MIRR - Mary Immaculate Research Repository

    • Login
    View Item 
    •   Home
    • FACULTY OF ARTS
    • Department of English Language and Literature
    • English Language and Literature (Theses)
    • View Item
    •   Home
    • FACULTY OF ARTS
    • Department of English Language and Literature
    • English Language and Literature (Theses)
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of MIRRCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Resources

    How to submitCopyrightFAQs

    From dolls to demons: exploring categorisations of the female figure in Gothic literature through a selection of nineteenth and twentieth century texts

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    Mitchell, D. (2014) From Dolls to Demons exploring categorisations of the female figure in Gothic literature. (PhD Thesis).pdf (681.6Kb)
    Date
    2014
    Author
    Mitchell, Donna
    Peer Reviewed
    No
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    This thesis will examine various representations of female agency and identity in both classic and contemporary selected Gothic texts. It will use feminist, psychoanalytic and selected aspects of literary theory in order to analyse four different stages of the female condition within this genre of literature. In doing this it will use examples from the literary Gothic that represent how the identity of these female characters is divided into binary oppositions of ‘civilised’ or ‘native women’. The deciding (and usually masculine) agents of this categorisation, as well as the activity that occurs within the divide between these two groups, will be the focus of this thesis that I will use to portray how female identity is more complex than the rigid limitations of these patriarchal classifications. My core objective is to analyse the collective image of women in selected Gothic literary texts in order to illustrate how this particular genre has given a voice to the struggles that women encounter during their search for identity within a society that places so many physical and behavioural demands on them. Originally an offshoot of Romantic literature, the Gothic engages with the supernatural in a deliberate effort to validate what is sublime and terrifying about the unknown. In the face of Enlightenment rationality, it facilitates encounters between reader and text that validate fears and insecurities that science often dismisses. This subversive quality of the Gothic, which still remains an inherent and essential feature of modern texts in the genre today, creates an active space for the uncanny, which thereby allows for the subversion of certain realities and identities in fiction that may or may not be possible in real life, and this is especially true in the area of female agency. This study will examine how these selected Gothic texts imagine, represent and explore women’s sociocultural and sexual identity within the divide between these ‘civilised’ and ‘native’ women, by offering characters that transcend the normative boundaries of gender identity by imagining gender-construction in a very different and emancipatory manner.
    Keywords
    Gothic literature
    Women in Gothic literature
    Language (ISO 639-3)
    eng
    Publisher
    Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10395/2134
    Collections
    • English Language and Literature (Theses)

    DSpace software copyright © 2002-2015  DuraSpace
    Contact Us | Send Feedback
     

     


    DSpace software copyright © 2002-2015  DuraSpace
    Contact Us | Send Feedback