These are the lecture slides for the latest Romancing the Gothic lecture. You can find the lecture itself online here - https://youtu.be/2TQbMo7oRpw

1. Heroines, Wives and
Demons: Gothic
Women and
Women’s Gothic
@RomGothSam
#RomancingtheGothic

2. Is there such a thing as the Female Gothic?

3. The Presence of the Female
The Female Writer
What I mean by Female Gothic is
easily defined: the work that
women writers have done in the
literary mode that, since the
eighteenth century, we have
called The Gothic.
Ellen Moers - Literary Women - 1986

4. The Presence of the Female
Mary Shelley T. J. Horsley Curties Peter O’Donnell William Johnston

5. The Presence of the Female
The Female Protagonist
‘Perhaps the most useful and
uncontroversial definition of this
classification would be limited to
its narrative focus – namely, on a
female, as opposed to a male,
protagonist.’
Margaret Carol Davidson -
Gothic Literature - 2009

6. The Presence of the Female
Ann Radcliffe Mary Shelley Stephen King 2015

7. The Presence of the Female
The Female Reader
Numerous critics point to the
idea of female gothic as a form
written by and for women. –
see, for example, E. J. Clery and
Anne Williams.

8. The Presence of the Female
‘Although all extant evidence
indicates that far more men than
women subscribed to circulating
libraries, from the middle of the
eighteenth century circulating
libraries gained a reputation for
mainly renting fashionable novels
to frivolous women.’
Edward Jacobs – ‘Ann Radcliffe and
Romantic Print Culture’ – 2014
‘The person, be it gentleman or
lady, who has not pleasure in a
good novel, must be intolerably
stupid. I have read all Mrs.
Radcliffe’s, and most of them with
great pleasure. The Mysteries of
Udolpho, when I had once begun
it, I could not lay down again; I
remember finishing it in two days
– my hair standing on end the
whole time.’

10. Aesthetics and Form
Horror vs. Terror
The real
supernatural
Visual vs. Audial

11. Aesthetics and Form
‘Scholarly emphasis arguably distorts historical practice, since Lewis and most ‘horror’ Gothic
writers themselves in fact reproduced the ‘terror’ Gothic conventions that Radcliffe’s novels
popularised, and hence less authored a rival Gothic genre than added elements of graphic
‘horror’ and/or actual supernatural event.’
Edward Jacobs – ‘Radcliffe, generism and gender’ - 2014

12. Plot
Heroine + home of initiation + happily ever after + responsibility +
suitor + second suitor + male antagonist + female antagonist +
confidante
Comic (rather than tragic)
Anne Williams – Art of Darkness - 1977
v

13. PlotSecondary
female
characters
Count Morano
(Cavigni, Verezzi,
Bertolini)
Poetry
Economic
storyline/Aesthetic
discourse
Hauntings and
bandits
St
Aubert/Count
de Villefort

14. Female Experience and Subtext
WRITING THE SELF
More specifically, however, the one plot that seems to be concealed in
most of the nineteenth-century literature by women which will concern
us here is in some sense a story of the woman writer's quest for her
own story; it is the story, in other words, of the woman's quest for self-
definition.
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar -The Madwoman in the Attic - 1979

15. Female Experience and Subtext
NARRATING PATRIARCHAL OPPRESSION
‘Dramatizations of imprisonment and escape are so all-pervasive in
nineteenth-century literature by women that we believe they represent
a uniquely female tradition in this period.’ -Gilbert and Gubar
The themes this work has identified (women’s domestic incarceration,
sexual violence, economic disenfranchisement and spectral maternity)
are central to the Gothic mode. – Ellen Ledoux

16. Female Experience and Subtext
GENDER INFLECTED SOCIAL COMMENTARY
The Female Gothic spoke back to the ‘mainstream’ Gothic form a
specific, gender-aware perspective. Davison – Gothic Literature

17. Female Experience and Subtext
WOMEN’S EXPERIENCE OF LOVE, DOMESTICITY, MARRIAGE AND
PROPERTY OWNERSHIP
‘Her (Radcliffe’s) novels established an enduring Female Gothic recipe
that explored the conjunction between love and terror, called women’s
domestic roles and ideals into question, and contested property-related
issues. Despite several recent claims about her tame and conservative
standpoint, Radcliffe dared to imagine a Wollstonecraftian world where
women retained control over their own financial affairs.’ - Davison

18. Female Experience and Subtext
FINDING THE MOTHER
‘…The plot of the female Gothic, where we encounter a heroine
simultaneously in search of an absent mother and in flight from a
patriarchal father.’
Robert Miles - The Great Enchantress – 1995
FEARING THE MOTHER
‘Numerous analysts of the Female Gothic have suggested that fear of
the mother lurks at its core.’ – Davison
(This may be fear of becoming her or fear of a threat posed by her.)

