Presentation on Gothic Heroines and Trauma given at Temporal Discombobulations Conference.

1. "Horror Occupied Her Mind”:
Misinformation, Misperception,
and Detecting the Trauma of
Gothic Heroines
Dr. Jeanette A. Laredo
JeanLaredo
JeanetteLaredo
Monsterscholar
JeanetteLaredo@my.unt.edu

2. Gothic Heroines as Detectives
 The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
 Northanger Abbey (1817)

3. Trauma and Temporality
 Trauma “is experienced, too soon, too unexpectedly, to be
fully known and is therefore not available to consciousness
until it imposes itself again, repeatedly, in the nightmares and
repetitive actions of the survivor.”
Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 4.
 “Perhaps the most mysterious and the most devastating
dimension of trauma is its apparent power to confound
ordinary forms of understanding…[because of] the abyssal
logic and the paradoxical temporality of the experience.”
Linda Belau, “Trauma and the Material Signifier,” Postmodern Culture: An
Electronic Journal of Interdisciplinary Criticism 11, no. 2 (January 2001): 5.

5. The Veiled Portrait
“Emily passed on with faltering steps, and having paused a
moment at the door, before she attempted to open it, she
then hastily entered the chamber, and went towards the
picture, which appeared to be enclosed in a frame of
uncommon size, that hung in a dark part of the room. She
paused again, and then, with a timid hand, lifted the veil;
but instantly let it fall—perceiving that what it had
concealed was no picture, and, before she could leave
the chamber, she dropped senseless on the floor.
When she recovered her recollection, the remembrance of
what she had seen had nearly deprived her of it a
second time. She had scarcely strength to remove from the
room, and regain her own; and, when arrived there, wanted
courage to remain alone. Horror occupied her mind, and
excluded, for a time, all sense of past, and dread of
future misfortune.”

6. The “Corpse” Behind the Curtain
“[This curtain] seemed to conceal a recess of the chamber;
she wished, yet dreaded, to lift it, and to discover what it
veiled: twice she was withheld by a recollection of the
terrible spectacle her daring hand had formerly
unveiled in an apartment of the castle, till, suddenly
conjecturing, that it concealed the body of her murdered
aunt, she seized it, in a fit of desperation, and drew it aside.
Beyond, appeared a corpse, stretched on a kind of low
couch, which was crimsoned with human blood, as was the
floor beneath. The features, deformed by death, were ghastly
and horrible, and more than one livid wound appeared in the
face. Emily, bending over the body, gazed, for a moment,
with an eager, frenzied eye; but, in the next, the lamp
dropped from her hand, and she fell senseless at the foot
of the couch.”

7. Discovering Domestic Horrors
“Her fearful curiosity was every moment growing greater; and
seizing, with trembling hands, the hasp of the lock, she resolved at all
hazards to satisfy herself at least as to [the chest’s] contents. With
difficulty, for something seemed to resist her efforts, she raised the
lid a few inches; but at that moment a sudden knocking at the door
of the room made her, starting, quit her hold, and the lid closed with
alarming violence.”
“At length, however, having slipped one arm into her gown, her
toilette seemed so nearly finished that the impatience of her curiosity
might safely be indulged. One moment surely might be spared; and,
so desperate should be the exertion of her strength, that, unless
secured by supernatural means, the lid in one moment should be
thrown back. With this spirit she sprang forward, and her confidence
did not deceive her. Her resolute effort threw back the lid, and
gave to her astonished eyes the view of a white cotton
counterpane, properly folded, reposing at one end of the chest
in undisputed possession!”

8. No Madwoman in the Attic
“On tiptoe she entered; the room was before her; but it was
some minutes before she could advance another step. She
beheld what fixed her to the spot and agitated every feature.
She saw a large, well-proportioned apartment, an
handsome dimity bed, arranged as unoccupied with an
housemaid's care, a bright Bath stove, mahogany
wardrobes, and neatly painted chairs, on which the warm
beams of a western sun gaily poured through two sash
windows! Catherine had expected to have her feelings worked,
and worked they were. Astonishment and doubt first seized
them; and a shortly succeeding ray of common sense added
some bitter emotions of shame. She could not be mistaken
as to the room; but how grossly mistaken in everything
else!—in Miss Tilney's meaning, in her own calculation!”

9. Getting Beyond the Veil
“Catherine, at any rate, heard enough to feel that in
suspecting General Tilney of either murdering or shutting
up his wife, she had scarcely sinned against his
character, or magnified his cruelty.”

10. Thank You!
Dr. Jeanette A. Laredo
JeanLaredo
JeanetteLaredo
Monsterscholar
JeanetteLaredo@my.unt.edu