Contextualizing the Female Gothic: A Feminist Criticism Study of “The Bloody Chamber” and Bodily Harm

Abstract

Female Gothic fiction is a sub-genre of Gothic literature, primarily authored by women and focusing on women’s experiences, desires and fears, particularly within domestic and patriarchal setting. Therefore, the female experience can be addressed in relation to gothic atmosphere and its setting that is filled with violence and menace, affecting women’s subjectivities and role in society. The Gothic conventions, however, are used in female gothic fiction to explore women’s experiences under the patriarchal violence and unfold the anxieties about their power, identity and freedom. Yet, this function of the female gothic can only be understood through contextualizing. And thus, this paper examines Susanne Becker’s (1999) contextualizing through experience, excess and escape of the female characters in female gothic fiction. As a case study, it focuses on the female gothics Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” and Margaret Atwood’s Bodily Harm from a feminist perspective. As a result, this paper essentially intends to show how both Carter and Atwood make use of the gothic setting and contextualize the female gothic in order to challenge the patriarchal objectification and victimization. They are either de/re familiarize or displace their heroines’ experience through irony, reconciliation parody and escape to eventually reclaim/reconstruct their subjectivity, role in society and liberty.