perpetrator binary when considering responsibility for historical violence and its legacies. I argue that in Melmoth, Perry uses gothic forms such as the tale and the found manuscript in ways that allow the reader to experience the moral and ethical dilemmas raised by the acts of violence and genocide that the novel references, including the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust. At the same time, however, I argue that Perry’s innovative revision of another gothic convention, the Wandering Jew legend, reinforces or even extends problematic representations of Jewish-Christian relations found in Charles Maturin’s 1820 novel Melmoth the Wanderer. By reimagining Melmoth’s “sin” as failure to bear witness to the truth of Christ’s resurrection, Perry’s narrative unwittingly re-inscribes the Christian supersessionism that so deeply informs Maturin’s work.