Female Gothic As A Literary Era Of Gothic Literature

Gothic can be defined as “literature dealing with the strange, mysterious, and supernatural designed to invoke suspense and terror in the reader.” (Pickering, 2004, p. 1425) Gothic literature generally presents the same themes and motifs: love lost, hidden secrets, love and death hand in hand, beauty, youth, grotesque characters, macabre eroticism, etc. Gothic literature also explores taboo subjects such as murder, suicide and incest. “A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner, is representative of the Southern Gothic stories since the themes of love lost, death, and murder are present in it. There are many elements that hint at the Gothic nature of the story: Emily’s description, her house, the poison she bought, and finally the ending.

Of the genres being explored, gothic fiction in particular has often emphasized the stereotypical damsel in distress. This image of women has generally been depicted by describing them as superficially beautiful, but incompetent in all matters of the mind. In Beautiful and Damned: The Sexual Women in Gothic Fiction, it is stated that fiction often mirrors conservative values (Mussell). At its pique popularity, the gothic genre has been used to escape or deter an increasingly promiscuous world. In gothic works, conservative values have been presented by portrayals of women being unable to sustain from acting on their feelings of lust, and consequently, being punished or defeated. This opposes the heroine archetype of the gothic, whom is generally a more conservative and

This dissertation will examine and analyse two of the macabre and gothic tales from the English author Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865); The Old Nurses Story (1852) and The Poor Clare (1857). Indicating and demonstrating how representations of mystery and the supernatural are used as vehicles of imagination, expression and exploration into the hidden depths of the female psyche through the use of Gothic fiction within the Victorian era (1837-1901). I intend to delve and explore into the identity of the feminine-self exposing the darker and intimate issues of the female Gothic, otherwise hidden within the oppressive constraints of the female role residing in Victorian society. Applying psychoanalytical examples, I shall discuss themes of the

In “The Female Uncanny”, Taniya Modelski examines core elements of female gothic literature, the cultural and social circumstances its emergence, and how gothic narratives indicate patterns of development in order to trace female pathologies to its root and “probe the deepest layers of the feminine unconscious” (IV,7). The unique familiarity found within gothic literature can be attributed, according to Modelski, to the mirroring and evocation of experiences of social isolation, abandonment, and anxiety unique to women and girls brought on largely by social and political inequalities, and it is through gothic literature that women are able to confront, at least in part, these emotions.

Gothic literature has been criticized as being a dreary, dark, and death-involving subset of Romanticism (a literary movement accentuating human individuality, imagination, and subjectivity). In addition, gothic lit incorporates several themes- not all about deathly acts - but includes some emotional and surprising themes such as dreams, nightmares, or hallucinations, and grotesque or bizarre occurrences. Two short stories, both written by Edgar Allan Poe, entitled “The Raven,” and “The Black Cat,” as well as the novel The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, all encompass these gothic elements, found throughout each story.

Psychological elements appear in various gothic tales. Specifically, the Gothic tends to exploit the disorders related to abnormal psychology. A common psychological disorder that is portrayed in the Gothic is madness/insanity. Furthermore, madness in the Gothic is primarily attributed female characters, who were often initially diagnosed with hysteria or a nervous disorder that typically later led to the diagnosis of madness. In “A Whisper in the Dark” by Louisa Alcott, a female character is pushed to the point of madness after being subjected to perverse psychiatric treatment under the supervision of a male doctor. I will argue that the psychiatric treatment the doctor prescribes led to the madness of Sybil; moreover, the “psychiatric treatment” was a façade to cover an abuse of patriarchal power to maintain control of the female patient rather than provide true diagnosis or

Women in the 18th and 19th century were expected to follow the orders of the males in their lives. They were forced into arranged marriages to connect families in a pursuit for social power and they were expected to abide by anything the males in their lives asked of them. Free will was nonexistent. Much gothic literature effectively highlights the women’s expected role of the time. However, another aspect that seems to surface in gothic literature is whenever there is a woman who is not following the social norms, they seem to be the driving conflict behind the plotline and ultimately lead to any present happy ending.

