CRIMSON PEAK

A Gothic horror, tragic masterpiece with astonishing imagery.

Use of symbols, colours, costumes and characters to represent deeper meanings and themes.
Nature of heroes and villains in the story laid out in their costumes design.
Edith and Alan (blonde hair and are always wearing warm light tones such as yellow, white and
covered in colorful embroidery).
Lucille and Thomas (often wearing cool colours mostly black and they both have black hair).
Costumes foreshadow purity of the heroes and the evil of the villains that is revealed in the end
of the movie.
After Lucille and Thomas are dead even the colours of their ghosts represent their true nature .
Thomas was corrupted but in end he did truly love Edith and died trying to save her so his entire
ghost is white.
Lucille’s ghost is shrouded in black lace representing the pure evil that resides inside her.
These costumes also coincide with the most prominent symbols in the movie which are the
beautiful butterflies and the black moths.
(They are first introduced when Edith and Lucile are in the park looking upon the dying
butterflies)
Lucile says to Edith(“When the sun desserts them they die”); she’s talking about the reliance
each characters have on other characters within the movie.
For Edith in the beginning of the movie after the death of her mother, her father is all she has and
without him she would have nothing)
But conveniently Thomas was there to be her something that she latched on to, from there
Thomas is truly all she has and without him she would have no family left)
Later on she also says to Thomas “You are all I have”. And that line makes Thomas feel guilty.
Lucille complete relies on Thomas as he is all she has in the world and she is completely in love
with him to the point of obsession, it’s an un healthy relationship because she needs him to feel
complete. Once he betrays her she kills him because she is nothing without his devotion.
Lastly Thomas becomes reliant on Edith, her warmth is everything in his troubled life and her
love is like the sun transforming him from a black moth into a beautiful butterfly.
He says to her (I feel as if a link exists between your heart and mine and should that link be
broken either by distance or by time then my heart would cease to be and I would die)
Once Edith learns his true intentions is when Thomas is killed much like the butterflies who die
without the sun.
When Lucille says no it’s not sad Edith it’s nature, it’s a world of everything dying and eating
each other right beneath our feat, this is talking about the hidden evil of the Sharpe family .
The basement of their house contains the the darkest secrets about them.
It also represents how the evil was buried in a hidden place that no one could see in plain sight.
Edith was ignorant of their horrific past, meanwhile all of their secrets were literally hidden
beneath her feet.
Next Lucile says “beautiful things are fragile, at home we only have black moths
formidable creatures to be sure but they lack beauty, they thrive on the dark and cold”
This is reference to Edith being the fragile beautiful butterfly and Lucile being a formidable
moth thriving on the dark and cold and lacking inner beauty.
Lastly Lucile explains that the moths feed on butterflies.
This shows how Sharpe’s were feeding off of Edith and taking advantage of her innocence and
using her for her money.
The black moths are also featured heavily in the house whenever Edith is having a dark
encounter.
The moths and butterflies also represent the recurring theme of being trapped vs being free.
When everything is revealed and Edith is dying and Lucile has her trapped in the house she
steals a locket of Edith’s hair and braids it. To hold the hair down she uses a cage that contains a
single yellow butterfly. At this moment in the movie Edith is trapped in many ways.
She is trapped by the Sharps in the sense she is being forced to sign away her fortune to them and
she’s trapped physically as well because the poison had drastically weakened her and the snow
outside has trapped all of them inside the house.
The Sharps are emotionally trapped as well, both of the siblings went through a terrible
upbringing because of their apathetic parents, they were trapped in the attic by themselves forced
to rely on each other. Afterwards, Thomas also became mentally trapped by his sister, years of
her influence and sexual abuse turned him into her property and he believed that he must protect
her at all costs, even if it means murdering all those people including her mother. Thomas was
mentally becoming free through his relationship with Edith.

Symbolism of the house:

The different levels of the house end up representing different levels of mind.
The Attic was Sharpe’s childhood , though they were trapped in there they built a little world of
safety and comfort with each other and were relatively happy, they were able to escape from
their terrible parents.
The main levels of the house are what Edith sees, she sees Lucille and Thomas in plain sight and
thinks she knows them. It’s the façade the siblings put on to try and appear normal meanwhile
the basement represents their hidden evil and darkness and decay that resides with in the Sharps.
This dark side was only found by Eighth with help of the ghosts.
The Sharpe’s home is dilapidated, containing holes in the roof which allow in snow, and is
sinking into the clay mines below it. On top of this, the red clay oozes down the walls like a
bleeding wound that seems to have death in its walls.
The house hasn’t been repaired because all of the ill-gotten money goes towards Thomas’ clay
harvesting machinery. Its injuries continue to bleed (clay) because they never received the care
to have them properly healed
The look of the basement with the Vats also mirrored the scene in the beginning in the morgue
after Edith’s father’s death further implying that basement is a place of death.
Sharpe’s whole house is taken over by the same wallpaper that on closer inspection is clearly
moth patterned. The novel notes that the moths are most prevalent in the attic…where Lucille
and Thomas were kept as children. This is where the madness and darkness in Lucille first
began to fester
The red clay of crimson peak represents the blood shed that occurs in the story as well the hidden
evil of the Sharps’.
In the attic there is no clay, on the main level the clay is seeping through the floorboards
representing that there is something hidden underneath, in the basement there is the most clay
constantly overflowing down the walls, clay is most prominent closer to the climax as winter
settles in the clay rises and appears on the snow like blood, this starts happening when all of the
dark secrets are coming to light. The harsh crimson against the pure white also represents the
corruption of innocence of the Sharpe's to Edith.
Imagery is also seen when father is gruesomely murdered by Lucille in the white bathroom and
his blood is flowing down the drain. This is also see when Edith begins to cough blood on her
pillow because of the poison Lucille has been giving her, it’s also seen in the end when
Thomas’s white ghost is still bleeding bright scarlet blood. Also in end after fight with Lucile,
Edith is covered in blood mostly in her hands showing how her innocence has been corrupted by
this horrifying experience.
The main theme of the movie is encapsulated in the ghost. The ghost represents the past events
leave a scar on the living forever reminding them of that time and place.
First we see this with Edith’s mother, she is the first ghost Edith experiences, this shows how
Edith will never be the same after her passing and a part of her soul will be tethered to that tragic
time. The past also follows the Sharpe’s as it contains all the dark secrets they are trying to hide
from Edith. For eg the murder of their mother and Thomas’s past. Edith discovers their true
nature with the help of the ghost who guide her in digging up their dark past since those ghosts
were created by Sharpe's evil ways.
Thomas due to his profession is referred to as a man that feeds off land that others work for him,
a parasite with a title, in fact it’s later proven that he truly is a parasite who latches into wealthy
women and tricks them into marrying him in order to take everything they have.
 The colours of the location as well
New York is always shown warm toned with a sunny orange cast over it representing the happy
life that Edith had to leave behind when she goes to Cumberland where the filter is much less
saturated and cold to reflect the menacing circumstances.
“his blood will be on your hands” foreshadows the final scene when Edith touches Thomas’s
cheeks.