Feminist Gothic
ebook ∣ Ghost Stories by Victorian Women Writers · Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature
By Anne DeLong
Sign up to save your library
With an OverDrive account, you can save your favorite libraries for at-a-glance information about availability. Find out more about OverDrive accounts.
Find this title in Libby, the library reading app by OverDrive.
Search for a digital library with this title
Title found at these libraries:
| Library Name | Distance |
|---|---|
| Loading... |
This examination of thirty-two ghost stories by twenty-one Victorian women writers defines a new genre—, Feminist Gothic—that utilizes the Gothic structure and its uncanny atmosphere of ambiguity to deploy competing narratives that seek to undermine patriarchy by simultaneously upholding and subverting its dominant myths. While a surface reading of these tales often interprets the outer, public, overt voice—as one of patriarchal appeasement,—a second reading uncovers an inner, private, covert voice that undermines the first. By focusing exclusively on women's stories and examining Victorian ghost stories by lesser-known women writers alongside those more widely disseminated and discussed, this study aims to establish a definition of feminist Gothic that transcends the binaries of horror/terror, physical/psychological, and intrusive/liminal. It also explores the issues that haunt the Victorian female literary imagination and techniques women writers employ to incarnate and exorcise those revenants. Aimed at scholars of feminist literary criticism, Victorian literature, and the Gothic genre, this study combines close readings of primary sources with current scholarship, arranged thematically in chapters that examine women's issues, including marriage, children, and property ownership.
