I wouldn’t I subscribe to the ‘depressed writer’ trope; I don’t think it’s entirely true, although you do have to be a certain kind of melancholy to be so full of thought that you can’t help but leak onto the page. I can see why this trope is tossed around though, when I look at the media I turn to for inspiration when I want to write or feel. I lean to the gothic, the dark and broody, the lyrics that make you cry if you listen too intently. They draw out the darker parts of me and that’s where the words reside.
I’ve collated a selection of my favourite pieces of media for when I’m feeling creatively stunted and need to quickstart my thoughts and feelings. I know that none of these are very niche, and you’re likely to have heard of them all, I just wanted the chance to gush about my favourite media :)) I hope you enjoy!
Wuthering Heights
Themes: love, revenge, devotion, haunting, passion
Novel: Emily Brontë (1847)
Film: Peter Kosminsky (1992)
“You say I killed you — haunt me, then!”
Wuthering Heights was the first classic novel I read and the gateway into my favourite literary genre. I re-read it every single year and I’m equally invested and inspired every time.
It tells the story of Heathcliff, an orphan, who is adopted by Earnshaw and raised with Catherine. The two of them are devoted to each other. When Earnshaw dies and his son inherits the estate, he treats Heathcliff like a servant, and the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff crumbles. He overhears her saying she cannot marry him and he flees.
When he returns, Catherine’s husband bans Heathcliff and Cathy from seeing each other and she falls ill, devestated by the loss of the man she loves so dearly. She ends up dying and Heathcliff calls on her ghost to forever haunt him.
The gothic setting of this story coupled with the intense infatuation and devotion of the main characters is so incredible and the raw passion is something I rarely see so explicitly and desperately portrayed.
Watching the 1992 film (my favourite version) on a rainy sunday night is an EXPERIENCE and I really really recommend it to anyone who’s feeling a bit creatively stunted. It’s so beautiful and powerful, and the book is even better.
Rebecca
Themes: love, haunting, paranoia, comparison, obsession
Novel: Daphne Du Maurier (1938)
Film: Alfred Hitchcock (1940)
Rebecca tells the story of an unnamed protagonist who marries the wealthy Maxim de Winter, who became a widow after his wife’s boating accident. Set at Maxim’s Manderley estate, the second Mrs de Winter comes to find her husband and his house are still haunted by the memory of his first wife, particularly the sinister character of Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper. It’s an incredible story about how the past occupies the present and the characters struggle to find a sense of self.
The novel is set in Cornwall in England, and the coastline itself is a character in the story. The movie features beautiful shots of the crashing waves and the gothic scenery is just breathtaking. It’s the sea scenes in Rebecca which actually inspired a lot of my recent post.
“I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.”
There is a more recent film starring Lily James and Armie Hammer, and while it is incredible, the Hitchcock version is so powerful. The cinematography is stunning and so bold. The black and white is so crucial in representing the obsessive, vengeful, cruel Mrs Danvers and the innocent, naive, insecure new Mrs de Winter.
Frankenstein
Themes: ‘The scientist as God’, humanity, nature, revenge, prejudice, corruption
This novel by Mary Shelley is so stunning I’ll always regret never getting around to it sooner. It’s one of my favourites.
The story centres around Victor Frankenstein and the creature he creates and abandons. The creature, feeling unguided and abandoned, seeks revenge on Frankenstein for creating him and leaving him in a world to suffer loneliness and prejudice.
the theme of humanity and just what that means is so important in the novel, and it ties in well with the ever-fascinating debate of nature vs nurture. The violent behaviour exhibited by Frankeinstein’s creature could be attributed to the body he lives in, and the life it lived before, but it can also be traced back to his nurture, or lack thereof. His traumatic bringing-to-life and subsequent abandonment is likely to have had a huge impact on his behaviour and world perspective.
Victor is the real monster, not his creature. His selfishness and lack of accountability are the reason for the creature’s behaviour. He refuses to see the humanity in his own creation, its need for companionship, for love. The monstrous appearance of Victor’s creation serves as a mirror to the cruely that resides within Victor, despite his outward appearance.
“You throw a torch into a pile of buildings; and when they are consumed you sit among the ruins, and lament the fall.”
The Fall of the House of Usher
Themes: greed, sin, power, death, immortality
This show was my first foray into the Mike Flanagan universe and it took my breath away. It tells the story of the Usher family, led by the father Roderick Usher and his much more brilliant sister Madeline. Their pharmaceutical company has earned them incredible amounts of wealth, but their empire begins to crumble when each of the Usher children are killed, one by one.
The dynasty is unraveling and it comes to light just how the Usher twins built their empire and exactly what they sacrificed to make it happen.
One of the more inspirational aspects of this show for me was Madeline Usher’s character and her desperation for immortality. She has aboslutely everything she could dream of, but it will never be enough because death is knocking at her door, and it’s her biggest fear. The passing of time and the idea that one day she’ll just be an ink blot on the page is horrifying for her. The irony lies in her sacrifice of the Usher lineage in a desperate attempt to have all the power in the world.
