UVM Theses and Dissertations
Format:
Print
Author:
Ardila, Michelle
Title:
Dept./Program:
English
Year:
2014
Degree:
M.A.
Abstract:
This project explores how and why sensation novelists appropriated certain Gothic themes and motifs in their works. The goal is to demonstrate how the Gothic mode exposes and interrogates anachronistic social and legal institutions that still held power over gender identity in the Victorian era. The focus of this research is on the theme of inheritance as a symbolic transporter of the past into the present. The threatening influence of the past on the present depicts social and legal institutions, originating in the past, as a hostile and oppressive system to the present, especially towards the heroines in the novels of the 1860s. The association of the heroines with ghosts and doppelgangers epitomizes their insubstantial identity that is dependent on patriarchal constructs of feminine identity. Most critics have analyzed ghosts as a threat to masculinity revealing a repressed sexuality; many have focused on empowered female characters and their subversive actions as a threat to the patriarchal order.
The purpose of my research is to explore the ghost motif as an expression of the insubstantial and vulnerable nature of the heroines' identity in the patriarchal system. The ghostly imagery is an expression of the heroine's loss of identity. The dependence on male authority over femininity undermines any empowered actions as the heroine is described in spectral and wraithlike terms.
In Wilkje Collins's The Woman in White and Sheridan Le Fanu's Uncle Silas, I look at how the Gothic is used to critique women's lack of social and legal position to their inherited property. The property the heroines inherit threatens their safety as the villains attempt to obtain the property for themselves. The ghost motif expresses the effect the loss of property has on the heroine's identity and agency, as she is deemed nonexistent, socially and legally. In Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley 's Secret, biological inheritance and resurrection of the past threaten the anti-heroine's identity. The male hero exercises his patriarchal control over her as she threatens the domestic ideal.
The anti-heroine' s associations with ghostly and spectral imagery reveal the inability she has in affecting her surroundings and express the loss of identity she suffers at the hands of the patriarchal system. By focusing on the destabilizing effects of the Gothic' mode in sensation fiction, this project demonstrates why and how sensation authors appropriated the theme of inheritance and ghost motifs. The use of the Gothic form exaggerated and exposed the effect anachronistic social institutions had on women, calling for a restructuring and modernization of women's legal existence and constructs of femininity.
The purpose of my research is to explore the ghost motif as an expression of the insubstantial and vulnerable nature of the heroines' identity in the patriarchal system. The ghostly imagery is an expression of the heroine's loss of identity. The dependence on male authority over femininity undermines any empowered actions as the heroine is described in spectral and wraithlike terms.
In Wilkje Collins's The Woman in White and Sheridan Le Fanu's Uncle Silas, I look at how the Gothic is used to critique women's lack of social and legal position to their inherited property. The property the heroines inherit threatens their safety as the villains attempt to obtain the property for themselves. The ghost motif expresses the effect the loss of property has on the heroine's identity and agency, as she is deemed nonexistent, socially and legally. In Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley 's Secret, biological inheritance and resurrection of the past threaten the anti-heroine's identity. The male hero exercises his patriarchal control over her as she threatens the domestic ideal.
The anti-heroine' s associations with ghostly and spectral imagery reveal the inability she has in affecting her surroundings and express the loss of identity she suffers at the hands of the patriarchal system. By focusing on the destabilizing effects of the Gothic' mode in sensation fiction, this project demonstrates why and how sensation authors appropriated the theme of inheritance and ghost motifs. The use of the Gothic form exaggerated and exposed the effect anachronistic social institutions had on women, calling for a restructuring and modernization of women's legal existence and constructs of femininity.