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Female Gothic novels of the late 18th and early 19th century have been described as a literary form of “feminine radical protest” in a time during which writing and publishing was a domain reserved for a small, male elite. Common tropes of domestic horror, female sexuality, economic disenfranchisement and ghostly maternity point towards a structural literary exploration of the historical reality of women’s experiences within patriarchal society a century before the first feminist movement in the Global North at the turn of the 20th century.
Yet, what do we actually mean when we speak of ‘the Female Gothic’, and where did the term originate? Regarded as a pivotal turning point for feminist literary studies when first coined in the 1970s, in recent years the term’s usefulness has come into question, as scholars point out how its use is often essentialising and works to reinforce gendered stereotypes rather than deconstructing them.
In this seminar, we will investigate the literary history of the Female Gothic, both in its production and its academic reception, in order to understand the political implications of literary scholarship. Beginning with classic examples of the genre by writers such as Ann Radcliffe and Charlotte Brontë, we will move on to more contemporary forms of the genre by writers such as Vernon Lee, Daphne du Maurier, Shirley Jackson, Toni Morrison, and others to understand how the definition of the genre has evolved to incorporate questions of class, race, empire and gender and sexuality. Throughout the seminar, we will return to the question, “how to define the Female Gothic?” and think about how our own scholarship impacts the term’s definition. |
