What is the

1
What is the Female Gothic?
Female Gothic
2
Rise of Feminism

• Against patriarchal prejudices and sexist
  assumptions that see women as inferior
• Against male dominance and power that
  subordinates women
• Against misogyny and marginalisation of women to
  a secondary unequal role
• Against exclusion of womens experiences from
  literature, history and society
• Against cultural habit of seeing male experience
  as universal

3
Depiction of women in Lit

• Fairy Tales heroines as sweet, young,
  vulnerable and beautiful Are given life by
  men. Marriage as answer to lifes problems
• Myths Witches, seductress, madwomen eg. Medusa
• (Decapitation Complex)
• Ethnic Literature Depicts experiences of women
  of other cultures trapped in racial
  Discrimination Eg. Beloved (Toni Morrison),
  Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys)
• Lesbian Literature Issues of equality
  Creation of Amazonian Utopia Communal
  Sisterhood of Women

4
Feminist Approach to Lit

• Women as "innocent and pure" kept in ignorance
• Women as possessions of male confined to their
  idealised feminine domain of domesticity
• Women as marginalised "Other" defined by their
  sexuality and femininity
• Culturally
• expose the stereotypes of women e.g. in fairy
  tales, myth. Marriage falsely seen as chief aim
  and only respectable path as fulfillment is only
  possible in relation to male.
• Rhetorically/Linguistically
• encourage artistic self-expression by empowering
  women to express the voice that was silenced by
  male POV which is deemed as norm, neutral,
  objective. Reading and writing as subversive.
• Biological
• locate an Other to authenticate Self. Doubling of
  character and self ? a creation of female
  identity

5
Purpose Intention

• Feminist writers examine and reveals the ways in
  which literature reinforces or undermines the
  economic, social and psychological oppression of
  women to increase our insights and understanding
  of womens experience.
• Accepts SEX (female) as biologically determined
  but Gender (feminine, woman) seen as
• Psychological or social construct (culturally
  acquired sexual identity). It is therefore
  subjective in nature and should be resisted as an
  imposed norm.

6
Writing as Empowerment

• -Male bias often seen in use of language and
  literature
• -Female voice is continually silenced by male
  subjugation
• -The female author must therefore struggle for
  artistic self-expression by empowering women to
  express that silenced voice
• -Literature (reading and writing) seen as
  self-determination, chart ones own destiny
• Literary Structure Use of language
• Masculine Writing closure, climatic and linear,
  objective, victorious
• Feminine Writing open-ended, cyclical, fluid,
  subjective, ambiguous
• Literary Form Psychoanalytic-Bio Symbols
• Female / Male body seen as biological metaphor
  for writing.
• Feminists resists a phallogocentric (phallus
  logos) way of interpretation that uses
  psychoanalysis to repress the Female Threat /
  Other.
• Symbol, the maternal womb as an alternative
  metaphor which symbolises life.
• Body text open menstrual flow Style No
  closure, cyclical
• Plot open-ended creates story Patriarchal
  Pen replaced by open-concept of Womb

7
Loopholes in Feminist Approach

• Makes assumption that all women are universally
  and permanently victims
• Do all women writers share same goal of sexual
  revolution?
• Are female authors consciously expressing
  defiance or disclosing their repression?
• Does gender matter? Feminist Approach excludes
  and isolates male readers. Can a male writer
  write in a feminine style? Can men be feminist?
  Can a male teacher teach feminist approach?
• In reality, feminist approach remains disunited.
  No one single approach. Other feminists even see
  each other as not feminist enough

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FEMALE GOTHIC

• The Female Gothic sees the Gothic as a plot of
  feminine subversion. As a marginalised form, the
  Gothic expressed the essence of female condition.
  The Gothic spoke the unspeakable and expressed
  women's point-of-view of women and underscored
  male disgust/hatred/fear of the "other" monster
  -- woman. The Female Gothic represented the
  female experience as one of imprisonment,
  claustrophobia and terror.

