Published in 1990
368 pages
Eugenia C. DeLamotte is Associate Professor of English, Arizona State University.
What is this book about?
This 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.
