Tainted love : portrayals of sexuality in selected gothic novels

Abstract

Through the history of humanity, except for only a few matriarchal societies, women were seen as inferior to men; thus, females had to behave in a certain way in order to please their men. During the nineteenth century, women strived to follow a set of rules known as The Cult of True Womanhood in order to fulfil the criteria for being good wife material. Women were seen as the heart of the family, pure and virginal, often put on a pedestal, out of reach. Women were never seen as sexual beings, but as 'The Angel[s] in the House', as described in the poem by Coventry Patmore, written between 1854 and 1862. Subsequently, women were viewed as either pure beings, or 'fallen women', by a society ruled by men. Using three Gothic novels, in my dissertation I will portray different aspects of female sexuality, including the split between the pure and impure being, women's repressed sexuality and the male fear of women whose sexuality was developed and expressed. Thus, in the Introduction I will give a background on Victorian women and how they were seen by males. Moreover, I will discuss the emergence of the New Woman in contrast to the women who followed The Cult of True Womanhood. In Chapter One I will mainly discuss the repression of women by a patriarchal society in Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. In Chapter Two I will further my discussion on the effect a patriarchal society has on women, but also on how men felt threatened by sexually unrepressed females in Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. In the Third Chapter, by using examples from Bram Stoker's Dracula, I will point out different portrayals and images of sexually repressed and sexually unrepressed women and how they were seen by Victorian men. To conclude, I will link all three novels together.