19. Female Experience and
Subtext
FEMALE EXPERIENCE OF PASSION
What happens if we lay aside our assumptions about women’s writing
and look again at women’s Gothic? What we find there suggests the
need for another story: wild passions, the sublime, supernatural
phenomena, violent conflict, murder and torture, sexual excess and
perversion, outlandish settings, strange minglings of history and
fantasy.
E. J. Clery - Women’s Gothic - 2004

20. What use the ‘female Gothic’ label?
‘Such discourses tend to reproduce earlier texts as continuously
preoccupied with the same problems, so that any real sense of the
differences between one historical moment and another is lost.’ –
Jacqueline Howard
‘The category “Female Gothic” more accurately reflects the ideological
goals of second-wave feminist literary criticism than it represents the
narratives of early women Gothic writers’ – Ellen Ledoux

21. Women in the
Gothic and
Women’s Gothic

22. Question Break
Starting off a little polemical… any questions?

23. Early Gothic Heroines
Horace Walpole – The Castle of Otranto – 1764
Hippolita – Isabella – Mathilda
Divorced – Bewedded - Died

24. Early Gothic Heroines
Clara Reeve – The Old English
Baron – 1778
Emma the Fair
Ann Radcliffe – The Castles of
Athlin and Dunbayne – 1789
Mary and Laura
Perpetual kidnap victims

25. Early Gothic Heroines
Sophia Lee – The Recess – 1783
Matilda and Ellinor
Leicester and Essex
Mary
• First person narration from
different narrators
• Female perspectives
• Polyphonic
• Lives of vicissitude and
adventure
• Court intrigue, politics,
reimagined history
• Safety and entrapment

26. Heroines
Name: Emily St. Aubert
Lives: Born in La Vallee and will
return but for now I’m touring Italy.
Likes: Wild wood walks,
inappropriately timed poetry,
terrible men, swooning, obeying my
father, drawing the view, keeping
hold of my inheritance, chastity,
hats.
Dislikes: Superstitious talk (well… go
on then!)
Goth Dates

27. Sensibility
‘Do not indulge in the pride of fine feeling, the
romantic error of amiable minds. Those, who
really possess sensibility, ought early to be
taught, that it is a dangerous quality, which is
continually extracting the excess of misery, or
delight, from every surrounding circumstance.
And, since, in our passage through this world,
painful circumstances occur more frequently
than pleasing ones, and since our sense of evil
is, I fear, more acute than our sense of good, we
become the victims of our feelings, unless we
can in some degree command them…
Happiness arises in a state of peace, not of
tumult. It is of a temperate and uniform nature,
and can no more exist in a heart, that is
continually alive to minute circumstances, than
in one that is dead to feeling. You see, my dear,
that, though I would guard you against the
dangers of sensibility, I am not an advocate for
apathy.’
St Aubert
Delicacy of passion
SOME People are subject to a certain
delicacy of passion, which makes them
extremely sensible to all the accidents of life,
and gives them a lively joy upon every
prosperous event, as well as a piercing grief,
when they meet with misfortunes and
adversity…
Delicacy of taste
There is a delicacy of taste observable in some
men, which very much resembles this
delicacy of passion, and produces the same
sensibility to beauty and deformity of every
kind, as that does to prosperity and adversity,
obligations and injuries.
Hume

28. Sublime Subjectivity
Speaking the language of the
sublime
Original Genius and Sublimity

29. Sublime Subjectivity
The Moral Sublime
Beautiful Sublime

31. Sublime Subjectivity
The man of faith has his light and support within him, that are able to
cheer his mind, and bear him up in the midst of all those horrors which
encompass him. He knows that his helper is at hand, and is always
nearer to him than any thing else can be, which is capable of annoying
or terrifying him. In the midst of calumny or contempt, he attends to
that Being who whispers better things within his soul, and whom he
looks upon as his defender, his glory, and the lifter of his head.
Addison - Evidence of the Cristian Religion - 1772

32. Sublime Subjectivity
Both ‘beautiful’ and ‘sublime’ virtues are to be found in both sexes in
Udolpho. Valancourt displays ‘compassion and liberality’ to the
shepherd family and Bonnac. Emily shows ‘wisdom’, ‘justice’ and
‘fortitude’ specifically in her rejection of Valancourt. Emily’s decision is
a point of fruition on her journey: a final choice to be not the beautiful
object but the sublime subject.
Emily becomes a model of a ‘degendered’ Christian subject: morally
sublime and claiming to herself the ‘spark’ of divinity often reserved for
men in theological and aesthetic discourses of the period. Constructing
Emily as a ‘degendered’ Christian subject … at least in the moral sphere,
fulfils the biblical promise that ‘in Christ there is no male and female’.
(Me)

