The Animal Within: Masculinity and the Gothic

ISBN-10: 0472109405
ISBN-13: 9780472109401
Category: Social Science / Women's Studies
Pages: 281
Language: English
Published: 1998
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Authors: Cyndy Hendershot, Cynthia Hendershot

Description

As Cyndy Hendershot demonstrates, the Gothic is more a mode than a rigid historical period, an "invasive" tendency that reveals the imaginative limits of social realities and literary techniques far beyond its origins in late eighteenth century Britain. And as she demonstrates in this first scholarly treatment of its kind, one of the continuing obsessions of the Gothic mode is masculinity. Masculinity is in some sense a Gothic castle of the imagination, haunted by fears of the body, science, and angry colonial subjects.
The book's keen critical insight, meticulous close readings and cross-cultural comparisons interrogate the historically situated function of masculinity in texts and films that range across the two-hundred year history of the Gothic. Matthew Lewis's The Monk is compared to Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers to reveal the "hauntedness" of the male body. Hawthorne's short story "The Birthmark" is juxtaposed with J. S. Le Fanu's "Green Tea" to ground the fantastic qualities of the scientific imagination. Conrad's Heart of Darkness converses with Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea about the nature of imperialism. And Jane Campion's film The Piano is figured as an imaginative foray into new forms of masculinity. Utilizing the insights of Lacanian theory, Hendershot demonstrates how the Gothic realm of ghosts, demons, and hidden passages continues to suggest alternative realities to claustrophobic cultural imaginations.
"Masculinity and the Gothic combines solid literary critical insight and close readings in a detailed and lively survey of various manifestations of the gothic within British and American cultural traditions, and admirably explores the connections between various cultural discourses. It will make a fine complement to the numerous recent publications of issues of femininity in the gothic." --Sharon Willis, University of Rochester
Cyndy Hendershot is Assistant Professor of English, Arkansas State University.

Get the book

Similar books

Sex, Gender, and Religion: Josephine Butler Revisited
By Diana Neal
Beresford's step - son , Alexander James Beresford - Hope , was Conservative MP for Maidstone and married Lady Mildred Cecil , sister of the future Prime Minister , Lord Salisbury . He inherited his stepfather's title and estate in 1854 ...
Running as a Woman: Gender and Power in American Politics
By Karen M. Paget, Linda Witt, Glenna Matthews
... and, judging by the strange new media venues, "Saturday Night Live," "Donahue," and gossip columnist Lany King's radio and television call-in shows on which 1992's Losing 245.
Feminism and the Legacy of Revolution: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas
By Karen Kampwirth
Booth, John. 1985. The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution. Boulder: Westview. Booth, John, and Thomas W. Walker. 1989. Understanding Central America. Boulder: Westview Borge, Tomás. 1984. Carlos, the Dawn Ls No Longer ...
Women in Early America: Struggle, Survival, and Freedom in a New World
By Dorothy A. Mays
Acknowledgments I want to give special thanks for support and assistance to: Jane Guthrie, John Auchter, and Kathleen Leighton, who read and helped with portions of the xvi manuscript. Rollins College, for leave time and generous ...
Nature Boys: Camp Discourse in American Literature from Whitman to Wharton
By Mike Perkovich
The Cambridge Companion to Mark Twain . Cambridge : Cambridge UP , 1995 . Rose , Margaret . Parody : Ancient , Modern , and Post - Modern . Literature , Culture , Theory . Cambridge : Cambridge UP , 1993 . Rowe , John Carlos .
Race, Class, and Gender in a Diverse Society: A Text-reader
By Diana Elizabeth Kendall
... Elizabeth Higginbotham , Robert Jensen , and bell hooks . I owe a debt of intellectual gratitude to Jeanne H. Ballantine , Catherine White Berheide , Elizabeth Higginbotham , and Marcia Texler Segal for an xii Preface.
Women Teachers and Feminist Politics, 1900-39
By Alison Oram
At the local level , some NUT associations supported the appointment of headmasters to mixed junior and infant schools.96 The Kent NUT branch requested the Kent Education Committee in 1933 to ensure that vacant headships should go to ...
Women and the Press: The Struggle for Equality
By Patricia Bradley
Helen Campbell In an age of muckraking and of women's involvement in re- form, Helen Campbell's 1886–87 series on poverty for the New York Tribune may not be surprising. But Campbell was writing slightly before the muckraking era was in ...
Women Icons of Popular Music: Carole King ; Madonna ; Sarah McLachlan ; Joni Mitchell ; Dolly Parton ; Liz...
By Carrie Havranek
... 475 Hummin ' to Myself ( Ronstadt ) , 390 The Hunter ( Blondie ) , 169-70 The Hunter ( Ike and Tina Turner Revue ) ... James , 183 , 185 , 186 , 192 " Honeymoon Suite , " 470 Honky Tonk Angel ( Cline , P. ) , 66 Honor ( benefit CD ) ...
Weaving the Past: A History of Latin America's Indigenous Women from the Prehispanic Period to the Present
By Susan Kellogg
Nutini,Hugo G. 1968.San Bernardino Contla: Marriage and Family Structure in aTlax- calan Municipio. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh. Nutini, Hugo G., and Betty Bell. 1980. Ritual Kinship: The Structure and Historical ...