Gothic Feminism

As British women writers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries sought to define how they experienced their era's social and economic upheaval, they helped popularize a new style of bourgeois female sensibility. Building on her earlier work in Romantic Androgyny, Diane Long Hoeveler now examines the Gothic novels of Charlotte Smith, Ann Radcliffe, Jane Austen, Charlotte Dacre Byrne, Mary Shelley, and the Bront&ës to show how these writers helped define femininity for women of the British middle class. Hoeveler argues that a female-created literary ideology, now known as &"victim feminism,&" arose as the Gothic novel helped create a new social role of professional victim for women adjusting to the new bourgeois order. These novels were thinly disguised efforts at propagandizing a new form of conduct for women, teaching that &"professional femininity&"&—a cultivated pose of wise passiveness and controlled emotions&—best prepared them for social survival. She examines how representations of both men and women in these novels moved from the purely psychosexual into social and political representations, and how these writers constructed a series of ideologies that would allow their female characters&—and readers&—fictitious mastery over an oppressive social and political system. Gothic Feminism takes a neo-feminist approach to these women's writings, treating them not as sacred texts but as thesis-driven works that attempted to instruct women in a series of strategic poses. It offers both a new understanding of the genre and a wholly new interpretation of feminism as a literary ideology.

She has just given birth to their child. He labels her postpartum depression as »hysteria.« He rents the attic in an old country house. Here, she is to rest alone – forbidden to leave her room. Instead of improving, she starts hallucinating, imagining herself crawling with other women behind the room's yellow wallpaper. And secretly, she records her experiences. The Yellow Wall-Paper [1892] is the short but intense, Gothic horror story, written as a diary, about a woman in an attic – imprisoned in her gender; by the story. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's feminist novella was long overlooked in American literary history. Nowadays, it is counted among the classics. CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860–1935), born in Hartford, Connecticut, was an American feminist theorist, sociologist, novelist, short story writer, poet, and playwright. Her writings are precursors to many later feminist theories. With her radical life attitude, Perkins Gilman has been an inspiration for many generations of feminists in the USA. Her most famous work is the short story The Yellow Wall-Paper [1892], written when she suffered from postpartum psychosis.

Gothic Heroines on Screen explores the translation of the literary Gothic heroine on screen, the potential consequences of these adaptations, and contemporary interpretations of the form. Each chapter illuminates the significance of this moving image mediation, relating its screen topics to their various historical, social, and geographical moments of production, while maintaining a focus on the key figure of the investigating woman. Many chapters – perhaps inescapably – delve into the point of adaptation: the Bluebeard story and du Maurier’s Rebecca as two key examples. Moving beyond the Old Dark House that frequently forms both the Gothic heroine’s backdrop and her area of investigation, some chapters examine alternative locations and their impact on the Gothic heroine, some leave behind the marital thriller to explore what happens when the Gothic meets other genres, such as comedy, while others travel away from the usual Anglo-American contexts to European ones. Throughout the collection, the Gothic heroine’s representation is explored within the medium, which brings together image, movement, and sound, and this technological fact takes on varied significance. What does remain constant, however, is the emphasis on the longevity, significance, and distinctiveness of the Gothic heroine in screen culture.

Argues that contemporary female Gothic novels of death can, in fact, breathe new life into feminist debates about victimization, essentialism, agency, and the body.

Gothic novels tell terrifying stories of patriarchal societies that thrive on the oppression or even outright sacrifice of women and others. Donna Heiland’s Gothic and Gender offers a historically informed theoretical introduction to key gothic narratives from a feminist perspective. The book concentrates primarily on fiction from the 1760s through the 1840s, exploring the work of Horace Walpole, Clara Reeve, Sophia Lee, Matthew Lewis, Charlotte Dacre, Charles Maturin, Ann Radcliffe, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, John Polidori, James Malcolm Rymer, Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Charlotte Smith, and Charles Brockden Brown. The final chapter looks at contemporary fiction and its relation to the gothic, including an exploration of Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin and Ann-Marie Macdonald’s Fall on Your Knees A Coda provides an overview of scholarship on the gothic, showing how gothic gradually became a major focus for literary critics, and paying particular attention to the feminist reinvigoration of gothic studies that began in the 1970s and continues today. Taken as a whole the book offers a stimulating survey of the representation of gender in the gothic, suitable for both students and readers of gothic literature.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “It’s Lovecraft meets the Brontës in Latin America, and after a slow-burn start Mexican Gothic gets seriously weird.”—The Guardian IN DEVELOPMENT AS A HULU ORIGINAL LIMITED SERIES PRODUCED BY KELLY RIPA AND MARK CONSUELOS • ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • WINNER OF THE LOCUS AWARD • NOMINATED FOR THE BRAM STOKER AWARD ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, NPR, The Washington Post, Tordotcom, Marie Claire, Vox, Mashable, Men’s Health, Library Journal, Book Riot, LibraryReads An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets. . . . From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes “a terrifying twist on classic gothic horror” (Kirkus Reviews) set in glamorous 1950s Mexico. After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region. Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom. Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness. And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind. “It’s as if a supernatural power compels us to turn the pages of the gripping Mexican Gothic.”—The Washington Post “Mexican Gothic is the perfect summer horror read, and marks Moreno-Garcia with her hypnotic and engaging prose as one of the genre’s most exciting talents.”—Nerdist “A period thriller as rich in suspense as it is in lush ’50s atmosphere.”—Entertainment Weekly

A re-assessment of the Gothic in relation to the female, the 'feminine', feminism and post-feminismThis collection of newly commissioned essays brings together major scholars in the field of Gothic studies in order to re-think the topic of 'Women and the Gothic'. The 14 chapters in this volume engage with debates about 'Female Gothic' from the 1970s and '80s, through second wave feminism, theorisations of gender and a long interrogation of the 'women' category as well as with the problematics of post-feminism, now itself being interrogated by a younger generation of women. The contributors explore Gothic works from established classics to recent films and novels from feminist and post-feminist perspectives. The result is a lively book that combines rigorous close readings with elegant use of theory in order to question some ingrained assumptions about women, the Gothic and identity.Key FeaturesRevitalises the long-running debate about women, the Gothic and identityEngages with the political agendas of feminism and post-feminismPrioritises the concerns of woman as reader, author and criticOffers fresh readings of both classic and recent Gothic works