Women in gothic fiction: Depiction of female figures in horror stories

Abstract

Emerged as a reaction to the strict laws, firm regulations and scientific reasoning of the Enlightment Era, Gothic literature is accepted as the darker strain, developed during the Romantic Period in the 18th century. The authors of Gothic literature tended to create terror and suspense with the uncanny, supernatural, spiritual, and irrational elements to replace order and accepted beliefs of the Age of Reason. Gothic fiction possesses certain traits: setting as the abandoned castles, cemeteries, towers, isolated churches; mysterious and gloomy atmosphere; the use of supernatural powers such as witches, vampires, ghosts or spirits; magic, mystery and curse. Although as a genre, gothic has been associated with men, women gain crucial roles in horror stories in literature of the western and Turkish cultures. There are various epithets attributed to female characters in gothic fiction: damsels in distress, victims, domestic governesses, evils, predators or prisoners; however, in this study, victims and femme fatales in horror narration are comparatively analyzed. Within this scope, examples from western and Turkish literatures were chosen for the analysis to specify the similarities among gothic female literary characters. Based on the analysis, it could be concluded that while the victims are forced to struggle with the evil forces to resist patriarchy, femme fatale gothic figures create them to challenge patriarchy.