In Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s gothic fairy-tale novella, Undine, the supernatural in this story isn’t just for decoration, nor does it function as a simple allegory or moral instruction. Instead, it operates as a Gothic aesthetic in which instability, fear, and liminality become visible. Nowhere is this more apparent than in “The Day After the Wedding,” from Undine, a chapter within The Penguin Book of Mermaids, that unsettles the apparent harmony of marriage through nightmares, silence, repetition, and a delayed revelation. While the chapter gestures toward future tragedy, its main function is not straightforward foreshadowing. Rather, it actually exposes the Gothic anxiety produced by proximity to a being who exists between two worlds–human and nonhuman, a familiar and unknowable. This anxiety is seen almost immediately in the chapter’s atmosphere of “wonderful and horrible dreams” (102) and the uneasy quiet that follows the wedding night.
Fouqué’s “The Day After the Wedding” uses the Gothic aesthetics of dream imagery, temporal disruption, monstrous transformation, liminal space, and supernatural knowledge in order to externalize anxieties that can’t be articulated within the rational discourse of marriage or of humanoids as paradigmatic liminal beings. The chapter can be placed within a broader Romantic Gothic tradition. In his text, the supernatural doesn’t explain emotion or stabilize this romantic union, but instead dramatizes the instability that comes with being human and attempting to contain what resists fixed boundaries. This function of the supernatural aligns with what Gothic theorist, Catherine Spooner, identifies as the genre’s defining impulse in “Unsettling Feminism: The Savagery of Gothic,” she explains how Gothic “acts as an unsettling force,” not to resolve contradiction, but to expose the fractures and aporias behind these systems that claim coherence (129).
One of the most striking Gothic strategies in “The Day After the Wedding” is Fouqué’s manipulation of time. The title itself shows that there is a disruption instead of a resolution after this holy unity. Marriage, conventionally imagined to be a moment of culmination and stability, is displaced by what comes after. The phrase “the day after” suggests a belated reckoning, a temporal lag in which consequences emerge indirectly rather than being resolved at the moment of ritual completion. Gothic anxiety is thus located not in the wedding night but in what lingers beyond it. Huldbrand’s terror unfolds in the liminal hours between night and morning. The “fresh light of morning” (102) awakens the newly married couple, yet daylight does not banish his fear. Instead, it reveals what is left of the darkness. Huldbrand’s dreams stay vivid, the images clinging to him as his consciousness returns. The Gothic that is seen here is how it refuses the restorative promise of daylight; fear persists even as the night recedes. This temporal overlap collapses the boundary that is between the unconscious fantasy and waking life, suggesting that the anxieties staged by the dream are not confined to sleep but embedded in the reality that the marriage between Undine and Huldbrand has produced. The displacement aligns with Gothic conventions that put horror not at the moments of climax but in the aftermath. Marriage should prove Undine’s status as a wife and human being, yet the morning after intensifies ambiguity. Stability becomes an illusion when it should have been secure. The Gothic, therefore, comes not as an interruption but as an afterimage, revealing the insufficiency of social rituals to resolve that ontological uncertainty. To be clear, the Gothic is not defined by terror alone, but by its capacity to expose the instability of categories–human and nonhuman, reason and emotion, order and excess–that the social rituals like marriage attempt to secure.
Gothic literature locates its deepest anxieties in liminal bodies, and in Undine, this anxiety is clear about the impossibility of fully domesticating a being that exists between human and elemental worlds. As Cristina Bacchilega observes in The Penguin Book of Mermaids, “we humans do not deal well with betwixt and between–liminality makes us anxious” (xi), and Merepeople: A Human History by Vaughn Scribner also enhances that same argument by saying “hybrid creatures represented danger as much as hope, wonder as much as horror” (8). This insight gives a lens for understanding Undine, whose existence undermines the stability that marriage is meant to guarantee. Undine’s marriage to Huldbrand represents her attempt to resolve her liminality through Christian ritual and being recognized by society. The elemental spirit she is is transformed into a wife, seemingly now as a part of society. Yet Gothic logic resists such containment. The day after their union doesn’t confirm harmony; instead, it introduces disturbance. Huldbrand awakens from his “wonderful and horrible dreams,” haunted by spectres who disguise themselves as beautiful women before suddenly assuming the face and bodies of dragons (102). The nightmare stages this anxiety visually, allowing Huldbrand to project what he cannot consciously acknowledge, since Gothic convention enables the rational subject to cast off its “horrifying and fascinating others in monstrous form” (Spooner 130). Beauty now collapses into monstrosity, exposing the fragility of appearances and the instability behind these social forms. The dream aestheticizes liminality itself. This fear of collapse aligns with Scribner’s observation in Merpeople: A Human History that such hybrid beings were understood as “they were unnatural manifestations of a realm that humans did not fully understand,” capable of drawing humanity into “a strange, disorderly world of confusion and destruction” (8). The supernatural has not been domesticated; it continues to exert pressure upon the social order. Undine’s body, her origin, and relation to humanity remain a mystery, and Huldbrand’s nightmare gives way to this instability to flourish into its grotesque visual form. Marriage attempts to render Undine legible within social order, yet her presence resists such containment, for Gothic hybrids are “disturbing” precisely because their incoherent bodies “resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration” (Spooner 136).
