Gothic Fiction & The Female Writer: Women who shaped gothic horror

“Gothic fiction” is likely to bring to mind stories involving mystery and horror that feature ruined castles, wild landscapes, haunted portraits, vampires, ghosts and other monsters. But what does it have to do with feminism? This talk traces Gothic fiction from its 18th-century origins to the 1890s and beyond, revealing how women writers used the gothic style to criticise gender inequality.

Join Dr Victoria Margree to explore how female Gothic stories recast the ancient castle – where heroines are imprisoned by villainous men – as a nightmarish version of the family home, where women were expected to obey fathers, husbands, or brothers. Explore how late Victorian era stories like Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) came to criticise the rising women’s liberation movement. The talk concludes by considering the enduring link between Gothic and feminist politics, with a look at a 2024 TV adaptation of a late-Victorian female Gothic ghost story.

Doors open at 7pm, talk starts at 7:30pm - come down early to grab a good seat!

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Speaker Bio:

Dr Victoria Margree is a Principal Lecturer at the University of Brighton, where she teaches literature and philosophy. Her research specialisms include feminist theory and politics, women’s writing, Victorian and neo-Victorian literature, Gothic fiction and ghost stories. She is the author of a book on British Women’s Short Supernatural Fiction, 1860-1890 (Palgrave, 2019) and another on second wave radical feminist Shulamith Firestone (Zero, 2018), and she has co-edited an essay collection on the Victorian / Edwardian popular fiction writer, Richard Marsh (Manchester University Press, 2018). She has been interviewed for podcasts or online events about Richard Marsh, Shulamith Firestone, and M.R. James and Eleanor Scott.

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