The Haunting of Bly Manor: A Review as a Gothic Work

by Mallery McKay

Promo Poster

The text that I have chose to write my blog post about is the television series, The Haunting of Bly Manor, created by Mike Flanagan. This television series is loosely based on the novel, Taming of the Shrew, written by Henry James, which is a notable Gothic work. This nine episode series is about an au-pair from America that travels to the English town called Bly to take care of two children that had just lost their previous au-pair and are stilling grieving the lost of their parents. The characters consist of the au-pair named Dani, the groundskeeper named Hannah, the chef named Owen, the gardener named Jamie, and the two children named Flora and Miles. The television series first takes place in 2004, where an older woman goes to a wedding and tells the story of Bly Manor. The episodes mainly consist flashbacks of events of Bly Manor, with the older woman is taking the role of the narrator and explaining the inner turmoil of the main character, Dani. Bly Manor is seemingly haunted by a number of ghosts, the main ones consisting of The Lady of the Lake and Rebecca, the old au-pair who died from drowning herself in the lake. The story explores what really happens after death and all of the characters’ relationship with it. This exploration is what drew me to the series in the first place, every character in the series is put there for a reason, they have their own special and specific relationship with the dead and the living, it is up to the audience to figure out what that reason is. This show is really engaging in that aspect, it leaves you on the edge of your seat, wanting to know more about each character, even the ones that are so clearly labeled “villainous.”

There are many elements from this show that makes it gothic, one of the main aspects of this text is the music score. It has a light, but eerie tone that puts the audience inside the setting from the first time they hear it. It has an underlying feeling of tension, like pulling a string until it breaks. It has the audience wondering what will happen when that string finally breaks. I think that specific form of tension comes with absorbing anything from the gothic media. The setting of the story is what makes this story especially gothic, with its castle-like manor that is closed off from the public and from my interpretation, even only allowing the workers of the manor to be spectators of the acts of the manor. Adding on to the self-isolation aspect of the series, Flanagan makes the audience feels isolated as well. There are only mentions of the town, Bly, and only brief moments of reprieve with characters that are not in Bly at all. Isolation is definitely a recurring theme of gothic works. Flanagan realizes this and makes it a big theme in Haunting of Bly Manor. It is no secret or the surprise that this manor houses many ghosts, the series was advertised as “a ghost story.” A quote direct from the narrator when she first describes the story she is about to tell to the wedding-goers. I believe that to make a story or a piece of media be considered gothic, you should have some sort of supernatural element either underlying the plot or apart of it entirely. The Haunting of Bly Manor does both it seems. It allows it’s characters to breathe and allows the audience to get to know them first, their quirks and faults. Flanagan seems to have a way with making his characters seemingly human before bringing down the “Gothic Hammer” so to speak.

Bly Manor

I found that this series has a very similar setting to We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. The isolation theme between both works is what made me group them together. The motto of ‘Us v. Them’ is recurrent in both cases, with the ‘us’ in each situation being the specific characters that live in that self-isolating setting. The ‘them’ in each situation is what differs the two works, with Jackson drawing a very distinct line between the Blackwoods and the townspeople. But with Flanagan, that line blurs as we never get to see the townsfolk of Bly and the ‘them’ in this work is also the people that live in the same self-isolation setting as the specific characters. The ‘them’ in Flanagan’s work is not the townsfolk, but more so the supernatural beings that attach themselves to the main characters of Bly.

I could not reveal all of the plot points in this essay as there are many plot twists in the story that are important to the overall theme to the work, which is what is life after death. Anybody who likes gothic media should definitely check this piece of fiction out. It truly is a masterpiece of gothic fiction in my opinion, it is what made me get into horror media in the first place and Flanagan truly never misses on getting his point across.