Gothic literature uses terror as a plot device within a mystical setting or with supernatural elements at play to comment on social, political, and religious tensions (and anxieties) of a certain time period or community even if this is done subtly. There is also usually a romance or romantic element involved.

Gothic novels have conventionally been divided into the schools of terror and horror, schools which have often been neatly grouped under the names of Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis. Terror seeks to evoke by suggestion, by dreadful suspense; horror displays in the hopes of generating revulsion.