Gothic Feminism

The Professionalization of Gender from Charlotte Smith to the Brontës

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, British, Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Gender Studies, Women&, History
Cover of the book Gothic Feminism by Diane Long Hoeveler, Penn State University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Diane Long Hoeveler ISBN: 9780271072425
Publisher: Penn State University Press Publication: October 30, 1998
Imprint: Penn State University Press Language: English
Author: Diane Long Hoeveler
ISBN: 9780271072425
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Publication: October 30, 1998
Imprint: Penn State University Press
Language: English

As British women writers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries sought to define how they experienced their era's social and economic upheaval, they helped popularize a new style of bourgeois female sensibility. Building on her earlier work in Romantic Androgyny, Diane Long Hoeveler now examines the Gothic novels of Charlotte Smith, Ann Radcliffe, Jane Austen, Charlotte Dacre Byrne, Mary Shelley, and the Brontës to show how these writers helped define femininity for women of the British middle class.

Hoeveler argues that a female-created literary ideology, now known as "victim feminism," arose as the Gothic novel helped create a new social role of professional victim for women adjusting to the new bourgeois order. These novels were thinly disguised efforts at propagandizing a new form of conduct for women, teaching that "professional femininity"—a cultivated pose of wise passiveness and controlled emotions—best prepared them for social survival. She examines how representations of both men and women in these novels moved from the purely psychosexual into social and political representations, and how these writers constructed a series of ideologies that would allow their female characters—and readers—fictitious mastery over an oppressive social and political system.

Gothic Feminism takes a neo-feminist approach to these women's writings, treating them not as sacred texts but as thesis-driven works that attempted to instruct women in a series of strategic poses. It offers both a new understanding of the genre and a wholly new interpretation of feminism as a literary ideology.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

As British women writers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries sought to define how they experienced their era's social and economic upheaval, they helped popularize a new style of bourgeois female sensibility. Building on her earlier work in Romantic Androgyny, Diane Long Hoeveler now examines the Gothic novels of Charlotte Smith, Ann Radcliffe, Jane Austen, Charlotte Dacre Byrne, Mary Shelley, and the Brontës to show how these writers helped define femininity for women of the British middle class.

Hoeveler argues that a female-created literary ideology, now known as "victim feminism," arose as the Gothic novel helped create a new social role of professional victim for women adjusting to the new bourgeois order. These novels were thinly disguised efforts at propagandizing a new form of conduct for women, teaching that "professional femininity"—a cultivated pose of wise passiveness and controlled emotions—best prepared them for social survival. She examines how representations of both men and women in these novels moved from the purely psychosexual into social and political representations, and how these writers constructed a series of ideologies that would allow their female characters—and readers—fictitious mastery over an oppressive social and political system.

Gothic Feminism takes a neo-feminist approach to these women's writings, treating them not as sacred texts but as thesis-driven works that attempted to instruct women in a series of strategic poses. It offers both a new understanding of the genre and a wholly new interpretation of feminism as a literary ideology.

More books from Penn State University Press

Cover of the book Pietas from Vergil to Dryden by Diane Long Hoeveler
Cover of the book Toledo Cathedral by Diane Long Hoeveler
Cover of the book Structure in Milton's Poetry by Diane Long Hoeveler
Cover of the book Memories of Lincoln and the Splintering of American Political Thought by Diane Long Hoeveler
Cover of the book Portraiture and Politics in Revolutionary France by Diane Long Hoeveler
Cover of the book Social and Economic Networks in Early Massachusetts by Diane Long Hoeveler
Cover of the book Animating Empire by Diane Long Hoeveler
Cover of the book Matters of Spirit by Diane Long Hoeveler
Cover of the book Magic in the Modern World by Diane Long Hoeveler
Cover of the book Net Loss by Diane Long Hoeveler
Cover of the book Spiritual Modalities by Diane Long Hoeveler
Cover of the book Sentiments of a British-American Woman by Diane Long Hoeveler
Cover of the book An Empire of Print by Diane Long Hoeveler
Cover of the book Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wall-paper” and the History of Its Publication and Reception by Diane Long Hoeveler
Cover of the book Aging Across the United States by Diane Long Hoeveler
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy