Primary Sources:
- Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
- The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
- The Italian by Ann Radcliffe
Keywords:
- Heroine
- Female Gothic
- Trope
Journal to Survey:
- Gothic Studies
Secondary Sources:
- Contesting the Gothic : Fiction, Genre and Cultural Conflict, 1764–1832 by James Watt
- The History of Gothic Fiction by Markman Ellis
- “Gothic Success and Gothic Failure” in The Cambridge History of the English Novel by George Haggerty
- The Making of Jane Austen by Devony Looser
- The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare by Helen Cooper
- Literary Character: The Human Figure in Early Writing by Elizabeth Fowler
- “Northanger Abbey, Gothic Parody, and the History of the Fictional Female Detective” by Elizabeth Veisz
- “Catherine Morland’s Gothic Delusions: A Defense of ‘Northanger Abbey’” by Waldo S. Glock
- “John Thorpe, Villain Ordinaire: The Modern Montoni/Schedoni” by Nancy Yee
- “Grad School Gothic: The Mysteries of Udolpho and the Academic #MeToo Movement” by Anna Williams
My thesis interest currently lies in analyzing how Catherine Morland of Northanger Abbey conforms, resists, and overall comments on the female gothic heroine as popularized by her in-text idol, Ann Radcliffe. So, to understand Catherine, I must understand her literary idols, namely The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian. Yet, the frameworks based on the Radcliffian heroine often simultaneously empower and misogynistically denigrate women- and not actually too different from modern popular “girl” books like Twilight and those by Sarah J Maas, situating my project in character tropes resonances broader than the 18th century. I want to explore these tensions, and the implications of what it means to explore those in a Gothic setting, and refract them onto the “realistic” setting of Northanger Abbey.
My research will start to address these varying angles. This will mean reviewing articles with a sharper lens for the literary element central to my interests: characterization. Many of these articles I found or read while abroad last year (and will thus have to get many ILLs), but the 5-page limitation for essays meant I could not really tease out all their implications. I also discovered Gothic Studies last year, and found it helpful to consider the Gothic in broader genre and temporal contexts. Since I want to understand Radcliffe and Austen contextually, I will read Items 1-3 to understand the genre and historical context the works were produced in. Similarly, after talking with Professor Sider Jost, I will also look at Item 5 to examine how Austen’s own literary taste developed. I would also like to further research biographies of Radcliffe to understand how she navigated female authorship.
Items 5-6 were contributions from Professor Skalak as I explained that I wanted to do a Gothic character study, rather than a Jane Austen study, making these medieval-centric books on character tropes applicable to my interests. Radcliffian and other early Gothic characters are just as uncanny as the inhabited settings, making these books a useful lens to consider the sociopolitical purpose of adhering more to tropes than in-depth psychology.
My remaining items are also developed from prior research, and will help me think about the direction I want to discuss Catherine as a Gothic and “Realistic” character. For the uncanny does reflect life, even if in a nightmarish outsized version, which Item 9 relates to even the modern day. In turn, I will use this in concert with the Northanger-centric sources to consider Catherine’s patriarchy struggles and how Gothic novels help and harm this social navigation.
Overall, I want my thesis project to consider what goes into crafting a heroine rather than a “hero.” What makes Emily St. Aubert of Mysteries of Udolpho a heroine, and how does that cohere with other contemporary gothic novels like The Castle of Otranto? How does this understanding of heroinism relate to Catherine’s character development and conceptualization? Ultimately, what does this say about media and identity formation, and how that may help or harm us?