What Is The Role Of Women In Gothic Literature
Melanie Konzett
London, 2006
BA English Literature with History
How and why has the Gothic been of importance in writing by and for women?
The Gothic genre arose with the publication of Walpole’s Castle of Otranto in
1764, and achieved instantly a high popularity. It was particularly associated with female writers and readers (Markman 2003: 48). The Gothic novels of the first wave consist often of a formulaic plot around a hidden crime that feature stereotypical characters in a medieval setting and draw on supernatural occurrences (Markman
2003: 1-16). Within these tensions of gothic horror, female writers and readers started to explore their private fears and desires. On the one hand, many Gothic texts written by women draw …show more content…
Isabella in Northanger Abbey resembles the numerous unmarried women who are imprisoned within the pressures of the 18th century marriage market. In preferring Frederick Tilney to Catherine’s brother,
Isabella acts within conventional female behaviour patterns to escape the fate of restricted financial means. According to Fitzgerald (2004: 13) Isabella’s fascination with property resulted from the contemporary understanding that property meant power and liberty. Yet, Frederick is just another example of a Gothic villain who is not interested in Isabella but only wants “to gratify his vanity of dominion by breaking a preexisting engagement” (Johnson 2004: 323). In this way, suffering and the depiction of women as the victim of a villain is of high importance in Gothic texts. As several critics have argued, this suffering resembles contemporary “women’s fears of entrapment within the domestic and within the female body” (Smith a. Wallace 2004:
1).
Whereas this victimization of women appealed to the fears of the female readership, the representation of the female victim who is able to escape into …show more content…
In representing the “moral nature of woman and her role in society” (Kirkham 1997: 23)
Austen and Radcliffe investigate femininity, female identity and gender roles within the patriarchal reality of the 18th century. In doing so they address the hidden fears and repressed desires of the contemporary female readership.
In this way, literature, as “one of a society’s instruments of self-awareness”
(Calvino 2004: 114) manages to give “voice to social and political struggles” (Carson
1998: 271); or as Norton (2006: 279) puts it, the Gothic genre has a subversive and political nature. As a consequence, the Gothic genre has been of importance for the female reader and author because it offers the opportunity to “address and disguise some of the most important desires, quandaries, and sources of anxiety, from the
10/14
Melanie Konzett
London, 2006
BA English Literature with History
most internal and mental to the widely social and cultural” from the 18th
London, 2006
BA English Literature with History
How and why has the Gothic been of importance in writing by and for women?
The Gothic genre arose with the publication of Walpole’s Castle of Otranto in
1764, and achieved instantly a high popularity. It was particularly associated with female writers and readers (Markman 2003: 48). The Gothic novels of the first wave consist often of a formulaic plot around a hidden crime that feature stereotypical characters in a medieval setting and draw on supernatural occurrences (Markman
2003: 1-16). Within these tensions of gothic horror, female writers and readers started to explore their private fears and desires. On the one hand, many Gothic texts written by women draw …show more content…
Isabella in Northanger Abbey resembles the numerous unmarried women who are imprisoned within the pressures of the 18th century marriage market. In preferring Frederick Tilney to Catherine’s brother,
Isabella acts within conventional female behaviour patterns to escape the fate of restricted financial means. According to Fitzgerald (2004: 13) Isabella’s fascination with property resulted from the contemporary understanding that property meant power and liberty. Yet, Frederick is just another example of a Gothic villain who is not interested in Isabella but only wants “to gratify his vanity of dominion by breaking a preexisting engagement” (Johnson 2004: 323). In this way, suffering and the depiction of women as the victim of a villain is of high importance in Gothic texts. As several critics have argued, this suffering resembles contemporary “women’s fears of entrapment within the domestic and within the female body” (Smith a. Wallace 2004:
1).
Whereas this victimization of women appealed to the fears of the female readership, the representation of the female victim who is able to escape into …show more content…
In representing the “moral nature of woman and her role in society” (Kirkham 1997: 23)
Austen and Radcliffe investigate femininity, female identity and gender roles within the patriarchal reality of the 18th century. In doing so they address the hidden fears and repressed desires of the contemporary female readership.
In this way, literature, as “one of a society’s instruments of self-awareness”
(Calvino 2004: 114) manages to give “voice to social and political struggles” (Carson
1998: 271); or as Norton (2006: 279) puts it, the Gothic genre has a subversive and political nature. As a consequence, the Gothic genre has been of importance for the female reader and author because it offers the opportunity to “address and disguise some of the most important desires, quandaries, and sources of anxiety, from the
10/14
Melanie Konzett
London, 2006
BA English Literature with History
most internal and mental to the widely social and cultural” from the 18th