Women Writers in English: The Female Gothic, ENGL 353-901 & GSWS 353-901 Dashboard
Description
This course will engage a broad array of texts by women-identified writers as we seek to collectively define the function, form, and relevance of the “Female Gothic” tradition. Coined by Ellen Moers in the mid-1970s, Female Gothic is a term used to distinguish and describe a literary tradition--gothic writing by women-identified writers—but it is also code for a set of ideas used by second-wave feminist critics to critique masculinist systems and structures. It is also a highly contested term that has been described as essentialist and limited in its imagintive scope.
While together we will primarily work with texts but we will also look at film and digital media, ranging from 18th century through 21st with texts related to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Students will engage in building tools related to a course anthology using Cove editions (https://editions.covecollective.org/), allowing them to gain experience with the editorial decisions and questions that have historically informed publication of writing by women.
Galleries, Timelines, and Maps
Individual Entries
During the Victorian era, women were expected to embrace their role as wives and mothers and exist quietly and neatly within their domicile, with few hobbies or interests outside of their domestic duties. Modesty, purity, passivity, and patience were just a few of the traits that characterized an ideal woman in the Victorian era. It is posited that the image of the ideal woman was modeled after Queen Victoria, the most powerful figure in England, who reinforced the importance of marriage, motherhood, and domesticity (Murray). However, many working-class women could not afford to work within their homes, and children of poor and working-class families also had to work. This created a larger gap between women of different classes, as working-class women could not meet the expectations surrounding class and gender performance.
Works Cited:
Murray,...
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