The Female Gothic

by Juliann Fleenor (Editor)

The overwhelming popularity of the female gothic has endured, virtually without change, for over 200 years. Women writers and women readers continue to identify with the female gothic, to lose themselves in the sometimes romantic, sometimes grotesque, sometimes fearful imagery of the genre. Why? Is it merely profitable escape fiction? Junk food for the mind? The Female Gothic takes a perceptive and entertaining look at what makes the female gothic work. The best of feminist scholarship gleefully addresses itself to the popular "Somebody's trying to kill me and I think it's my husband" and the "Had I but known" plots of the modern female gothic. Sexuality, terror, anger and madness are discovered in various guises in all female gothics from Monk Lewis in the tombs to Jane Eyre's madwoman in the attic to today's drugstore fare. Traces of the female gothic are found in writers as diverse as Margaret Atwood, Flannery O'Connor and Isak Dinesen.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Gothic

311 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1983

Reviews

[Carmen Tudor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an invaluable collection of essays and articles. Sections include Mystique (Popular Gothic); Madness; Monsters; and Maternity. Fun alliteration notwithstanding, I wish the Maternity section had more offerings than the three that were included. Still, those ones (one by editor Juliann Fleenor, the second by Claire Kahane and the final by Margaret Homans) are excellent. They cover Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Flannery O'Connor and C and E Bronte respectively.

[Cecil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of Gothic literature, so I really enjoyed this book. The essays were all thought-provoking and really interesting to read. I also got some great book recommendations of it.