Gothic incest: transgression and counter-hegemony

In this thesis I will analyze representations of incest in the Gothic from 1764-1847 and argue that the genre's critical genealogy, beginning with its contemporary reception, has viewed the Gothic as divided into a male tradition or its female counter, and subsequently informed understandings of incest as having distinct meanings produced by their presence in works designated as male or female. Although feminist criticism from the 1970s onwards has demonstrated that women writers articulated subversive views in the Gothic, such analyses have relied on psychological and sociological theories of incest that frequently reproduce gendered di visions and fai l comprehensively to address the incest thematic. It is instead essential to do away with the genre's gendered bifurcation and employ a broad methodological framework that applies the insights in recent work by anthropologists, feminist, social, and queer theorists, geneticists, and legal and social historians to specific incestuous configurations. In so doing, I argue that the genre's complex depictions and disruptions of eighteenth-century ideologies of gender and sexuality are revealed through incestuous desires, threats, violence and transgressions. This thesis is comprised of five chapters that explore the social, sexual and legal anxieties underlying representations of incest in different family relationships in the Gothic and contextualizes these accounts within analytic lenses suited to the particular kinship bond. It examines the ability of father-daughter incest to offer female sexual agel]cy and to breakdown the exchange of women, and investigates the potential for equality in _sibling relationships that troubled contemporary ideas of desire and laws as ,inherent~y-natural or-unnatural. It explores the sexual threats of uncles towards nieces that literalize the female body's status as property, and how cousin marriage negotiated the changing status of family and the conflict between individual desires and obligation to the family as state. It analyzes how mother-son incest exposes the inadequacy of availab le gender and sexual ideologies to account for female desire, agency and aggression. Through these analyses I argue that Gothic writers use the incest convention in order to reveal the arbitrary legal, economic and social limitations on behaviour that are enforced by heteronormative culture and offer alternative models of family, sexuality and desire that counter the hegemony.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Gothic incest

The first full-length study of incest in the Gothic genre, this book argues that Gothic writers resisted the power structures of their society through incestuous desires. It provides interdisciplinary readings of incest within father-daughter, sibling, mother-son, cousin and uncle-niece relationships in texts by authors including Emily Brontë, Eliza Parsons, Ann Radcliffe and Eleanor Sleath. The analyses, underpinned by historical, literary and cultural contexts, reveal that the incest thematic allowed writers to explore a range of related sexual, social and legal concerns. Through representations of incest, Gothic writers modelled alternative agencies, sexualities and family structures that remain relevant today

Gothic Incest: Gender, Sexuality and Transgression

The first full-length study of incest in the Gothic genre, this book argues that Gothic writers resisted the power structures of their society through incestuous desires. It provides interdisciplinary readings of incest within father-daughter, sibling, mother-son, cousin and uncle-niece relationships in texts by authors including Emily Brontë, Eliza Parsons, Ann Radcliffe and Eleanor Sleath. The analyses, underpinned by historical, literary and cultural contexts, reveal that the incest thematic allowed writers to explore a range of related sexual, social and legal concerns. Through representations of incest, Gothic writers modelled alternative agencies, sexualities and family structures that remain relevant today

