In this respect it manifests the first of the three things David Punter argues are definitive of Gothic, that is, the concept of paranoia. Gothic is what he calls ‘paranoiac fiction’, that is, ‘fiction in which the “implicated” reader is placed in a situation of ambiguity with regard to fears within the text, and in which the attribution of persecution remains uncertain and the reader is invited to share in the doubts and uncertainties which pervade the apparent story’.22
