Abstract
Abstract Perhaps no other genre is as intrinsically linked, in the popular imagination, with the iconography of the persecuted heroine fleeing from her villainous oppressors as that which has been dubbed “the female gothic.” This chapter compares the string of runaway-woman novels penned by the female gothic’s first and most influential author, Ann Radcliffe, to novels written by two of her best-known contemporaries, Mary Wollstonecraft and Frances Burney. As the subtitles of Wollstonecraft’s Maria; or, the Wrongs of Woman (1798) and Burney’s The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (1814) make clear, both are centrally concerned with the subject of female adversity—specifically, in both cases, the adversity faced by women fleeing from abusive husbands. By harnessing the affective power of the genre that Radcliffe made so popular in the years leading up to their composition, Maria and The Wanderer introduce new shades of darkness and terror to their authors’ career-long critiques of gendered injustice.
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