Chapter 2 – Victorian Mansion History and characteristics of this architecture Set Design’s usage of Victorian Mansions and it´s style The eff ect of this visual cliché The role of subconscious and conscious mind in this context

Chapter 2

Victorian Mansion

Victorian Mansions are usually referred to as houses built during Queen Victoria’s reign from 1837 to 1901 (Middeke et al 2012, 56). Back then, the British Empire had a big reach, which is why the Victorian style can be found in not only Great Britain, but also the US, Australia and New Zealand. Queen Victoria was known for her luxurious taste, which heavily infl uenced architecture and décor at that time. Due to her long reign, diff erent styles of architecture are being subcategorized under the generic term of the ‘Victorian Mansion’, especially in the US. Due to the Industrial Revolution, the middle class were able to aff ord luxury for the fi rst time, which is refl ected in the popularity that Victorian style houses held during that period. The Victorian style with eccentric and almost over the top ornaments and decorations, was used to signify wealth, especially in the middle class. Although there are various subcategories to the Victorian style, “Queen Anne”, “Stick/Eastlake” and “Italianate” (Mastroeni, 2020) to name a few, they all feature similar characteristics. Victorian houses are usually marked by lavish and luxurious style. In their at least two (rather three) stories, they feature ornate staircases, intricate wooden trim, as well as high ceilings and little nooks. It was dark and cluttered (Amaya 2017). The exterior is as playful as the interior. Towers, turrets and dormers and decorative woodwork are as much of an indicator for the Victorian style as bright colours, steep and gabled roofs and round angles (Mastroeni, 2020). Another big theme were bay windows and arches, as well as decorative panels (Mastroeni, 2020). All in all, Victorian style can be described as the opposite of today’s modern and clean style.

When thinking about haunted houses, especially in fi lm and television, Victorian style houses immediately come to mind. Holly Amaya even writes: “When it comes to horror fl icks, there‘s nothing Hollywood loves more than a towering Victorian manse that‘s a bit past its prime” (2017). However, why is this the case? Victorian homes are “[t]he hallmark of haunted-house movies for decades, eliciting a fear response in your brain every time you see that castle-like house—usually on a hill” (Jones 2018). Victorian style houses, with their age and therefore subsequent decay, have earned themselves the title of the typical haunted house in horror movies. From Psycho to American Horror Story, Victorian houses are a common trope in the horror genre and are therefore irrevocably connected to the imagery of distress and haunting. While the style and history of Victorian mansions most defi nitely play a part in why they are perceived as haunted, Hollywood did the rest. The persistent use of Victorian homes as haunted houses or the homes of psycho killers, irrevocably established the

Fig. 13

trope and therefore, the connotation of the Victorian mansion and horror. So in this day and age, when using the trope of the Victorian mansion as haunted, context and explanations are barely needed, as the subconscious connotation has already