Dreams occupy a privileged position in Gothic and Romantic literature because they make way for forbidden or unacknowledged fears to surface. In “The Day After the Wedding,” Huldbrand’s nightmare functions as a Gothic disclosure, translating unspoken anxiety into a spectacle. The spectres that haunt him do not appear as overtly supernatural beings, but instead they “grin at him by stealth,” masquerading as beautiful women before revealing their monstrous faces (102). There is this oscillation that is seen between beauty and horror that mirrors Undine’s liminal status and destabilizes the reliability of perception itself in Huldbrand’s view. The dreams that he has, the most disturbing feature isn’t the violence of it all, but it’s the structure of the transformation from a beautiful being to a monster. The spectres are not immediately monstrous; their monstrosity emerges through sudden collapse. The women’s faces become dragons without transition, evoking medieval Christian iconography in which dragons signify deception and spiritual danger. In mermaid traditions, hybridity itself is frequently aligned with the demonic–not because the creature is morally corrupt, but because it resists the fixity required by Christian moral systems. Huldbrand’s dream draws upon this symbolic logic, staging the terror of an unfamiliar being rather than betrayal. Most importantly, the dream does not end upon waking. Pale moonlight floods the room, collapsing the boundary between dream and reality. Huldbrand looks at his wife, Undine, who still lies “in unaltered beauty and grace,” yet terror persists (102). Nothing about her has changed; what has changed is his perception of her. The dream has attached the possibility of monstrosity to Undine’s presence, showing the Gothic fear that beauty conceals monstrosities.
The transformation of women into monsters within Huldbrand’s dream aligns with a long Gothic tradition in which femininity becomes something of a site for projected anxieties. It is not male bodies that mutate but female ones, reflecting cultural fears surrounding female otherness and autonomy. As Cristina Bacchilega notes, such narratives oftentimes reveal “the discrepancy between men’s longing for a woman unfettered by social mores and their attempt to control her by domesticating her” (xviii). Undine embodies this contradiction. Her difference makes her desirable, yet once bound within marriage, that same difference becomes threatening. Huldbrand’s attempt to master his fear–reproaching himself for doubt and pressing a kiss upon her lips–exposes the tension between rational self-discipline and irrational anxiety. The Gothic does not resolve this tension; it sustains it, revealing the limits of reason in the face of liminality. Undine’s response intensifies uncertainty. She sighs deeply and remains silent, offering no verbal reassurance. In Gothic literature, silence marks the presence of what cannot yet be safely articulated. Her quietness reflects not innocence but opacity, reinforcing the sense that she cannot be fully known or contained.
Undine’s silence following Huldbrand’s apology is one of the chapter’s most theologically charged moments. She communicates forgiveness through gesture rather than speech, holding out her hand and offering a look of “exquisite fervour” (102). In Gothic terms, silence marks the presence of knowledge that goes beyond what can be fulfilled by a spoken language. The scenes that follow Huldbrand’s apology attempt to reassert social and spiritual order: within himself and his wife. The priest prays inwardly, the foster parents observe Undine attentively, and the household waits for confirmation that the supernatural has been successfully domesticated. Undine appears to fulfill this hope. She performs idealized domestic virtues, becoming “quiet, kind, and attentive, at once a little matron and a tender bashful girl,” yet this very perfection still comes with unease. Those who have known her longest expect at any moment to see some “whimsical vagary” to burst (103). Stability feels unnatural, sustained only through vigilance and restraint. Gothic tension operates here through anticipation rather than action. Domestic order is revealed as performative rather than natural, a fragile illusion rather than a secure resolution.
Gothic anxiety is further reinforced through the repetition and return within the chapter. Huldbrand repeatedly awakens from terror, reassures himself, and falls asleep again, only to be disrupted by new visions. This cyclical pattern undermines the idea that rational correction can dispel fear. Anxiety does not disappear when confronted; it only recurs in an altered form. Spatial repetition mirrors this psychological pattern. When Undine asks Huldbrand to carry her to the island, he recalls that this is the same island from which he first carried her to the fisherman’s cottage. Progress is revealed as circular rather than linear. Marriage does not inaugurate a new beginning but reactivates unresolved tensions rooted in liminal spaces. The island now functions as a Gothic threshold, a place of judgment rather than safety. Undine insists Huldbrand sit opposite her and read his answer in her eyes before his lips speak. Her insistence reflects a Gothic epistemology in which “vision precedes language,” marking a knowledge that cannot yet be safely articulated within humans (Spooner 135). This insistence reflects mermaid past that an interaction with them tests men; in this case, it isn’t through vow but through recognition and whether he can truly see Undine for who she is–a hybrid of both land and sea.
