Although this is a rather tedious novel which almost reads like an absurd parody of itself today, you can still recognize the stamps of what eventually became Gothic literature. Occult rituals, madness, unseen violence, supernatural events, melodrama, sexual perversion, and so on and so on. 
 It seems rather tiresome today, but that might be because of all that it has inspired, and so many authors who, working in its image, have surpassed it.