Role of Women in Gothic Fiction

Discuss the difficulties women face in the Gothic short stories and novel, their roles, relation them and why it’s bad.

Discuss the difficulties women face in the Gothic short stories and novel. Analyze what the Gothic genre suggests about women in a patriarchal world, women’s status and privilege (or lack of it), women’s fears, women’s situation in the home, women’s sexuality, or alternatively, middle-class fears of immodest, powerful or immoral women. Are these narratives repressive or subversive in their depiction of women? Do they suggest, as one critic explains “a fear of (female) sexuality itself as a demonic force, that, awakened by one fatal kiss, can change one utterly and irreversibly”? Or, in their transgressive and subversive properties, do these narratives open up new perceptions gender roles and sexuality for both men and women, but especially for women?