Confronting the monster : an analysis of the changing female Gothic

This thesis identifies a historical shift in the female Gothic heroine's liberation from patriarchy. Comparing two Victorian female Gothic texts—Jane Eyre (1848) and "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892)—with two modern female Gothic texts—The Bell Jar (1963) and Sleepwalking (1994)}—it explores how more recent writers reconfigure female Gothic conventions to reflect historical and political gains in women's lived realities. Whereas the heroines of Jane Eyre and "The Yellow Wallpaper" escape from patriarchy through figurative means such as art or writing, those of The Bell Jar and of Sleepwalking achieve both figurative and literal emancipation: they express themselves creatively through art and they survive as social agents who divorce themselves from patriarchal ideologies that lock women into constructed roles. Despite this progressive shift, I consider the problem of liberation from patriarchy dialectically: grey areas exist where earlier protagonists seem to transgress societal norms and where modern protagonists are still immured by them. My first chapter outlines the history and structure of the Gothic, and my subsequent chapters are organized around Gothic conventions, each of which is modified in The Bell Jar and in Sleepwalking to provide increased liberation for heroines. Chapter 2 discusses the Gothic trope of confinement, chapter 3 discusses the Gothic split-self, and chapter 4 examines the changing perception of the creative woman as monster.