The Female Gothic

Content

Gothic fiction abounds with distressed female heroines who are exposed to the threat of sexual violence and/or the horrors of domestic spaces. Another key trope of Gothic horror centres on the demonisation of 'monstrous' women and female bodies. By focusing on female characters and women authors, this seminar will trace the development of the female Gothic from the late eighteenth century to contemporary culture.

As Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik have pointed out, the Gothic mode has lost none of its relevance: "Despite the considerable economic, social and legal progress [...] made by women, Gothic texts still frequently convey anxiety and anger about the lot of women." Discussing novels, novellas and stories by authors such as Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Margaret Oliphant, Edith Nesbit, Daphne du Maurier, Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood, we will ask how these examples express women's fears and anxieties in patriarchal culture.

How does the female Gothic tradition comment on the victimisation of women, whilst also exploring their desire, courage, agency and empowerment? Tracing the articulation of feminine experience and identity in Gothic writing, we will simultaneously explore cultural fears of the feminine: How are women who transgress traditional gender norms pathologized and/or abjected? To what extent can the Gothic mode be used to critique harmful images of femininity along with the misogynistic power systems that produce them?