Queer Others in Victorian Gothic: Transgressing Monstrosity (Gothic Literary Studies) - Softcover

Ardel Haefele-Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0708324657 ISBN 13: 9780708324653

Publisher: University of Wales Press, 2012

Synopsis

Queer Others in Victorian Gothic: Transgressing Monstrosity explores the intersections of Gothic, cultural, gender, queer, socio-economic and postcolonial theories in nineteenth-century British representations of sexuality, gender, class and race. From mid-century authors like Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell to fin-de-siècle writers such as J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Florence Marryat and Vernon Lee, this study examines the ways that these Victorian writers utilized gothic horror as a proverbial safe space in which to grapple with taboo social and cultural issues. This work simultaneously explores our current assumptions about a Victorian culture that was monolithic in its disdain for those who were other .

About this title

About the Author

Ardel Haefele-Thomas is a Victorian and Queer Studies scholar who currently holds the position of Chair of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies at City College of San Francisco.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Queer Others in Victorian Gothic

Transgressing Monstrosity

By Ardel Haefele-Thomas

University of Wales Press

Copyright © 2012 Ardel Haefele-Thomas
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7083-2465-3

Contents

Acknowledgements, 
1 Introduction, 
2 The Spinster and the Hijra: How Queers Save Heterosexual Marriage in Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White and The Moonstone, 
3 Escaping Heteronormativity: Queer Family Structures in Elizabeth Gaskell's Lois the Witch and 'The Grey Woman', 
4 Disintegrating Binaries, Disintegrating Bodies: Queer Imperial Transmogrifications in H. Rider Haggard's She, 
5 'One does things abroad that one would not dream of doing in England': Miscegenation and Queer Female Vampirism in J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla and Florence Marryat's The Blood of the Vampire, 
6 In Defence of Her Queer Community: Vernon Lee's Coded Decadent Gothic, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

* * *

The intersections of queer, postcolonial and Gothic theories

A missing Indian diamond. A scaffold in New England. A map of the African interior written on a potsherd. A Jamaican vampire bat. A portrait of an Italian castrato. These are some of the props I have chosen to analyse in Queer Others in Victorian Gothic: Transgressing Monstrosity. The props themselves are only pieces of a larger tropology where queer sexuality, transgender bodies, racial otherness and Gothic horror intersect. Each item signifies a site of crisis as well as a site of transgression in Victorian culture. The Western authorities who search for the unusual Indian diamond cannot find it; rather, it is the biracial, genderqueer 'anti-authority' figure who solves the mystery of the stolen yellow jewel. The New England scaffold becomes a murder site where an American Indian woman and an English woman, clinging to one another as they are conducted out of their dank prison cell, are hung as witches by the power hungry Puritan authorities. The map on the potsherd sends three Britons to the heart of Africa where they discover a 'savage' monarch who appears hauntingly similar to Queen Victoria. The vampire bat represents a conflation of racist and imperialist stereotypes about the Jamaican spiritual practice of obeah, fin-de-siècle worries about hereditary taint and the possibility of queer contagion. And the portrait of the genderqueer, beautiful and 'wicked' Italian castrato seduces and then haunts men and women until they wither and die for want of hearing his decadent voice sing yet another song. In some cases, these props signal the author's use of Gothic to interrogate and subvert Victorian hegemonic ideals regarding sexuality, gender identity, race, empire and nation. In some other instances, the props signify the author's deep ambivalence about how to read the multiple and changing faces of the monstrous 'Other' in the nineteenth century.

This project aims to explore the intersections of Gothic, cultural, gender, queer, socio-economic and postcolonial theories in nineteenth-century British representations of sexuality, gender, class and race. Broadly, Michel Foucault's writings about the violence of the 'Victorian regime' – one that forced anyone who was not bourgeois, white and heterosexual into closeted silence – help set up the framework for understanding the ways that the 'other Victorians' were portrayed. These 'other Victorians' included working-class people, imperial subjects, prostitutes, homosexuals and anyone else who did not fall into the prudish and rigidly structured identity deemed appropriate in the Vic

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0708324657
• ISBN 13: 9780708324653
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224