ABSENT MOTHERS AND GHOSTLY DOUBLES IN DIANE SETTERFIELD’S THE THIRTEENTH TALE

Abstract

Neo-Victorian literature recontextualises popular Victorian tropes and re-examines fictional and historical Victoriana’s place within today’s larger culture. Contemporary neo-Victorian narratives often repurpose Gothic motifs, whose unsettling nature illustrates our own ambivalent attitudes towards the Victorians and the cultural heritage they left behind. This paper analyses Diane Setterfield’s debut novel The Thirteenth Tale (2006), positing it as a neo-Victorian Gothic text and paying special attention to the motifs of doubles and motherlessness, so as to examine the ideas of identity, origin and belonging that permeate this novel on the thematic and narrative level. Particular emphasis is also placed on intertextual relationships The Thirteenth Tale fosters with codifying Victorian Gothic texts, especially Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The rich intertextuality of The Thirteenth Tale demonstrates that the novel is ultimately a story about stories and storytelling, a quintessential neo-Victorian text which re-evaluates the Victorian era’s cultural, historical and literary legacy.