Sublime Madonna or bleeding nun? Virtually (virtuously) monstrous females in male gothic fiction

Abstract

Victorian feminist critique has often outlined the split representation of woman as either angelic or monstrous throughout the literary tradition. This study aims to provide an overview of this dichotomy through a Gothic lens, with male Gothic fiction being of central focus. However, whilst female characters often adhere to one side of this incompatible spectrum, the Victorian Gothic genre is often seen to depict women who cannot fully commit to one polarity, a result of the innumerable social anxieties that pervaded Victorian society. These ambivalent women are able to transform and embody traits associated both with the virginal ideal and the monstrous she-devil, making them both physically and psychologically liminal. Moreover, it is arguably pertinent to analyse these metamorphic women in light of surrounding social anxieties, consequently revealing how such literary ambivalence correlates with the fear of fractured human identities within the fin-de-sièclein particular. In this view, the first chapter examines principal differences between what critics suggest to be female and male-penned Gothic works, ultimately revealing how the male Gothic is particularly inclined to illustrating metamorphic females within their texts. The second and third chapters narrow down the focus to Arthur Machen’s The Great God Panand Bram Stoker’sDracula,both portraying highly liminal female characters, whilst also tracing social factors such as socio-medical discourse, degeneration theory and the emergence of the New Woman. All these factors arguably share a significant role in the depiction of virtually monstrouswomen who are not born as such, but made.