![]() By that time, the population almost doubled, technology, science and medicine progressed further, however at the same time, the divide between the social classes, the rich and the poor, became gradually more pronounced.Ĭulturally, the Victorians were highly moralistic nevertheless they also furthered their investment in mysticism and Romanticism, at its peak from 1800 to around 1850, similarly to the Georgians, who, as was said, reacted in this way to the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment. These models of instability can certainly be related to historically specific concerns, such as the idea of economic uncertainty that characterizes the period of for example “the hungry forties”, which are alluded to in the writing of Charles Dickens. The rest of the century, that which brought forth what can be called the Victorian Gothic, appears to be suffering the same fate of evoking certain instabilities in the works. It is not therefore surprising that the Gothic, seemingly thriving on the horrors of humanity, produced its own monsters at the time. The beginning of the century was certainly marked by the Napoleonic wars and the uncertainties the Industrial Revolution brought about, not only through new inventions or the progress of science, but also due to the transformation of the economic and social structure of the country. It is undeniable that the period saw many changes. Therefore historically speaking, it would appear that the century was not one of the darkest parts of the past, and yet Gothic literature and its primary aspects was revived throughout the period, despite being perceived as a genre which generally marks the presence of anxieties, different horrors, or the frightening unknown amidst the society, and is therefore often seen as a sign of something being wrong. One was the end of the Georgian era, along with the interim of the Regency period, and the other was the Victorian era.įrom the perspective of literary history, we encounter the works by the Romantics, the rise of the historical novel, realism, naturalism, and of course the progenies of the Gothic novel.įollowing the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Britain experienced a rather long period of peace and prosperity, interrupted perhaps most distinctly only by the Crimean War or maybe even the American Civil War, sending its troops as aid, and managed to regain its national self-confidence. By analyzing the women through the lens of the nineteenth-century concepts of the female body and mind, it becomes clear that the monstrous female in literature crosses multiple social and physical boundaries, challenging norms and confirming sexist stereotypes and further confusing the paradoxes of the proper and improper body.During the nineteenth-century, Britain was the witness of two major historical periods. Examination of the female monsters in Anne Bannerman’s “The Mermaid,” Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan leads to a discourse on the transgressive female body, including discussions of sexuality, disease, the undead body, and boundary crossing. In an era when conflicting and paradoxical ideas about women flourished in the bourgeois culture, many of these female monsters in the literature of the era often embody these paradoxes, revealing the anxieties of the culture and its perception of women who do not achieve the status of the proper woman. ![]() Mermaids, vampires, shape-shifters, sexual deviants, and madwomen fill the pages of these works with emotion and movement, harming their victims while seducing them. ![]() “The Pull of Dark Depths”: Female Monsters in Nineteenth-Century Gothic Literature ASU Author/Contributor (non-ASU co-authors, if there are any, appear on document) Kayla Marie Lindsey (Creator) Institution Appalachian State University (ASU ) Web Site: Advisor William BrewerĪbstract: The Gothic literature from the late 1700s to the late 1800s featured a multitude of female characters with monstrous qualities, specifically their transformative and transgressive bodies.
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