Several of Sylvia Plath¡¦s poems are associated with the term ¡§Gothic¡¨ by critics. By examining how some conventional Gothic literary devices are used and how the feeling of terror is evoked in Plath¡¦s poetry, I shall try to prove the close correspondence between the Gothic literature and Sylvia Plath¡¦s poetry in this thesis. Then, I shall proceed to assert Plath¡¦s orthodoxy in the Gothic literature and discuss her uniqueness in the Gothic tradition.

Thesis (Honors)--College of William and Mary, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-69). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Inaug.-. Diss.--Cologne. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 508-520.

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on Dec. 18, 2009). Thesis advisor: Dr. Devoney Looser. Includes bibliographical references.

This report explores the ideological motivations behind Charlotte Brontë's inclusion of and alterations to gothic conventions in Villette (1853). By building on an account of the recent critical conversation concerning the conservative Enlightenment force of the gothic, this report seeks to explain the political significance of a specific, nineteenth-century mutation in the genre: Lucy Snowe as an experiment in the bourgeois paradigm. Lucy Snowe's sophisticated consciousness of genre manifests in her minute attention to dress, but the persistence of her personal gothic history means that Villette enacts political tension between individualistic "self-fashioning" and historical determinism as clashing models for the origin of identity. / text

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Isak Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales is part of a literary tradition whose most important feature is its subversiveness. This subversion involves supernatural or fantastic elements in the creation of a temporary alternative world. The ensuing struggle between the real and the fantastic worlds is often embodied by a bourgeois heroine and an aristocratic male villain, respectively. The role of the heroine is pivotal to the plot for it is her survival that signals the defeat of a subversive alternative world. But what happens when the villain is a woman? Can her subversion be feminist in nature? The popularity and financial success of women writers of the Gothic means they could not have contradicted dominant views of gender. Yet, Dinesen's fiction demonstrates that subversion is indeed possible. A look at her life and her nonfiction works will facilitate an investigation into the subversive nature of her Gothic tales.

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At the turn of the nineteenth century in England, the Gothic novel was extremely popular for its stories of ghosts, mysterious circumstances and of course, the “damsel in distress”. These novels depicted such women as virtuous heroines, women whose chastity, perseverance in the face of adversity (often brought about by a threatening male figure) and innocence made them models for female readers. However, such depictions of female virtue encouraged readers to associate positive female behaviour with suffering. Charlotte Dacre choose to challenge these beliefs by writing about heroines who attempted to understand and control their sexuality and their lives, regardless of societal mores. However, while Dacre writes of such women, her heroines always end up punished in some way, condemned to a life apart from the outside world by being shut away in convents, or succumbing to death. Comparing Dacre’s work to novels by Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis reveals her important contribution to English literature from a feminist perspective; however, it is conceded here that Dacre ultimately cannot envision women who can free themselves from accepted beliefs of virtue. Her heroines’ destinies seem the same as those of her contemporaries: to suffer. Still, her courage in writing about such heroines makes her a remarkable writer, and important to a feminist study of Gothic literature.

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