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Gothic Monsters and Masculinity : Neutralizing the New Woman in Victorian Gothic Literature
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Schoch, Sara |
| Copyright Year | 2013 |
| Abstract | Gothic literature of the nineteenth century was deeply concerned with with threats to masculinity. Beginning with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and spanning the century, these novels captured an important sense of social unrest attributable to contemporary changes in intellectual and social thought which reverberated throughout the century and threatened to topple patriarchal gender norms. Two major shifts contributing to this instability were the transition from the Baconian to the Darwinian scientific model, and the threat posed by the emerging model of the New Woman to the Victorian feminine ideal embodied in the “angel in the house.” These changes threatened the foundation upon which masculinity and thus, patriarchal society, rested its dominance. This article explores textual attempts to neutralize such threats by vilifying the New Woman and glorifying the “angel in the house” in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and concludes that such attempts ultimately reaffirm the female’s power in this male-dominated society. GOTHIC literature of the nineteenth century was deeply concerned with threats to masculinity. Beginning with Mary Shelley’s 1818 publication of Frankenstein and spanning the century, these novels captured an important sense of social unrest attributable to significant contemporary changes in intellectual and social thought, which reverberated throughout the majority of the century and threatened to topple current patriarchal gender norms1. Evolution in scientific and social thought over the course of the century played an integral role in destabilizing Victorian masculine gender dominance, causing anxiety in the face of dramatically changing social standards for the family.2 The two major shifts contributing to this instability – the transition from the 1Smith, Andrew. Victorian Demons: Medicine, Masculinity and the Gothic at the Fin-de-siècle. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2004. Print., Showalter, Elaine. Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin De Siècle. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Viking, 1990. Print. 2 Navarette, Susan J. The Shape of Fear: Horror and the Fin De Siècle Culture of Decadence. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1998. Print. Baconian to the Darwinian paradigm of science, and the threat posed by the emerging model of the New Woman to the traditionally established and deeply celebrated “angel in the house” – worked to threaten the foundation upon which masculinity and thus, patriarchal society, rested its dominance. Several key texts exploring such threats use monsters and depictions of their moral and sexual depravity to subvert these contemporary destabilizing influences and strengthen the power of the feminine. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the catalyst for such socially critical monstrous texts, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, all explore and attempt to neutralize the social threat of the emerging dominant female figure, as well as that of the scientific revolution’s subjection of the male scientist to a feminized nature, by using the villainous monster as a representative of the autonomous and assertive New Woman figure, while celebrating textual representatives of the angel in the house as integral features of a happy and healthy society and family. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://explorations.ucdavis.edu/docs/2013/SCHOCH_SARA.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