9
Gothic Heroine

• Usually a young virgin who is passive and
  victimised by imprisonment or rape. As both
  object of virtue and object of desire, the woman
  is seen as a sexual being as defined by the Male
  Gaze and the motif of enclosure and escape.
• Women as the Other. Male hostility towards,
  fear and suspicion of, women -- the source of all
  mans evil (Remember Eve?). Desire to control
  women. Dichotomy dark, sexy and dangerous vs
  fair, innocent and pure i.e. fallen vs ideal
  (i.e. obedient to men).

10
Women as Other

• Reveals male disgust / hatred / fear of the
  Other
• monster WOMAN
• Her female sexuality and procreative power become
  latent threats
• Surface Text Women depicted as guardians of the
  HOME and SYMBOL of Love and Purity.
• Subtext Women exist simply to serve as prey of
  men who imprison and rape them.

11
Gothic Romance

• Gothic Hero Hero-villain, cruel, sadistic,
  brooding darkly attractive lover
• Gothic Heroine Traditionally a young virgin in
  distress, defenceless, meek, whimpering and
  screechy.
• Not so much to escape but to be saved
• Women who attempt to be self-assertive are
  tortured, killed and blamed for everything.
• Gothic Romance
• Heroine declares preference for hero. An obstacle
  to their reunion is discovered. They remain
  throughout the plot pining and faithful for their
  day of marriage.

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Motifs to look out for

• 1. Passive Heroines
• Things happen to them, obedient, victimised
• 2. Heroine as Object of Virtue / Chastity
• Loss of virginity demands a fate worse than death
• 3. Object of Desire via Male Gaze
• Patriarchy confers approval, power and
  identity on women
• 4. Enclosure and Escape
• Imprisonment and entrapment
• Expresses womens experience in a masculine world
  including marriage
• Home is Prison, not refuge
• 5. Wish-Fulfilment
• Only in relation to male presence
• Perverse desire of women to be dominated

13
Roles of women

• Women either virtuous or downright evil e.g. 3
  witches, Cordelia vs Regan
• Women traditionally expected to fulfil 3 roles
  upon reaching puberty
• Virgin, Wife, Mother
• To Nina Nichols, "marriage was the cornerstone"
  of female powerlessness. Marriage is seen as the
  engulfment of the female self by the identity of
  the male. For instance, Miss Temple.

14
Women are supposed to be very calm generally but
women feel just as men feel they need exercise
for their faculties, and a field for their
efforts they suffer from too rigid a restraint,
too absolute a stagnation and it is
narrow-minded to say that they should confine
themselves It is thoughtless to condemn them,
or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or
learn more than custom has pronounced necessary
for their sex. (JE 141) Jane Eyre has been read
as "a cult text of feminism". Jane is bullied at
every station of her journey of self-discovery by
a male oppressor in an otherwise subdued female
community. Her overt protest against androcentric
norms and patriarchal oppression is a bid for
acceptance, equality and power
15

• WOMAN'S SOCIAL CONDITIONS
• Demands equality - against stagnant inaction,
  isolated incarceration and restraining
  expression.
• As Gothic Heroine, Jane is forced to resist the
  patriarchs desire to desex her, to subdue and
  possess her as an object or try to fit her into
  their male ideal of femininity. She defies the
  conventional male models of women as angelic,
  demonic or fallen. - "mans vigorous brain and
  a womans heart" (Ch 34). Brocklehurst - "to
  mortify in these girls the lust of the flesh" (Ch
  7). Rochester dresses her up "like a doll" (Ch
  24) and St John intends her to be a missionary's
  wife "formed for labour, not for love" (Ch 34).

