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ly, thusNina turns to Sam’s friend, also her doctor, Darrell for help, then Nina gives birth to ahealthy baby. Actually, Nina falls in love with Darrell, but Darrell does not want to berestrained by Nina, when he finds that he can not live without Nina, but Nina isreluctant to leave her husband even though she loves Darrell. After Sam’s death, herson little Gordon leaves Nina with his girlfriend, thus Nina has to stay with Marsden,a father-like friend to spend the rest of her life.
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Chapter One Introduction to Gothic Literature

Gothic literature is also called dark romanticism. Its “darkness” mainly reflectsin the following two aspects: In plot, it prominently emphasizes violence and terror.The most common plot is that the vulnerable heroine encounters terrible danger;imprisoned in a threatened and mysterious circumstance, she starts a horrifying“chase-escape-chase” battle with the villain, which is certainly along with a series ofsuspenses, such as secret antecedents, mysterious inheritance, lost testament, familysecret, family curse, and so on. In theme, not just like other romantic writings thatexpress their ideal social, political, religious, and moral ideas positively, Gothicliterature is inclined to reveal the evils in society, probing into the defect and darknessof humanity, particularly of morality (Xiao, 2001: 90-91).

1.1 Overview of Gothic Literature
The term “Gothic Literature” origins from the word “Goth” which originallyrefers to the Teuton tribe in northern Europe. This Gothic tribe is famous for itsaggressiveness and blood-thirsty manners; it invaded the Roman Empire in the 3rdand4thcentury. Therefore, the word “Gothic” refers to things about “Middle Ages” and ithas the meaning of “savage, primitive”. From the 12thto the 16thcentury, the word“Gothic” stands for medieval style of architecture, mainly embodied by churches andcastles. This kind of buildings have soaring towers, massive stone walls, narrowwindows, somber gallery, and even underground charnel abodes, which represent“savage, darkness, backward civilization” (Punter, 1980: 5). Afterwards, Gothicelements extended from architecture arts to other fields. In 1764, British writerHorace Walpole produced The Castle of Otranto, with the subtitle A Gothic Story, thestory of which chooses a Gothic castle as the setting and is full of crime and violence,hereafter, the word “Gothic” becomes the name of a new fictional genre.Saunders, an English literature critic, sums up the main features of Gothicliterature like this: witchcraft, cliff and abyss, delusion and allegory, the unpeacefulmind, the sudden death, the hell-like prison, the world of dream, special love to corpse,being addicted to horror and torture, the coming and going of apparition (Saunders,1980: 498). To sum up, the major Gothic features include horror, misfortune,decadence, mystery, death, supernature and so on.
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1.2 O’Neill’s Gothic Complex
There are several important reasons for O’Neill to use Gothic elements in hisplay writing. The first and foremost reason is the influence of his family. If we knowO’Neill’s unfortunate family background and various trauma of life experiences, wewill easily understand why he writes so many tragedies and why he employs Gothicstyle in his tragedies. O’Neill’s life experiences molds his outlook on life and worldview, which directly influences his value orientation of tragedy crea