Graduation Term
2021
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Department of English
Committee Chair
Katherine Ellison
Abstract
This thesis investigates the distinction between terror and horror that Robert Hume first established in his 1969 article on categories of the gothic novel, a distinction that I redefine as a scholar working after the #Metoo movement and broader cultural recognition of the terror that women face in their everyday lives. “Terror” illustrates the sustained sensations produced in women’s lives as powerless and marginalized. Eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twenty-first-century women writers of the gothic, including Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, depict female characters who overcome terror through domestic, scientific and medical, familial, experiential, cultural, and academic education. Linking recent feminist recuperations of the gothic to foundational conversations about gender in the genre, this thesis expands the idea of education as a defense from terror and argues that the gothic form was and is a kind of pedagogy.
Access Type
Thesis-Open Access
Recommended Citation
Borland, Faith, "The Pedagogy of Terror: Women's Education in the Gothic Novel" (2021). Theses and Dissertations. 1352.
https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/1352
DOI
https://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2021.20210719070603170676.95