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WOMAN'S PSYCHOLOGY

• Victorian psychiatric theory suggested that
  sexual appetite, particularly female desire, was
  one of the chief symptoms of moral insanity. As
  such, chastity was equated with sanity (i.e.
  Chastity sanity self).
• The word "passion" is used as a sexual euphemism.
  The expression of female passion, whether in rage
  or in lust, is perceived to be madness as it
  violates the boundaries of acceptable feminine
  conduct.
• Jane herself subscribes to this criterion as she
  views her own fits of passion as lapses of
  temporary madness and rejects "the insane
  promptings of a frenzied moment" (Ch 37). Female
  passion is thus perceived to be a dangerous force
  that must be punished and confined. Women seen as
  spiritually controlled or madly passionate

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The motif of enclosure and escape

• The ultimate victim of this male sexual
  oppression is Bertha Mason.
• Confinement is often used as a form of
  containment for female deviance and misconduct.
  Women are to be liberated only "on condition of
  perfect submission and stillness" (Ch 2).
  Incarceration, literal or symbolic, is
  interpreted as an externalised form of such male
  repression.
• This imprisonment of women is akin to the Gothic
  motif of live burial. Georgina and Eliza Reed,
  "one the cynosure of a ballroom, the other the
  inmate of a convent cell" (Ch 22), exemplify "the
  two equally destructive extremes to which female
  nature can be driven". As in Marmion, the book St
  John gives Jane, the women are buried alive,
  figuratively, if not literally.

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WOMAN'S REVOLUTION

• The happy ending of the typical governess novel
  is marriage as love was considered the only means
  of female self-realisation. Marriage is viewed
  negatively as a form of servitude or
  imprisonment.
• Imagery of slavery and possession that Rochester
  employs before the wedding and the language of
  wage service St John uses to convince Jane to be
  his wife. Rochester's allusion to "the Grand
  Turk's whole seraglio" (Ch 24) calls to mind the
  Roman emperor slave-drivers to which Jane likened
  John Reed. He warns Jane that "once I have fairly
  seized you, to have and to hold, I'll just --
  figuratively speaking -- attach you to a chain
  like this".
• Similarly, St John's proposal demands undivided
  allegiance and complete sacrifice. His kiss is "a
  seal affixed to my fetters" (Ch 34) and Jane
  barely escapes being "chained for life to a man
  who regarded one but as a useful tool" (Ch 35).
  Jane regards herself equal to St John as his
  sister but sees herself as his subject if she
  becomes his wife. With Rochester, she is
  determined to find her own liberation and become
  "a free human being with an independent will" (Ch
  23).
• Is Jane's marriage then a progress towards
  identity or a regression to conformity? Jane's
  marriage collapses boundaries between governess
  and mother. Her idea of marriage changes "I
  suppose your love will effervesce in six months
  I have observed in books written by men, that
  period assigned as the farthest to which a
  husband's ardour extends" (Ch 24).
• Critical of tales that "run on the same theme --
  courtship, and promise to end in the same
  catastrophe -- Marriage" (XIX). in this fairy
  tale, Princess frees man e.g. Jane's role
  reversal pictures herself a male lover seeking
  sleeping mistress.

19

• Jane's revenge - All the men punished for their
  desire to render Jane an object - form of
  wish-fulfillment. Reversal of the Gaze to female
  as voyeurism as sexual . The Female Gaze?
• Jane's wishes - "you shall, yourself, pluck out
  your right eye yourself cut off your right hand"
  
• (CH 27) - dreams the destruction of Thornfield -
  loss of sight as symbolic castration - Rochester
  is
• feminised while she gains vision.
• All signs point towards Jane as a feminist of her
  time but what questions why her ascent requires
  the negative examples of the other women in the
  novel e.g. What does the death of Bertha
  represent?