Edgar Allen Poe
Mike Flanagan stitches together pieces of Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories, which inspired me to later go on to buy them and they are just perfect. Here are some of my favourite parts:
“The drops of moisture trickle among the bones.” - The Cask of Amontillado
“The whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity—an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn—a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leadenhued.” - The Fall of the House of Usher
The book I read is titled ‘The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales (Signet Classics)’ and features several of his works, but my favourites are definitely ‘The fall of the House of Usher’, ‘The Masque of the Red Death’, and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’.
Miss Havisham
Themes: revenge, decay, heartbreak, passing of time, denial
Miss Havisham is a character in Dickens’ Great Expectations, whose life remains frozen from the moment her suitor abandoned her. All the clocks are stopped and she remains in her wedding dress, years later. The wedding feast decays in her home. She trains Estella to break men’s hearts.
The specific motif of a heartbreak so intense that your life stops evokes such emotion in me and I’ve always been drawn to the character of Miss Havisham and the way she is described:
“the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung lose, had shrunk to skin and bone”
Similar to this theme is the Taylor Swift song ‘right where you left me’. This song alone features on a playlist I have titled ‘Miss Havisham kind of grief"'. If you have any songs similar to this, please please let me know!!!
At risk of going down a rabbit hole, this theme is also present in Bridgerton!! We can kind of see the way Violet comes out of this frozen grief in season 3 when she begins to consider other relationships and sweet Colin gifts her a pocket watch, symbolising the way her life starts up again. (I have plenty more to say about this but I’ll keep it to myself for now <3)
The Bloody Chamber
This is a collection of short stories written by Angela Carter, each inspired by a fairytale. They tell the much darker version of the stories we all know well.
My favourite of the collection is titled ‘The Lady of the House of Love’ and it details the story of an English soldier who comes across a vampire who lures men into her home and feeds on them. She intends to do this with him, but his virginity is fascinating to her.
“She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the window of her eyes and this is very frightening.”
A very close second is the title story ‘The Bloody Chamber’, in which a teenage girl marries a French man. He has previously had multiple wives, all who died suspiciously. He gifts her a choker made of rubies. When he goes away, he entrusts her the keys to the castle, banning her from entering a certain room. When she does so, she’s shocked by the gruesome interior; the bodies of his former wives are presented.
The imagery of this story is beautiful and dark and it’s so incredibly written, I highly recommend!!!
Music
I frequently turn to music when I need a quicker burst of inspiration, specifically the playlist I created based on the novel I’m planning/writing! <3
Beyond this, anything by Florence + The Machine works. Every time. Specifically, ‘Dream Girl Evil’, ‘Cosmic Love’, ‘Which Witch’, ‘Seven Devils’, and ‘Never Let Me Go’.
Themes
This was hard to think of a way to express without being morbid, but the idea of stagnancy and decay fascinates me. I love the motif of returning to the earth and the grass growing over you, like in the Hozier song ‘In a Week’.
I also LOVE the Spanish post-war motif of women in the stagnant home. ‘La Casa de Bernada Alba’ by Federico García Lorca, Nada, and La isla y los demonios’, both by Carmen Laforet, are incredible examples of this and I think the descriptions as well as the social context are so powerful and important. This is another theme I could definitely go down a rabbit hole about, so there may be an essay coming at some point.
Another piece of media which captures the women in the home idea so so well is ‘The Virgin Suicides’ by Jeffrey Eugenides. It perfectly fits the ‘weird girl lit’ that I mentioned in my autumn guide. The visuals created in the novel alone are incredible and I can’t wait to watch the film at some point. I really really recommend it.
If any of these interest you in the same way, pleaseeee feel free to DM about it I woulf LOVE to discuss <3
Quotes
Often there are novels that as a whole, don’t inspire me in any particular directions, but there are quotes that I’m left thinking of for days. I went through my clippings on my kindle (the best feature ever) and here are some of my favourites:
‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ by Anthony Doerr is a book that I found initially tricky to get into, but I ended up loving it. It’s such a magical piece and full of so many beautiful quotes:
“text— a book— is a resting place for the memories of people who have lived before. A way for the memory to stay fixed after the soul has traveled on.”
“Moonlight pours into the fog like milk.” - I just love this imagery
I read ‘Carol’, formerly ‘The Price of Salt’ by Patricia Highsmith as part of a module on my study abroad and I just loved it:
“She wished the tunnel might cave in and kill them both, that their bodies might be dragged out together.” The devotion that fills this sentence is beautiful.
“Carol was happy only at moments here and there, moments that Therese caught and kept.”
“It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and in hell.” Just perfect.
I also recently read ‘Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrad and I found it tough to read as a whole, but the analysis that lies in the story is so fascinating. I was once told about this story in relation to ‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding and that connection is incredible. There’s so much to say about Golding’s work.
“There was a whole world in her,”
“There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies”
“It had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation.”
This is my collection of media that inspires me to write or create. If you have any other books, films, TV shows, or other, that always inspire you, please let me know!!
Great list. Wuthering Heights is one of my all time favorite novels, but now I am going to check out the film as well.
definitely going to check these out x