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Introduction

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Contemporary Women's Gothic Fiction

Part of the book series: Palgrave Gothic ((PAGO))

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Abstract

Gina Wisker’s work asks and answers the questions: Why do contemporary women write the Gothic? What are the essential links between feminist perspectives and critiques, and the contemporary Gothic? It begins by establishing a background in historical Gothic writing by women—Gothic revival in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea—and links contemporary women’s Gothic fictions with theories of performance, masquerade, duplicity, and gender as performance. Gina Wisker establishes second-wave feminism’s Gothic challenge to the gendered status quo and rewriting hidden histories and different perceptions. The first chapter introduces Gothic tropes, ghostings and hauntings, vampires and were-creatures to expose horror in the domestic, oppression in the colonial, and cultural constraint perpetuated in narratives including folk and fairytales.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Learning & Teaching, University of Brighton, East Sussex, UK

    Gina Wisker

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  1. Gina Wisker
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Wisker, G. (2016). Introduction. In: Contemporary Women's Gothic Fiction. Palgrave Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-30349-3_1

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