20
The Gothic Self

• Who is Jane Eyre?
• "I learnt the first two tenses of the verb Etre,
  and sketched my first cottage" (73)
• "There are people who seem to have no notion of
  sketching a character, or observing and
  describing salient points, either in persons or
  things the good lady evidently belonged to this
  class" (107, Jane referring to Mrs Fairfax)

21

• Her names
• One's name is the most fundamental tag of
  self-identity. To introduce oneself -- "I am Jane
  Eyre" -- is to define oneself.
• Janes names "witch, sorceress", "malicious elf,
  sprite", "mocking changeling"
• Jane rejects the labels others use to address her
  e.g. "I will not be your Celine Varens", "I am
  not an angel I will be myself."
• Her books
• Bewick's History of British Birds (2), Gulliver's
  Travels (15 x-ref 238), Rasselas (47), Marmion
  (392).
• Her pictures
• Her first drawings (p 74) Bewick's pictures
  contrast with her's (p 128 - 129), Her portraits
  of Blanche, herself, (166) Rochester (244),
  Rosamund (390-1)
• Her imagery
• Character of other-world - an "almost unearthly
  thing" who "comes from the other world" like a
  "fairy, and come from Elf-land".
• As bird (143, 327, 339, 368 )

22

• Her doubles
• Bertha Mason (298) - Jane's "truest and darkest
  double" (Gilbert Gubar 360)
• Bertha Mason, whom Gilbert and Gubar call "the
  madwoman in the attic", appears hideous because
  she is desexed and animalistic. Still, she is
  lucid enough to attack only those who have
  contributed to her imprisonment.. Her madness is
  hereditary but linked to her sexuality. Mental
  illness as product of degenerative sexual origin
  i.e. VD. As Jane's Double, she represent s Jane's
  Id. Socially acceptable passive "feminine" self
  vs suppressed mad monstrous self
• Other characters e.g. Eliza and Georgiana, Helen
  Burns, Ms Temple, Blanche Ingram, Mary and Diana
• All the characters are to some extent
  "projections or fragments of Jane and provide
  both reflections and alternatives to Jane's self.
  Characters are called into being or eliminated in
  response to Jane's phase of development.
• Rochester "all were familiar to me as my own face
  in a glass" (210), refers to Jane as his "second
  self ... equal likeness."
• Her mirror images (Red Room, before wedding)
• Other characters' observations of her
• Rochester (135, 139), St John (396)

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• WOMAN'S IDENTITY Jane Eyre as Governess
• As part of the "anathematized race" (Ch 17), the
  governess was a "tabooed woman" who was seen as
  someone who transgressed the social barriers of
  class, family and gender roles. Working women
  challenged notion that women would be content at
  home given a central familial role that
  approximates that of wife and mother but is still
  marginalised, as she is part of the household and
  not of the family.
• As a female domestic labourer, her androgyny
  located herself inside and outside both male
  society and the home.
• Neither mistress nor servant, wife nor nanny,
  gentlewoman nor a working class destitute, the
  governess was a "source of cultural anxiety" that
  contested the role definitions of women in
  Victorian society.
• As disciplinarian-nurturer, the governess' task
  of policing the undue assertiveness or sexuality
  of her charges required that she herself be
  sexually repressed or neutral.

24
Auto-Bio-graphy

• Jane Eyre as Bildungsroman - "education novel" -
  which traced the protagonist from childhood to
  maturity.
• THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS THE STORY OF THE SELF
• is a means to know and express the self through
  introspection and
• narrative.
• serves the objectives of self-definition,
  self-knowledge and self-defence.
• crystallises the definitive self that it
  envisions and brings that self into being
• The narrator's control of the narrative
  represents not only his control of the narrative
  of his life, but how others view the self through
  that narrative.
• An autobiography not only describes what happened
  but how the biographer became what she is
  presently because of what happened to her in the
  past. However, when memory is turned into
  narrative, retrospection may not be what actually
  happened but what the autobiographer remembers or
  re-writes as her history.

