Daughters of the House : Modes of the Gothic in Victorian Fiction

Through innovative and controversial readings of Victorian Gothic and 'sensation' fiction, this book interrogates current feminist assumptions about the relation of women to the private sphere, and reveals the unexpectedly radical potential of this association. It is argued that this potential is an intrinsic aspect of the 'female' Gothic tradition traceable back to Ann Radcliffe. A new typology of 'male' and 'female' Gothic is shown to be relevant to contemporary French feminist debates about sexual difference Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction....Pages 1-24 Breaking and Entering: Wilkie Collins’s Sensation Fiction....Pages 25-53 Hidden and Sought: Wilkie Collins’s Gothic Fiction....Pages 54-79 Housekeepers: Bleak House ....Pages 80-101 Ruination: Little Dorrit ....Pages 102-120 In the Passages of Desire: Great Expectations ....Pages 121-139 ‘Handling the Veil’: Charlotte Brontë....Pages 140-157 The Haunted House: Sheridan Le Fanu....Pages 158-173 Through a Glass Darkly: Uncle Silas ....Pages 174-197 Conclusion: Through the Looking Glass....Pages 198-201 Back Matter....Pages 202-217