All the villagers were afraid of the house of Emily, for it was a relic of days long past. In Charles Dickens's Great Expectations Mrs. Havisham was undeniably a gothic figure, surrounded in a London definitely no longer influenced by gothicism. And people were afraid of her. You get the point. I often feel when I'm reading fanciful novels that I'm just kidding myself, cheating myself.
Early gothic can sometimes read more like heroic fiction than anything else.
Anyway, it's interesting for me to see how different characters deal with impending doom. But they all bear the weight of their large stone mansions with frustration. The best gothic writers had this air of frustration which permeated the pages of their books. You could feel it, and there's nothing you could do about it. You watch these people accept their demise.