Perils of the Night: A Feminist Study of Nineteenth-Century GothicThis book argues that the source of Gothic terror is anxiety about the boundaries of the self: a double fear of separateness and unity that has had a special significance for women writers and readers. Exploring the psychological, religious, and epistemological context of this anxiety, DeLamotte argues that the Gothic vision focuses simultaneously on the private demons of the psyche and the social realities that helped to shape them. Her analysis includes works of English and American authors, among them Henry James, Mary Shelley, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, and a number of often neglected popular women Gothicists. |
Other editions - View all
Perils of the Night: A Feminist Study of Nineteenth-century Gothic Eugenia C. DeLamotte Limited preview - 1990 |
Common terms and phrases
alien Ann Radcliffe barriers blank boundaries castle Charlotte Brontë confinement conscious context danger dark door dream Emily Emily Brontë Emily's escape evil experience fact father fear female final forces genre ghost Gilbert and Gubar Ginevra Gothic fiction Gothic heroine Gothic Novel Gothic romance Gothic tradition Gothicists Graham haunted haunted mind Hawthorne Hawthorne's heart Heathcliff hero heroine's hidden Hilda's horror human identity imagination inner innocence Isabel Jane Eyre Jane's Justine Marie knowledge Lévy locked Lockwood Lucy Lucy's marriage Maturin Melmoth Melmoth the Wanderer Melville mind Miriam Moby-Dick Montorio moral Mysteries of Udolpho narrative nature nightmare passion Paul perils Pierre Pierre's prison psychological Radcliffe Radcliffe's reader relation repetition represents revealed Rochester says scene secret seems self-defense sense sexual shut Sicilian Romance social soul story sublime supernatural terror theme things Thornfield transcendence unity Univ veil villain Villette vision woman women women's Gothic writers Wuthering Heights Zofloya
Popular passages
Page 110 - Sin has educated Donatello, and elevated him. Is Sin, then — which we deem such a dreadful blackness in the universe — is it, like Sorrow, merely an element of human education, through which we struggle to a higher and purer state than we could otherwise have attained? Did Adam fall, that we might ultimately rise to a far loftier paradise than his?
Page 157 - By marriage the husband and wife are one person in law ; that is the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband ; under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs everything...
Page 125 - Into every intelligence there is a door which is never closed, through which the creator passes. The intellect, seeker of absolute truth, or the heart, lover of absolute good, intervenes for our succor, and at one whisper of these high powers we awake from ineffectual struggles with this nightmare.' We hurl it into its own hell, and cannot again contract ourselves to so base a state.
Page 95 - ... resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceived a staircase ; and upon...
Page 17 - If I climb up into heaven, Thou art there : if I go down to hell, Thou art there also.
Page 128 - In every cloud, in every tree — filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day — I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men and women — my own features — mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!
Page 137 - I'm wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart; but really with it, and in it.
Page 218 - I should still have my unblighted self to turn to: my natural unenslaved feelings with which to communicate in moments of loneliness. There would be recesses in my mind which would be only mine, to which he never came, and sentiments growing there fresh and sheltered which his austerity could never blight, nor his measured warrior-march trample down: but as his...
Page 96 - It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity: there will be no end to this exquisite, horrible misery. When you look forward, you shall see a long forever...