There's so much in this chapter. Firstly prudent reasoning from Carwin vs religious enthusiasm indirectly clashes in this emotion heated scene. Carwin has confessed his sins. Wieland escaped prison again to sacrifice Clara in his belief that the voice he hears is a divine messenger. Clara had thought of commiting suicide before Carwin's confessions, but once Wieland appears, she dreads the thought of dieing. The atmosphere has such eerie gothic elements. On the other hand there's a lot of character development, all 3 have changed a lot which makes them dynamic characters. Carwin seeks to clear up everything he had done out of guilt. Wieland had gone insane. But the most dramatic change is within Clara, who everyone adored, percieved as pure, brave and just and now - even though she just heard from Carwin that he had not made Wieland murder his family, Clara turns on him with a lie, a religious reasoning to save herself from her brother and to make his brother realize that "the divine messenger" is unreal. Clara is trying to use a possibly deadly trick on the two men. All three characters has reached a big turning point.

The entire chapter is a mix of overlapping sentimentalism and gothic elements in the form of religious enthusiasm: devoted and passionately religious Wieland is convinced by a hallucination that he must sacrifice his wife - and later children - to rid himself of mortal impurities, selfishness, and to prove his faith to God by it. The darkness and the torturous thoughts about death and murdering what's most precious to him are gothic elements. I think the cause - the hallucination itself - as godly as it looks is controversially gothic because it is a coverage of the madness and the horrors that will happen. The emotions are overpouring with grief, hesitation, and the urge to fulfill a "divine duty". The reasoning is far from prudent, although there are episodes where Wieland is torn between his love for his family and God. The inner conflict - although more exaggerated here - reminds me a little of "Contemplations", but unlike in Contemplations, where from the gloomy thoughts we reach peace, Weiland is "dancing with madness" in his inner battle, episodically going back and forth even after the deed is done - at first he's relieved even happy that he was able to obey a divine command and set himself free, but then he breaks down under its weight, and again his hallucinations bring him back to carry on and repeat it with his children too.

Macbeth has occult content, but every high school reads it! gothic literature has supernatural elements, too! How can a literary element be praised within one genre and criticized within another?

Gothic

These German ghost stories were translated into French for the book Mary, Percy, and Byron read during the summer; its French title was Fantasmagoria; ou Recueil d'Histoires, d'Apparitions, de Spectres, Revenans, Fantomes, etc., translated by Jean-Baptiste Benoit Eyries in 1812.

This description got me curious about Melville's relationship to gothic literature, so I did a search in my (other) library's federated search and found that < melville benito cereno gothic > yielded 583 results.

Citing Sara Mills, Justin D. Edwards draws attention to the us vs. them narrative in Benito Cereno.

"For Melville, I suggest, the coupling of the two forms was possible because they were both filtered through a racialized lens. For instance, the structures of difference that are central to nineteenthcentury travel narratives— the narrative necessity of providing a gap between 'us' and 'them'— can also be found at the heart of Benito Cereno (Sara Mills 23)." Edwards, Justin D.. Gothic Passages : Racial Ambiguity and the American Gothic, University of Iowa Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/columbia/detail.action?docID=837041. Created from columbia on 2018-10-06 15:39:04.

He goes on to discuss violence, ignorance, and revolt in the power dynamic between Babo and Delano. That's not strictly gothic, but the elements are not far removed.

The names Emily and Valancourt are reference to characters from the gothic romance novel Mysteries of Udolpho by Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, which was published in 1794. Emily is the heroine of the novel who goes through misfortunes after the death of her father. Valancourt is a traveller who Emily falls in love with while traveling with her father. After her father's death, Emily is under the guardianship of her aunt Madame Cheron who tries to keep Valancourt and Emily from being together and eventually marrying each other. Madame Cheron goes as far as to take Emily away with her to Italy to be rid of Valancourt. Valancourt asks Emily to marry him in secret, but Emily refuses and leaves him to go with her aunt to Italy. (Regency History)

Here is a novel cover of Anne Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho: