Gothic fiction and the law : conveyance, criminality, and child custody in the Gothic novel, 1764--1866
No Thumbnail Available
Authors
Meeting name
Sponsors
Date
Journal Title
Format
Thesis
Subject
Abstract
This dissertation argues that writers of Gothic fiction during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries engaged purposefully with the law by narrativizing key issues in legal thought. To do so, it reads novels by Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Dacre, and others alongside legal texts such as William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, royal proclamations regarding sedition, and the political pamphlets of Caroline Norton. Chapter one is primarily interested in the portrayal of inheritance, positing that early Gothic writers connected the issue of conveyance to the progression of history. Chapter two turns its attention to the trial during the period of the French Revolution and suggests a link between political sentiment in Britain and the character of the criminal trial. Chapter three steps back from legal mechanisms and instead looks at the emerging nineteenth-century idea of the criminal type and argues that authors might push back against such a notion by championing a didactic quality intrinsic to the Gothic genre. Finally, chapter four considers how the idea of child custody disputes led female writers to construct imagined alternatives in which maternal rights are enshrined. Adding to the burgeoning study of law and literature, the goal of this study is to examine how legal elements were incorporated into the plots of Gothic novels in order to affirm, critique, or suggest changes to the law and legal practices.
Table of Contents
PubMed ID
Degree
Ph. D