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.

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.

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