Reclaiming the Monster: Abjection and Subversion in the Marital Gothic Novel

Abstract: This article explores literary representations of women over the centuries, from the witch of children’s fairy tales to the madwoman of the nineteenth century and the sexually voracious vamp of the twentieth century. Within this context, it examines the gothic novels Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier, 1938) and Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys, 1966) in relation to theories of Julia Kristeva and Margrit Shildrick. Both Kristeva and Shildrick explore the perception of the female form as ‘abject’ and relate this concept to the notion of the ‘monstrous feminine’ in cinema and literature. This article will also examine how these novels have taken the traditional tropes of the gothic genre and subverted them to expose the frustrations of mid-twentieth-century women.The gothic literary genre, initially dominated by male authors, has always been a natural home for both monsters and binary depictions of womanhood. According to Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, this binary view presented women as either

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• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Veröffentlichungsversion ; begutachtet (peer reviewed) ; In: Studies in Arts and Humanities ; 4 (2018) 1 ; 53-72

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Mannheim
• (who): SSOAR, GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften e.V.
• (when): 2018
• Creator: Mitchell, Jane

Further information

• DOI: 10.18193/sah.v4i1.125
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2022090115282038941245
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.