The Gothic genre often reproduces a conservative paranoid structure when it comes to homophobia and other moral panics over sex (Hanson, Pg. 176). Eve Sedgwick depicts this in her work, ‘Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosexual Desire’ as she discusses how these ideas (paranoia) are represented within the Gothic, in what she describes as the ‘homosocial’ in reference to male bonds (Sedgwick, Pg. 86). She also discusses how bonds between men exist as the backbone of social form and forms (Sedgwick, Pg. 86). Thus, a consequence of said structure is the ability to define, control, and manipulate male bonds, which in turn becomes an inexplicably powerful instrument of social control (Sedgwick, Pg. 86). Thus, homosexuality is represented as the ‘unspeakable’ within the Gothic, as it has been defined, controlled, and manipulated to be such though social control. Therefore, this paper will discuss how ‘homosocial’ bonds between men, are used as a tool in social control and used as a way to produce paranoia and moral panic, thus in reference to the Gothic, these forms epitomize homosexuality as the ‘unspeakable,’ especially through homosexual representations within the contexts of ghosts and haunted houses.

A querying of normative gender behaviour and sexuality pervades the 19th century gothic fiction text. What does this reveal about the cultural context within the tale exists?

Within My Last Duchess, The Bloody Chamber and Dracula, there is evidence to suggest that women within the gothic genre as portrayed as victims of male authority, as well as evidence to disprove this argument, instead suggesting that it is the women within the Gothic genre which makes themselves victims. ‘Angela Carter is particularly interested in the portrayal of women as victims of male aggression as a limiting factor in the feminist perspective of the time’[i] Carter, with her modern twist on traditional fairytales places a

The Gothic genre is an increasingly popular area for feminist studies, showing contrasts in society at the time and the expectations of women within it. In pre industrial times, women were expected to play a subservient role to men, they were expected to marry young and bare children, they would simply care for their husbands and support the family, they were denied the right to vote or own property and were expected to be the innocently silent, supportive backbone behind patriarchal society. It is noted that female characters in Gothic novels and plays often fall into one of two categories: innocent victims, subservient to the strong and powerful

Moers’s coinage contributes to the cleavage of the Gothic into male and female. This gendering of this tradition displays the incompatibility between male and female writers who “employ two distinct sets of literary conventions” (Anne Williams 100). Although female gothic shares many of the literary aspects of the male genre, it not only strives to challenge them but also to encumber them with ideas related to women which conveniently leaves the reader with a positive image of female novelists and their vigorous potency to create a their own tradition that conveys their fears and anxieties of incarceration within the private space of domesticity and within the female body. I will go beyond that arguing that Female Gothic differs from the Male formula “both in

In my opinion this famous quotation explains how often the creative imagination and the Gothic genre are very often linked. For the novel to be affective within the gothic genre the readers imagination needs to become engaged and often intertwined with the characters conscious. The term Gothic fiction refers to a style of writing that usually includes characteristics of death, horror, and tragedy, as well as romantic elements such as nature, individuality, and very high emotion – but that leaves space for doubt as we wonder as to whether these ghosts, gaols and monsters are affective on their reader. Gothic novels centralise the reactions of their characters to distressing or troublesome situations. But their heroes and heroines are not subjected to trials and obstacles merely to exhibit dramatic feeling, another distinctive feature of the early Gothic novel is its attempt to involve the reader in a new way. The hidden mysteries and miseries of gothic literature withholds the reader from understanding the full complexity and range of emotions within this fiction. There are many questions as to whether Gothic fiction is just merely another form of literature for us to enjoy or whether is it an affective genre in horrifying and unsettling us. Throughout gothic literature there is a growing interest in the psychological affect on the reader, many writers of the time would have emotional impact on the reader at the forefront of their work. In the more sentimental and ordinary

The term gothic fiction implies a British literary genre from the late eighteenth, and early nineteenth century. The modernized term seems to have been generalized into anything that is dark, gloomy, or depressing. Gothic novels often time posses an emphasis on portraying the terror, a prominent use of supernatural circumstances, the presence of highly stereotyped characters, and the attempt to display techniques of literary suspense. There are also other parallels among this vastly popular genre. Gothic novels often time describe the city of London in corresponding ways. Also a common theme amongst gothic literary works is the duality of human nature, or the quality or characteristic of being twofold. These mutual themes are apparent in

The class of the novel started just in the eighteenth century however since its exceptionally beginning it grew quickly. Distinctive sorts of the class rose, for instance a novel of conduct, a household novel or a Gothic novel. The Gothic novel is a well unmistakable sort among the others and has a critical effect on the improvement of the entire type of the novel. In opposition to Neoclassicism which adulated realism, Gothicism did not trail the principles of etiquette, did not matter instructive highlights but rather put highlight on secret, ponder and sublimity. Along these lines, Gothic fiction increased tremendous prevalence among the users. In any case, after numerous books of the kind being distributed, they ended up being regular too