25
Janes voice

• Her voice is her self. Her narrative is her story
  and is, thus, an expression of her identity.
• Begins with her first experience of
  self-expression. This marks her first significant
  revolution against oppression. This revolt is
  particularly described in vocal and linguistic
  terms.
• Despite being told to remain silent "until you
  can speak pleasantly", she declares aloud the
  unspeakable parallels she had drawn in silence
  from her reading. "Speak I must" and as she does,
  she develops "a new way of talking". Modelling
  herself after Helen Burns and Miss Temple, she
  begins "to arrange coherently what I had to say"
  and learns that "thus restrained and simplified,
  her story sounded more credible I felt that as
  I went on Miss Temple fully believed me". Jane
  learns to control her tongue, and thus her
  narrative voice. By controlling her narrative,
  she masters herself and begins to contain and
  order her life. The socialisation of Jane's
  narrative style empowers her to wield this
  "weapon of defence". Jane develops from a child
  whose "tongue pronounced words without my will
  consenting to their utterance" to Rochester's
  translator "putting into words what light could
  no longer stamp on his eye". Just as "he saw
  books through me", the reader sees the events of
  the novel through her.

26
Jane and the Reader

• Jane's apostrophes to the "Reader" encourages
  intimacy and trust, but this hinders the reader
  from identifying or sympathising with anyone
  except Jane.
• Her apostrophes consciously call the reader's
  attention from the events of the narration to the
  reader/writer relationship and the act of
  storytelling itself. This creates a double
  perspective with the reader watching the writer
  in the task of producing the narrative. The
  narrative consciousness of Jane is demonstrated
  when she relates her dreams to both Rochester and
  the reader concurrently.

27
The hyper-narrative

• Her narrative subordinates all other narratives.
• XV XXVII Rochester's account of his past
• XXI Mrs Reed's death-bed retrospective
• XXXIII St John River's account of Jane's history
• XXXVI Ex-butler's account of the fire
• Although it is evident that the narrative has
  been mediated, expurgated and censored, the
  reader is not intended to suspect or question the
  reliability of the narrator when, in truth, all
  the voices in the novel are sifted and, thus,
  governed by Jane.
• The narrative, the demonstration of Jane's
  ability to express herself, becomes the means by
  which Jane's self controls and dominates the
  characters in her story.
• "Jane's struggle to resist domination by others
  is perhaps the one constant in her life"
  (Benvenuto 634). Instead, the other characters
  and their perspectives are marginalised and
  silenced (e.g. BM). Their words are bestowed upon
  them by the writing voice. Just as her self
  dominates the others, her narrative overwhelms
  their voices and commands the response of the
  reader.

28
Ms Chuas notes
29
FEMINIST THEORY
Womens movement of the 1960s Fought for
Equality for women. Now emphasis and
exploration of the differences between women and
men
Virginia Woolf A Room of Ones Own (1929) Betty
Friedan The Feminine Mystique (1963) Simone de
Beauvoir The 2nd Sex (1952) Adrienne Rich Of
Woman Born (1976) Dale Spender Man Made
Language (1980)
30
Virginia Woolf A Room of Ones Own
Focus The reprehensible poverty of our
sex -Economically Women denied the right, by
law, to possess what they earned. -Socially
Women denied the right into university libraries,
unless accompanied by a letter by senior member
of the male university staff. -Historically
the past has an almost religious permanance.
It is sacrilege to change it. Response
lock up your libraries if you like but there is
no gate, no lock, no bolt you can set upon the
freedom of my mind
31
Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique
Focus The problem that has no name -Identity
a) Limited Solely defined by role as housewife
and mother. Marriage as live burial, reduction
of woman to property. I want something more
than my husband and my children and my home.
(Friedan) Should be contributing daily and
hourly to the comfort of husbands, of parents, of
brothers and sisters . . . in the intercourse of
domestic life (Thomas Gisborne, 1797, Enquiries
into the Duties of the Female sex) b) Always
in-relation to someone else other than yourself.
Either, my husbands wife or my childrens
mother c) Lack of a Private image bombardment
by mass media with glossy public images that
defy reason and have little to do with women
themselves.
32
Characteristic Images in Fairy Tales Sleeping
Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood.
Effects of this androcentric culture (incl mass
media) that does not permit women to accept or
gratify their basic need to grow and fulfil their
potentialities as human beings ? a stunting or
erasure of growth
SO WHAT IS WOMAN? 1) ambivalence will seem an
intrinsic quality of the eternal feminine
(Simone de Beauvoir) 2) 2 extremes
33
Adrienne Rich Of Woman Born
Focus 1 Institutionalised Motherhood serves the
interest of the patriarchy. She exemplifies in 1
person religion, social conscience and
nationalism. 19th 20th century ideal immured
in the home, Mother ?angelic love, symbolic of
moral values and tenderness. separation of home
from the mans world ? isolation, burden,
guilt. Must have self control temper was a
dark wicked blotch //s to slavery no other
calling except motherhood open to her. Planters
commanded women and kids to have children, or
threat of flogging.
34

