Page 54 - All About History - Issue 70-18

Gothic literature

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)

A multifaceted American writer and feminist icon

Gilman’s haunting novella The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), She suffered from postpartum depression following
about a woman confined to her bedroom, draws on the birth of her daughter Katharine, and underwent
her own experience of mental illness. the controversial ‘rest cure’, which prohibited
intellectual stimulation and most exercise. Her tale
features Gothic themes to explore the protagonist’s
heightening distress. The room’s sense of a prison –
including barred windows – links to the motif of the
insane asylum, and Gilman’s language is ambiguous
as to whether the events are grounded in reality or
the supernatural. The movements of the “repellent”
wallpaper as seen by the woman synchronise with
her deterioration. Gothic ideas are also evident in the
novella’s ending. Consciously reversing the Gothic
scene of a heroine fainting out of terror, Gilman has
her protagonist’s husband faint upon seeing his wife.
Today Gilman is celebrated as a feminist icon – she
divorced her husband (sending their daughter to
live with him and his second wife), entered into a
happy marriage with her first cousin, and dedicated “There are things in that
herself to the women’s suffrage campaign. The Yellow paper that nobody knows
Though best remembered for her grim Wallpaper’s slim size in no way diminished its stature
tale The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman also – the novella’s message about the unrealistic domestic but me, or ever will.”
wrote utopian feminist stories
expectations placed on women inspired many. The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Smith

(1749-1806)

William Wordsworth was a fan of the poet and novelist

Charlotte Smith embarked on her career as a Another device was that of the ‘wanderer’ figure
‘gentlewoman poet’, and her success gave her the as a means of exploring social issues. In The Old
confidence to publish prose under her own name. Manor House (1793), Orlando Somerive’s travels in
Like Ann Radcliffe, her novels were satirised America lead him to become opposed to imperialism
by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey. Smith often and slavery. While, as above, Smith did later criticise
incorporated the Gothic setting of the manor house slavery, she had also benefited from its existence –
– which has been suggested was a metaphor for the her husband Benjamin was
nation – and it was argued that she used the form of the son of an East India
the courtship novel to criticise primogeniture laws. Company director, who owned
plantations in Barbados, and
his and Smith’s annual income
had depended on slave labour.
Smith also became a vocal
supporter of the French
“Silene, who declines The Republic, but later altered

garish noontide’s blazing her opinion as a result of the
Smith’s
Eventually
Terror.
light; But when the evening popularity declined, but she
crescent shines, Gives all was remembered by William
her sweetness to the night.” Wordsworth as “a lady to
The Horologe of Smith’s novel Celestina whom English verse is under greater
obligations than are likely to be either
the Fields challenged gender assumptions acknowledged or remembered”.

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