Gothic incest: transgression and counter-hegemony

In this thesis I will analyze representations of incest in the Gothic from 1764-1847 and argue that the genre’s critical genealogy, beginning with its contemporary reception, has viewed the Gothic as divided into a male tradition or its female counter, and subsequently informed understandings of incest as having distinct meanings produced by their presence in works designated as male or female. Although feminist criticism from the 1970s onwards has demonstrated that women writers articulated subversive views in the Gothic, such analyses have relied on psychological and sociological theories of incest that frequently reproduce gendered divisions and fail comprehensively to address the incest thematic. It is instead essential to do away with the genre’s gendered bifurcation and employ a broad methodological framework that applies the insights in recent work by anthropologists, feminist, social, and queer theorists, geneticists, and legal and social historians to specific incestuous configurations. In so doing, I argue that the genre’s complex depictions and disruptions of eighteenth-century ideologies of gender and sexuality are revealed through incestuous desires, threats, violence and transgressions. This thesis is comprised of five chapters that explore the social, sexual and legal anxieties underlying representations of incest in different family relationships in the Gothic and contextualizes these accounts within analytic lenses suited to the particular kinship bond. It examines the ability of father-daughter incest to offer female sexual agency and to breakdown the exchange of women, and investigates the potential for equality in sibling relationships that troubled contemporary ideas of desire and laws as inherently natural or unnatural. It explores the sexual threats of uncles towards nieces that literalize the female body’s status as property, and how cousin marriage negotiated the changing status of family and the conflict between individual desires and obligation to the family as state. It analyzes how mother-son incest exposes the inadequacy of available gender and sexual ideologies to account for female desire, agency and aggression. Through these analyses I argue that Gothic writers use the incest convention in order to reveal the arbitrary legal, economic and social limitations on behaviour that are enforced by heteronormative culture and offer alternative models of family, sexuality and desire that counter the hegemony

Gothic incest

The first full-length study of incest in the Gothic genre, this book argues that Gothic writers resisted the power structures of their society through incestuous desires. It provides interdisciplinary readings of incest within father-daughter, sibling, mother-son, cousin and uncle-niece relationships in texts by authors including Emily Brontë, Eliza Parsons, Ann Radcliffe and Eleanor Sleath. The analyses, underpinned by historical, literary and cultural contexts, reveal that the incest thematic allowed writers to explore a range of related sexual, social and legal concerns. Through representations of incest, Gothic writers modelled alternative agencies, sexualities and family structures that remain relevant today

The Lady's Magazine Index

A fully annotated index to the just over 15000 text items in the Lady’s Magazine; or, Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex from its first series (1770 to 1818)

John Polidori\u2019s Gothic Novel: "Ernestus Berchtold" and the Daring Narrative of Incest

Polidori\u2019s almost \u201clost romantic\u201d novel Ernestus Berchtold, or the Modern Oedipus (1819) is an inter-textual narration that draws quite openly from the contemporary gothic literature of the time. Moreover, due to its exceptional genesis, it may be contextualised as a response to what Polidori was experiencing in his life, namely his journey with Byron to the Continent and, in particular, the summer spent at the Lake near Geneva with the Shelleys. The novel is precisely the result of the ghost-story competition and is to be read in relation to and in dialogue with the more successful literary works published by his fellow writers, primarily Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein and Byron\u2019s Manfred. Even though Polidori as a novelist did not acquire the same success and critical attention of his contemporaries, his \u2018lost\u2019 novel Ernestus Berchtold is an interesting gothic story worthy of examination for its dense inter-textual connotations

“If ever there was someone to keep me at home”: Theorizing screen representations of siblinghood through a case study of Into the Wild (2007)

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Quarterly Review of Film and Video on 04/03/2021, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2021.1886823Images of siblings pervade the screen, yet their representation remains under-explored. Though sibling relationships are common, these lateral bonds are often overlooked in favor of the vertical bonds privileged by Freudian psychoanalysis. Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn 2007), though ostensibly focused on the solitary journey of its protagonist, Chris McCandless, can be read as a narrative of siblinghood and here serves as a case study for exploring ways of theorizing the sibling relationship on screen. Often, there is an inherent anxiety embedded within representations of close adult bonds between brothers and sisters, resulting in frequent on-screen separation. Though Chris and his sister Carine are similarly separated for the majority of the film, their relationship is foregrounded by framing Chris’s story through Carine’s re-telling. Here, the sibling pair may be better understood through the prism of modern discourses of the soulmate, emphasizing the value of knowledge to the sibling relationship and looking beyond the vertical to consider how lateral bonds might be excavated from the edges of the screen