A Study Of The Uncanny In The Gothic Writing Of The Accidental

Ali Smith is an up-and-coming Scottish writer whose works have been watched,praised and nominated for various literary awards such as Booker and Orange since the publishing of her debut in 1995.Her novel The Accidental recounts a story of the Smarts when they are on holiday in a village.Through the portrayals of the family’s inner worlds after the encounter with the mysterious visitor,Amber,Smith highlights the unconsciousness underneath the Smarts’ seemingly normal appearances,unveiling the vulnerability and hypocrisy of the Scottish middle class.Based on the notion of the uncanny from Freud,the thesis aims at analyzing the Scottish gothic motifs and the core values of The Accidental.Through the analysis of the Smarts’ saying and doing which are suffused with duality,Amber is symbolized as the Smarts’ doubles.Then,the storytelling of the other worlds in novel is elaborated from the three parts of the novel,which is framed by Amber’s monologue about her life that have intertextual references with history and movies.Furthermore,the Smarts’ narratives interweave with Amber’s voice in sequence and the boundaries between Amber’s segments and the Smarts’ are mysteriously crossed to blur the lines between fiction and reality.Finally,the thesis analyses the archetype of femme fatale of Amber who seemingly resembles the female monster from the mythology and serves simultaneously as a destroyer and a savior,thus implying the status quo of the modern society in the post-millennium:the world is no longer "one or the other,"Instead,everything stands for something beyond itself,which provides philosophical inspiration for our contemporary life.Through reinterpretation of the traditional gothic motifs,Smith provides a sidelong glance at the uncanny quality of the ordinary world.Furthermore,the novel reveals the other side of the humanity and the social alienation resulting from a deeply rooted,disturbing unhomeliness that characterizes human existence in the world.