When her mind was discomposed... a book was the opiate that lulled it to repose.

Matthew shook his head. “Whoever said anything of women in the Victorian era being prim and proper apparently hadn’t met Maxine Fleming.”
Tahatan chuckled. “I’m sure a publisher somewhere would make a nice fortune with putting this into print. The fact is, people tend to look back on bygone times through rose-colored glasses. All eras have encouraged values that are pushed on the surface, but in the end, people are still people.

Good evening, you poor little Orphans of a Loveless God. Good evening to you blood sucking fools.

(speaking of Ann Radcliffe) A work of art worthy of the name is one which gives us back the freshness of the emotions of childhood.

All of the village was of a piece, a time, and a style; it was as though the people needed the ugliness of the village, and fed on it. The houses and the stores seemed to have been set up in contemptuous haste to provide shelter for the drab and the unpleasant, and the Rochester house and the Blackwood house and even the town hall had been brought here perhaps accidentally from some far lovely country where people lived with grace. Perhaps the fine houses had been captured—perhaps as punishment for the Rochesters and the Blackwoods and their secret bad hearts?—and were held prisoner in the village; perhaps their slow rot was a sign of the ugliness of the villagers.

At its heart, Gothic Fiction is the introvert's "Hero's Journey" where heroes and heroines must navigate the uncharted territory of the mind in order to solve the mystery of their life's adventure.