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Ann Radcliffe's Superpaternal: A Study Of The Supernatural In The Romance Of The Forest And The Mysteries Of Udolpho, Lynn Kramer
Ann Radcliffe's Superpaternal: A Study Of The Supernatural In The Romance Of The Forest And The Mysteries Of Udolpho, Lynn Kramer
English Theses
This study proposes a new way to examine the supernatural being in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Romance of the Forest. Critics have argued that the supernatural being is used in these novels to remind the heroines to think rationally; however, I argue that his purpose is more complex than that of a figment who instills reason. Rather, his role is to make the females realize their sexual vulnerability within the imprisoning, Gothic house. He is able to show the women they are in sexual danger by creating sexually explicit situations with the heroine that occur …
Female Virtue In Gothic Literature 1780-1810, Philippa Catnach
Female Virtue In Gothic Literature 1780-1810, Philippa Catnach
Other Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business Theses
My thesis analyses presentations of the concept of female virtue in Gothic literature between 1780 and 1810 particularly by drawing on literary texts supplemented by contemporary non-literary sources in order to set out the background and definitions of my work. The word ‘virtue’ has come to mean ‘goodness’ or ‘morality’ but looking at eighteenth-century usage it has often been gendered female and nearly always had a sexual quality: female morality was irrevocably intertwined with a sexual code of conduct. Daughters (perhaps most famously in the mid eighteenth-century Pamela in Richardson’s popular 1740 novel of the same name) were reminded that …