This is an attempt to investigate how first-wave Gothic fiction serves as a powerful mechanism for disrupting established concepts of normalcy in late eighteenth-century European society. Arising during the Age of Enlightenment—a period anchored in empirical rationality, secularisation, and rigid bourgeois domestic ideals—the early Gothic novel systematically destabilised these emerging cultural frameworks. Through a critical analysis of foundational texts, this study explores the specific narrative strategies employed to fracture the illusion of a stable, orderly reality.