Subjects of slavery, agents of history: Women and power in female gothic novels and slave narratives, 1790-1865.

摘要

This dissertation compares how two marginalized genres of women's writing represent women's subjection to and resistance to oppression. The introduction examines the long record of patriarchal and feminist rhetoric that compares nominally free women to slaves. Part One analyzes the historical contexts in which Gothic novels and slave narratives were written. Between 1790 and 1865, male Gothic novelists typically lingered over detailed descriptions of sexual sadism, gore and death, and located evil in the "other" (women, Catholics, Jews and devils). In contrast, female Gothic novelists uncovered the terror of the familiar: the routine brutality and injustice of the patriarchal family, conventional religion, and the intersecting oppressions of gender and class. During the same period, ex-slave women in America wrote narratives exposing the "all-pervading corruption" of southern slavery. Their texts challenged white women to repudiate their complicity in a racist culture and to join with their black sisters in a war against the "peculiar institution." Both Gothic novels and slave narratives suggest that although women are victims and mediators of the dominant order, they also can become agents of historical change.;Part Two maps the labyrinths of terror in which Gothic heroines and slave narrators are trapped. The protagonists fear that no space is safe; their bodies and minds are constantly threatened by male domination. Part Three focuses on how the texts represent relations between women of different races and classes. Part Four explores the ways that Gothic heroines and slave women resisted subjugation. Moments of escape from the horrors of patriarchal domination provide the protagonists with essential periods of respite from pain. The conclusion argues that if escape were complete and enduring, it would provide satisfying closure for the texts. However, because the authors insist that escape is never more than temporary, the problem of how to end their narratives, how to rescue their protagonists from terror, threatens their powers of representation.