Women's Gothic from Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley , and: The History of Gothic Fiction (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS307 EJ. Clery. Women's Gothicfrom Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley. Horndon, Tavistock, Devon: Northcote House, 2000. viii + 168pp. £9.99. ISBN 0-7463-0872-8. Markman Ellis. The History of Gothic Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000. ix + 261pp. US$22. ISBN 0-7486-1195-9. EJ. Clery's Women's Gothicfrom Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley and Markman Ellis's TheHistory ofGothicFiction exemplify some recent trends in the study of the Gothic: an historical rather than psychoanalytic approach, an interrogation of the kind of feminist criticism that focuses on patriarchal oppression and on the supposed difference ofwomen's writing, an exploration of the interplay between high and popular culture, and the rejection of a simplistic opposition between the Enlightenment and the Gothic. Clery's book has the clearer and stronger argument; Ellis's reveals the more extensive research and is especially enjoyable to read. Clery begins by focusing on Sarah Siddons in the role of Lady Macbeth. What women Gothicists take from the actor and her signature role is "the Siddonian ideal"—that of "a character elevated beyond the limitations of her sex" (p. 110), in part by exemplifying "the key passion of the modern commercial state"—economic self-interest (p. 19). While Clery sometimes seems overly insistent in bringing in every possible connection to Siddons, overall she is successful in showing that seemingly incidental contact between Gothic writers and Siddons had a crucial impact on their work. Clery, who examines notjust the novel but the whole "variety of Gothic modes" (p. 99), is concerned with the late eighteenth-century resurgence of tragedy and with what she terms "the novelization of tragedy" (p. 41). Ellis begins his book with a discussion of three examples: the London surgeon John Sheldon's coldly scientific mummification of his beloved in 1799, the mystery ofthe black veil from Radcliffe's TheMysteries ofUdolpho, and the conjunction between folklore and science in Fuseli's The Nightmare. Unfortunately, the second example does not inspire reader confidence: Ellis mistakenly cites the passage when Emily St Aubert actually sees a corpse instead ofwhen she mistakes a waxen effigy for a corpse. He more successfully analyses the interplay between public Enlightenment science and hermetic alchemy in Frankenstein's creation ofhis monster, and between enlightened antiquarian research and folk culture in the case of vampire tales. The opposition between folklore and science, moreover, recapitulates the opposition between romance and novel. Ellis argues that die Gothic novel reconciles the two fictional forms, since it "approaches the supernatural as if it can be described or observed in the mode of formal realism" (p. 22). The Gothic functions historically for Ellis by presenting a "contest between rival forms of thought" or by transgressing the boundaries between them (pp. 227, 228). 308 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION15:2 Clery distinguishes "women's Gothic" from "Female Gothic," the latter term referring to the purported preference ofwomen writers for the novel of terror over the novel of horror. Charlotte Dacre is important for Clery's argument, since recent critics have found in Zojloya a rejection ofdie Female Gothic. The concept of "women's Gothic" focuses on "the author's claim to imagination, genius, originality, and on her aim to represent and transmit powerful emotion in a way which . . . responds to the demands and opportunities of the marketplace" (p. 126). Clery, whose favourite word in this book is "affect," claims that what "most crucially characterizes" Gothic literature is the investigation ofthe passions (p. 117). While Markman Ellis retains the category "Female Gothic," he appears to agree that an exploration of the passions is a defining characteristic of the mode. He defines the Gothic as an experimental "tone or mood" deriving from the "culture ofsentimentalism " (pp. 8, 9) and as an unsettling "almost hallucinatory tone" (p. 217), which may residt in "epistemological insecurity" (p. 128). Ellis believes that Matthew Lewis understood the feverish tone of Radcliffe's fiction "as a discourse on the passions" (p. 84). One wonders if it is necessary to de-emphasize didacticism to the extent Clery does in order to focus on the passions. She appears to think that the best way "to help create a market for early women's writing" (p. 24) is...