Book Review #8: "Mexican Gothic" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
On the merits of Booktok and my personal horror theory
Although Mexican Gothic has its flaws, it is a strong example of horror’s efficacy in portraying social issues and subverting normative expectations.
In even the most cursory reading, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s expertise in the Gothic genre is apparent. In the novel’s supplementary materials, she illustrates the many subdivisions within the Gothic genre. However, she also establishes its overarching theme: “Its emphasis on melodrama and big feelings is what marks the Gothic. Nothing small or muted” (310). She argues that Mexican Gothic is part of the New Gothic Romance genre, borrowing tropes and aesthetics from the mid-20th century movement that lended itself to mass production and a mostly female audience. While aspects of this genre are certainly prevalent in Mexican Gothic, the novel’s (and the author’s) self awareness keep it from easy categorization. She twists New Gothic Romance to fit the modern era. Rather than a replica of the genre, it is both an ode and a criticism.
Essentially, Mexican Gothic uses Gothic horror, a genre rife with its own issues of gender and race, to challenge postcolonial narratives and conceptions of women in the Gothic. This is evident in a few ways, namely in the story’s discussion of eugenics, its mushroom symbolism, and portrayal of sexual violence.
Mexican Gothic takes place in 1950s Mexico, following a young socialite named Noemí Taboada who goes to the countryside to visit her cousin at her father’s behest. Having married into an old British mining family, her cousin Catalina lives in a rundown manor in a dying town and seems plagued by some sort of mental disorder. However, as Noemí spends more time with her in-laws, she begins to realize that the manor’s eerie nature and her cousin’s psychosis have a stronger link than she could have ever anticipated.
The story incorporates several classic Gothic elements, such as the old, decrepit mansion, the crazed/trapped woman, and haunting landscapes. Through these references, Moreno-Garcia makes larger social points about racism and sexism–turning the genre against itself. Upon Noemí’s arrival to the Doyle mansion, she is met with adversity. The elderly patriarch, Howard Doyle, joins the family for dinner and asks Noemí, “What are your thoughts on the intermingling of superior and inferior types?” (30). It’s a question Noemí clearly detests, but also recognizes as a challenge. It establishes good and evil along the lines of white supremacy and colonial violence.
Howard’s repulsive theories also foreshadow a deep irony that occurs at the novel’s climax. Noemí discovers that Howard is virtually immortal, using fungi that grow throughout the house as a pseudo-neural network that maintains his consciousness. Anyone who breathes the air around the Doyle mansion becomes infected with spores, allowing Howard to control their minds and even transfer his awareness to their bodies.
The Doyle family maintains this tradition through inbreeding, only taking in outsiders when necessary. This practice alone suggests that the British Doyles are the so-called inferior race, engaging in inhuman practices to maintain the life of a single man–a man who, importantly, is desperate for money. He needs Noemí and Catalina to help fund his family’s defunct mine. Once again, it seems that the Mexican characters have the upperhand–even within the capitalist structure that the Doyle’s appear to value and attempt to uphold.
Almost everything ties back to eviscerating Howard’s archaic views. His dying, putrid body symbolizes the infection that is white supremacist capitalist exploitation. In Howard’s pursuit of human domination, he loses his humanity. The fungus that grows in and around the house functions in a similar manner, demonstrating the Doyles’ disgusting, festering nature. Admittedly, I found the mushrooms to be the weakest part of the story, but their symbolism is quite effective. Beyond the Doyles, the mushrooms further emphasize the connection between oppression and illness. In her attempt to escape, for example, Noemí is caught in a mist of spores, which make her breathing heavy and her throat burn (223). In a more direct example of sickness, the Doyles poison their miners (many of them Indigenous people) to feed their growing fungus with human decay. This also connects to a tangible aspect of colonialism–that is, the murder and forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples to siphon resources from the Americas into European pockets.
Besides showing the evils of the Doyle family and what they represent, Moreno-Garcia also displays acts of (female) rebellion that ultimately result in the family’s downfall. At first, this is through traditional medicine from a local woman that alleviates Catalina’s fungus-induced psychosis. Overall, Noemí is the strongest example of social subversion, questioning and defying the Doyles at every turn to ensure the safety of her beloved cousin. Pain/rage (often associated with sexual assault) catalyzes these rebellions and furthers the novel’s thesis regarding the violence of colonial oppression. This begins with creepy references to Noemí’s appearance from the Doyle men, Howard and his son Virgil, which take a nastier turn when Noemí discovers she is to become a breeder for Howard Doyle’s next iteration of bodies. And, in a scene that tows the line between fantasy and reality, Virgil assaults Noemí as she bathes. The Doyle women are similarly mistreated. There’s Florence, Howard’s niece, who helps do his bidding after a lifetime of conditioning and abuse. Then there is Ruth, the long dead Doyle niece who killed her parents and attempted to kill Howard, whose consciousness haunts the halls of the Doyle mansion and sends warnings to Catalina and Noemí. Finally, there is the golden woman, revealed to be Howard’s first wife, whose body houses the central part of the fungus and whose mind is part and parcel of the house and everyone in it. It is through her pain that the house both conducts its evil and discovers forms of resistance. All of these oppressed women have a home in Gothic tropes and, through Noemí, find release.
As stated at the outset of this review, I didn’t love Mexican Gothic. I found some of the characters annoying and thought that the evil mushrooms were a convoluted and weak reveal. However, the book is also a testament to the power of horror literature and horror tradition. I first heard about Mexican Gothic through Booktok, a cultural subset of Tiktok focused on literature, which established the novel’s popularity during the early years of the pandemic. Although it’s only a theory, I believe the novel’s use of illness to discuss social issues made it even more relatable and engaging.
In tying into the current moment, Mexican Gothic showcases the fascinating nature of fear. It is at once constant and fluctuating. Although the fears of the oppressor have adapted over time, they still seem to boil down to concerns about social/cultural revolution. In this way, fear shapes hierarchies of power and drives people to commit heinous acts. On the other hand, we can weaponize fear against these hierarchies, using terror as a form of revealing. Moreno-Garcia does just that, using Noemí’s brave defiance as hope against a seemingly impenetrable social structure.