Consuming the World – Guarding the Garden : Ecogothic Imagery and Ethical Reflection on Sustainability in The Picture of Dorian Gray and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, within a Swedish EFL Context

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) represent ecological anxiety, consumption, domesticity, and human-environment relations through an Ecogothic lens. Drawing on Ecogothic theory, ethical ecocriticism, degrowth perspectives, and concepts such as ecophobia, the environmental unconscious, trans-corporeality, and the Resource Gothic, the study explores how the novels construct contrasting environmental imagery shaped by decay, containment, excess, and withdrawal. Organised around domestic, bodily, and social dimensions of environmental relation, this comparative thematic analysis shows how Gothic literature exposes anthropocentrism and the tensions embedded within systems of ecological control and interdependence. Rather than claiming these historical texts explicitly address modern sustainability, the study argues that they provide a retrospective perspective through which ecological anxieties become newly legible in the context of the present environmental crisis. While primarily focused on literary analysis, the thesis also considers how an Ecogothic interpretation may contribute to critical reflection on sustainability within the upper secondary EFL classroom. Ultimately, the study argues that Ecogothic literature offers a productive way of approaching sustainability as an ethical and interpretative question rather than a behavioural prescription.