Water imagery saturates “The Day After the Wedding,” functioning as a central metaphor for Gothic instability. The forest stream, once wild and swollen, now flows gently, appearing temporarily subdued. Yet this calmness is explicitly framed as transient. By morning, Undine notes, the stream will be dry, enabling Huldbrand’s departure. Stability is provisional, dependent on fluctuating natural environmental forces. Undine’s ability to glide effortlessly through water contrasts with Huldbrand’s need to carry her, highlighting their ontological difference. Though he carries her body, he cannot contain her essence. Like the transformations of the nightmare, water refuses fixity. It shifts from obstacle to passage, restraint to release. The Gothic emerges not through overt threat but through the constant motion that undermines permanence, revealing marriage itself as a provisional structure rather than a stable resolution of liminality. This instability reflects a broader Gothic tradition in which, as Scribner suggests, “humankind has always grappled, humanity maintains a tenuous balance between wonder and order, civilization and savagery” (9).
Undine’s revelation of her elemental nature shifts the Gothic from implication to articulation. She situates herself within a parallel cosmology of salamanders, gnomes, spirits of air, and water beings, decentering human existence entirely. This knowledge destabilizes Enlightenment assumptions of mastery and hierarchy. Her explanation of soullessness intensifies this disruption that is seen. Elemental beings, she explains, vanish entirely at death, lacking immortal souls. The acquisition of a soul–often treated as a triumph–is framed instead as a burden that brings suffering, fear, and vulnerability. Gothic inversion is at work here because spiritual elevation gives exposure rather than transcendence. Huldbrand’s “strange shudder” and inability to speak register the epistemological shock of this revelation (105). He is confronted not with a monster but with a being whose suffering now depends upon his fidelity. Gothic anxiety arises not from threat but from responsibility.
Although the episode concludes with Huldbrand’s vow never to forsake his wife, Undine, this declaration offers emotional reassurance rather than ontological certainty. The anxieties revealed by the nightmare–fear of transformation, instability, and loss of control–remain unresolved. Fouqué is not merely depicting a husband’s fear of his wife. Rather, he uses Gothic aesthetics to interrogate the limits of social institutions themselves. Marriage, religion, and reason attempt to impose order, yet the supernatural exposes the fragility of that order by embodying what exceeds it.
“The Day After the Wedding” from Undine uses the Gothic aesthetics of dream imagery, temporal disruption, monstrous transformation, silence, repetition, water imagery, and supernatural revelations to dramatize the instability inherent in attempts to contain liminality within human social structures. Huldbrand’s nightmare is not simple foreshadowing but an aesthetic event that externalizes anxieties surrounding categorization, control, and transformation. When the chapter is read alongside mermaid scholarships, The Penguin Book of Mermaids by Cristina Bacchilega and Marie Alohalani Brown, and Merpeople: A Human History by Vaughn Scribner, the chapter reveals how supernatural female figures function within Gothic literature as sites of cultural and psychological projection. Fouqué’s supernatural does not resolve conflict or explain emotion; it illuminates uncertainty. In doing so, Undine demonstrates the power of the Gothic not to soothe Romantic-era anxieties, but to render them visible and inescapable. In this way, Undine reveals that Gothic literature does not merely reflect anxiety but produces it deliberately, forcing readers to confront the limits of social, religious, and epistemological systems meant to protect them from uncertainty.
Works Cited
Bacchilega, Cristina, and Marie Alohalani Brown. “The Day After the Wedding from Undine.” The Penguin Book of Mermaids. New York, New York, Penguin Books, 2019, pp. 101-106.
Bacchilega, Cristina, and Marie Alohalani Brown. “Their Bodies, Our Anxieties.” The Penguin Book of Mermaids. New York, New York, Penguin Books, 2019, pp. xi-xiv.
Bacchilega, Cristina, and Marie Alohalani Brown. “Plots, Gender, and Human-Nonhuman Relations.” The Penguin Book of Mermaids. New York, New York, Penguin Books, 2019, pp. xvii-xx.
Spooner, Catherine. “Unsettling Feminism: The Savagery of Gothic.” The Gothic and Theory: An Edinburgh Companion, edited by Jerrold E. Hogle and Robert Miles, Edinburgh University Press, 2019, pp. 129–46. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctvggx38r.10.
Scribner, Vaughn, and Reaktion Books. Merpeople: A Human History. London, Reaktion Books, 2020.