33. Wives
Happily Ever After
Marriage + economic security + financial independence… voluntarily
surrendered

34. Wives
‘Radcliffe warns her readers of the true threat to women: the husband
and father excessively empowered under the systems of coverture and
primogeniture.’ Ruth Bienstock Anolik – ‘There was a man’ – 2007
Coverture
Feme covert Feme sole

35. Radcliffe’s Wives
The Literalisation of Coverture The Wives of Udolpho
Madame St Aubert – Disappears
from the text
Marchioness de Villeroi – killed by
a husband
Countesss de Villefort – capricious
and unhappy

36. Demons
Signora Laurentini di Udolpho - Emily’s dark double
’Men of such lively passions are apt to be transported beyond all bounds of
prudence and discretion, and to take false steps in the conduct of life, which
are often irretrievable.’ (Hume)
‘Sister! beware of the first indulgence of the passions; beware of the first!
Their course, if not checked then, is rapid—their force is uncontrollable—
they lead us we know not whither—they lead us perhaps to the commission
of crimes, for which whole years of prayer and penitence cannot atone!’

37. A Standard …
… across Radcliffe’s works?
• Mirrored heroines
• Wives to the rescue
• Power hungry demons
• Wives who rule the roost
… across the genre?
• Prostitute heroines
• The Castle of St Donats
• Sympathetic demons
• Zofloya
• Working class heroines
• The Castle of Montabino
• Put to the test but not refined by fire
• The Children of the Abbey
• Ruling women
• Ethelwina

38. Question Break
Take a sip of tea, pause for thought, ask a question!

39. Claimed Equality
Jane Eyre and the ‘doctrine of the equality of disembodied soul’
‘Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am
soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as
you,—and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some
beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave
me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now
through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal
flesh;—it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had
passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,—as we
are!’

40. Refusing the role of Cinderella
“Oh, sir!—never rain jewels! I don’t like to hear them spoken
of. Jewels for Jane Eyre sounds unnatural and strange: I would rather
not have them.”
“Jane, you understand what I want of you? Just this promise—‘I will be
yours, Mr. Rochester.’”
“Mr. Rochester, I will not be yours.”

41. Bertha Mason and the inherent polyphony of
Gothic madness
• The portrayal of Bertha betrays many underlying
textual assumptions
• Bertha as the monstrous feminine
• Jane’s dark double
• The inherent polyphony of madness
• ‘The fiendish laugh, yells and cries’
• She attacks Rochester, Mason and the veil
• Not in keeping with current theory (although in keeping
with contemporary practice)
• ‘In his countenance I saw a change: that looked desperate
and brooding – that reminded me of some wronged and
fettered wild beat or bird, dangerous to approach in his
sullen woe.’

42. Rewriting Gothic
Wrongs• Racism
• Displacement
• Mental Health and Mental
Disintegration
• Spousal abuse
• The realities and lasting
legacies of slavery
• Mother/daughter relations
• Love without caveat

43. An active agent of destiny

44. The Holt Gothic Romance and its heroines
• Harriet – the power of desire
• Fanny – the loving saviour/mother
• Gwennan Menfrey – the wild friend
• Jessica – Fighter for her own
happiness
• Jenny – the young and vivacious
stepmother
• Aunt Clarissa – the staid partisan of
virtue
• Lisa – the beautiful

45. Holt’s male characters rarely come alive for me…
‘A narrow focus on secondary female figures simply as doubles or rivals
of the heroine ignores the ways in which ‘Gothics’ and Gothic romances
more generally frequently explore a range female inter-relations and
use them to investigate a range of female homosocial relations not
mediated by a central male presence, depicting and exploring both the
possibilities and the dark corners of these relationships as well as
exploring varied and complex female subjectivities and a range of
issues such as psychological disintegration, projection, obsessive
maternal love, child-loss, psychic doubling and internal duality.’ (Hirst)

46. Women and class in the Gothic
Gothic Credentials
Madness, family secrets,
confinement, abuse, threat and
reality of sexual assault,
transgressive relationships,
tyrannical patriarchs, murder,
creative heroine…
Survive not avoid
Class realities and inequalities,
present trauma not future threat

47. Women and class in the Gothic
Gothic Credentials
Madness, family secrets,
confinement, abuse, burning
houses, transgressive
relationships, tyrannical
patriarchs, murder…
Survive not avoid
Class inequalities
Marrying ‘down’

48. Fairy-tales made Gothic
•Latent content or
rejected content
•Desire or a new way of
understanding desire
•Uncovering
monstrosity or felling
its siren call…

49. Fairy-tales made Gothic
Women’s Co-operation
T. J. Kingfisher – The Seventh Bride
- 2015
Power changes hands
Lindsay King-Miller – ‘The White
Door’ - 2019
Margaret and Lucy

50. Branching out from Jane Eyre, I’ve given only a few examples of texts
created by, featuring, and depicting women. There are a plethora of
other examples, different schools and traditions… as always!