• Focus 2 Oppression couched in religious terms
• the worlds redeeming influence welfare of men
  and children was the mission of women
• YET
• the 1st in the transgression the 1st offender,
  the polluted one, the polluter

35
Dale Spender Man Made Language
Focus 1 r/s between language, reality,
thought -Edward Sapir We see and hear and
otherwise experience very largely as we do
because the language habits of our community
predispose certain choices of interpretation Lan
guage is a guide to social reality . . . It
powerfully conditions all our thinking about
social problems and processes -Wittengenstein
the limit of my language is the limit of my
world
36

• Focus 2 There is sexism in language that
  enhances the position of males, and males have
  had control over ways in which things are
  represented.
• -eg Man as an ambiguous term species, or the
  male of the species ? promotes androcentric
  thinking
• Man as unable to encompass all aspects of human
  activities areas of discord
• eg Man devotes more than 40 hrs to
  housework
• Man lives an isolated life when engaged in
  child rearing in our society

37
The male becomes the universal category, the
norm, the dominant group projecting meaning into
existence, making his subjective meanings the
decreed reality
1553 Mr Wilson it is more natural to place the
man before the woman Joshua Poole it is not
only natural . . . It is also proper because .
. . The male gender is the worthier
gender 1746 John Kirkby the male gender is
more comprehensive than the female.
38

• Response
• Silence a) as lack, or b) as resistance (inner
  dialogues)
• adopt language
• Produce something other, a discourse not
  controlled by the patriarchal order, a discourse
  that does not confirm to male rules of logic
• -Feminists investigate mirror images, secret
  codes, dreams and stories of identity they are
  drawn to unconventional grammar, and other
  experimental techniques.
• -stress ambiguity and open endings. Seek double
  meaning

39
RE-VISIONING An oppressed group must at once
shatter the self-reflecting world which encircles
it and, at the same time, project its own image
onto history. In order to discover its own
identity as distinct from that of the oppressor,
it has to become visible to itself. All
revolutionary movements create their own way of
seeing (Catharine MacKinnon 1989)
40
AUTHORSHIP Latinate auctor originator,
founder, creator Reactions a female writer,
like a female warrier, was considered a kind of
eccentric being that deviated, however
illustriously, from her due sphere of motion . .
. The revolution of years has now produced a
generation of Amazons of the pen, who . . Has set
masculine tyranny at defiance, asserted their
claim to the regions of science, and seem
resolved to contest the usurpation of
virility (Dr Samuel Johnson 1963) Writing as
unnatural, independent and active.
41

• The Female Gothic is
• - essentially formless . . . It frequently uses
  a narrative form which questions the validity of
  the narration itself. (Juliann Fleenor, 1987)
• Transgressive lays the female heart open to
  public view // to public undressing ? voyeuristic
  invitation to reader.
• Images the enclosed space (repression and
  frustration), veils, costumes, mirrors,
  paintings, the castle (preserve folk and fairy
  lore).