Document Type
Article
Language
eng
Publication Date
4-1992
Publisher
University of Texas Press
Source Publication
Journal of the History of Sexuality
Source ISSN
1043-4070
Abstract
Kate Ellis's purpose in The Contested Castle is to examine the relationship between two "epi-phenomena 0f middle-class culture the idealization of the home and the popularity of the Gothic"( pp. ix-x). According to Ellis, the point of connection between the two is the female reader a newly empowered figure, eagerly courted by publishers for her discretionary time and income. The new gothic novels that these women read so voraciously however did not simply reinforce the gender construction that late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century capitalist culture preferred. The gothic novel also worked to subvert those constructions, particularly the ideology that imprisoned middle-class women in their homes like so many captives in a fictitious paradise regained.
Recommended Citation
Hoeveler, Diane, "Review of The Contested Castle: The Gothic Novel and the Subversion of the Domestic Ideology by Kate Ellis" (1992). English Faculty Research and Publications. 66.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/english_fac/66
Comments
Accepted version. Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 2, No. 4 (April 1992): 658-660. Permalink. © 1992 University of Texas Press. Used with permission.