51. Question Break
Last chance for questions!

52. Bibliography – Primary Texts
Women’s Weird ed. by Melissa Edmundson – 2019
Joseph Addison – Evidence of the Christian Religion – (1772)
Darcie Little Badger – Elatsoe – 2020
Madeleine Brent – Moonraker’s Bride - 1973
Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre – 1847
Emily Bronte – Wuthering Heights – 1847
Edmund Burke – A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful
– 1757
Angela Carter – The Bloody Chamber - 1979
K J Charles – A Flight of Magpies - 2014
Susan Claudia – A Silent Voice - 1966
Catherine Cookson – The Moth – 1986
Charlotte Dacre – Zofloya, Or The Moor – 1806

53. Christine Marion Fraser – Nobles Deeds – 1995
Susan Hill – The Woman in Black - 2012
Victoria Holt – Menfreya - 1966
Victoria Holt – The Mistress of Mellyn – 1960
Victoria Holt – The Shadow of the Lynx - 1971
T. J. Horsley-Curties – Ethelwina, or The House of Fitz-Auburne - 1799
David Hume – ‘On the Delicacy of Taste and On the Delicacy of Passion’
Stephen King – Carrie - 1974
T. J. Kingfisher – The Seventh Bride – 2015
Lindsay King-Miller – ‘The White Door’ in Unspeakable: A Queer Gothic
Anthology - 2019
Sophia Lee – The Recess – 1783
Charles Lucas – The Castle of St Donats, or The History of Jack Smith - 1798
Daphne Du Maurier – Rebecca – 1938
Joanna Mazurkiewicz and Angela Sanders – Once Upon a Quest - 2018
Toni Morrison – Beloved - 1987

54. Ann Radcliffe – The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne – 1789
Ann Radcliffe – The Mysteries of Udolpho - 1794
Ann Radcliffe – A Sicilian Romance – 1790
Ann Radcliffe – ‘On the Supernatural in Poetry’ – 1826
Clara Reeve – The Old English Baron – 1778
Jean Rhys – The Wide Sargasso Sea – 1966
Anne Rice – The Witching Hour - 1990
Regina Marie Roche – The Children of the Abbey - 1796
Mary Shelley – Frankenstein - 1818
Mary Shelley – The Last Man - 1826
Horace Walpole – The Castle of Otranto – 1764
Sarah Waters – Fingersmith – 2002
S Wilkinson – The Castle of Montabino - 1810

55. Bibliography - Films
Alien – Ridley Scott - 1979
Beloved – Jonathan Demme – 1998
Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Fran Rubel Kuzui - 1992
The Carmilla Movie – Spencer Maybee – 2017
Carrie – Brian de Palma - 1976
Crimson Peak – Guillermo del Toro – 2015
The Final Girl – Tyler Shields - 2015
The Final Girls – Todd Strauss-Schulson – 2015
Frankenstein – J. Searle Dawley – 1910
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night – Ana Lily Amirpour – 2014
Jennifer’s Body – Karyn Kusama - 2009
Rebecca – Alfred Hitchcock – 1940

56. Bibliography – Secondary Sources
Ruth Bienstock Anolik – ‘There was a man’ in Horrifying Sex- 2007
Fred Botting – Gothic - 1996
E. J. Clery - Women’s Gothic: From Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley - 2004
Margaret Carol Davison - Gothic Literature 1764 – 1824 - 2009
Kate Ferguson Ellis – The Contested Castle – 1989
Eva Figes – Sex and Subterfuge: Women Writers to 1850 - 1980
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar -The Madwoman in the Attic - 1979
Jacqueline Howard – Reading Gothic Fiction – 1994
Edward Jacobs – ‘Radcliffe, Genericism and Genre’ in Ann Radcliffe, Romanticism and the Gothic – 2014
Ellen Ledoux - Was there ever a “Female Gothic”? In Palgrave Communications – 2017
Robert Miles – The Great Enchantress - 1995
Ellen Moers - Literary Women - 1986
Janina Nordius – ‘A Tale of Other Places: Sophia Lee’s “The Recess” and Colonial Gothic’ in Studies in the Novel - 2002
Andrew Smith and Diana Wallace – ‘The Female Gothic: Then and Now’ in Gothic Studies 6:2 - 2004
Anne Williams - Art of Darkness: A Poetics of the Gothic - 1995