This thesis establishes the ‘hellscape’ as a new term for reading Hell-like landscapes in Victorian literature; the spaces where Hell’s theological connotations are relocated and create terrifying ecological indicators. Its interdisciplinary approach combines a grounded historical analysis of Hell’s evolving theological position in the nineteenth century with the EcoGothic– an emerging interpretive lens concerned with how human narratives have characterised ecological relationships as something to be feared. 

Hell’s role in ecological discourse has been repeatedly overlooked. Where critics like Charles Taylor have theorised that Hell declined from a theological reality into an abstract metaphor across the nineteenth century, I argue that Hell’s transition is more complex and non-linear. My intervention reframes the existing ‘decline of Hell’ hypothesis, acknowledging how writers utilised both Hell’s collective theological context and its metaphoric power to conjure compelling portraits of ecological disruption.

Coining the term ‘hellscape’ to acknowledge Hell’s ecologically and theologically complex position in Victorian literature is vital for understanding our current climate concerns. Twenty-first-century media frequently reference a ‘Hell-on-Earth’ when discussing climate change and extreme weather events. This thesis offers a timely examination of the infernal ecological destruction in nineteenth-century industrial literature, reflecting on why current climate discourse continues to draw on Gothicised visions of Hell.

Focusing on hellscapes from 1824 to 1865, this thesis brings working-class voices into conversation with the literary canon to illustrate how Northern England’s industrialisation was repeatedly constructed as Hell-like. It conducts EcoGothic close readings of well-known texts – including Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849), Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848) and Gaskell’s North and South (1855) – alongside understudied working-class poetry from the Lancashire Cotton Famine (1861-1865), newly recovered through original archival research conducted for this thesis. Collectively, this analysis foregrounds the infernal ecological upheaval that has haunted Anglophone discourse for over two hundred years.