Date of Award

2020

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in English

Department

English

First Advisor

Jean Walton

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the mode of the Female Gothic primarily by examining how texts utilize the role of curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge, paying close attention to how female characters employ these attributes. Existing criticism is vital to understanding the Female Gothic and in presenting the genealogy of feminist literary criticism, and yet I argue, this body of criticism often produces elements of essentialism. In an attempt to avoid and expose the biases that essentialism produces, I draw from Sara Ahmed’s theory of queer phenomenology to investigate the connections between the way that women pursue and circulate knowledge through education and reading and writing practices in the Female Gothic. What women are allowed access to these practices, and what women are denied access? I argue that curiosity positions characters towards objects of knowledge in a positive and active way. I trace the trajectory of the Female Gothic beginning with Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. I also examine the following novels: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches, Octavia Butler’s Fledgling, and Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing is Monsters. I end the dissertation by examining the Female Gothic’s impact on the pop cultural imagination by analyzing the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its surrounding transmedial texts, such as the comics published by Dark Horse and Boom, and the podcast Buffering the Vampire Slayer.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.