Description
Book SynopsisRoyce Mahawatte critically compares the frightening, startling and melodramatic moments in George Eliot's fiction with excerpts from Gothic and sensation novels and in doing so argues that suspenseful plotting, and Gothic figures and tropes, play a role within Eliot's ambitions for the Victorian novel.
Trade ReviewIn this highly engaging book, Royce Mahawatte takes on the great icon of Victorian literary realism, George Eliot, and presents a nuanced and compelling argument for reading her work alongside Gothic fiction. By teasing out the complex and contradictory relationship Eliot had with the Gothic novel, Mahawatte not only offers a fresh take on Eliot's work, but also greatly expands our understanding of the part Gothic played in Victorian literary culture. Dr. Catherine Spooner, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Lancaster University
Table of ContentsIntroduction: 'half-womanish, half-ghostly'- George Eliot and the inheritance of the Gothic Part one: reimagining the genres of feeling 1. 'there was a demon in me': 'Janet's Repentence' and the evangelical Gothic 2. 'with two names written on it': sensation narratives in Adam Bede 3. 'of one texture with the rest of my existence': 'The Lifted Veil' and the tale of the supernatural Part two: uncanny women, fearing men 4. Counterfeit Gothic heroines in The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch 5. Romola and Felix Holt, The Radical: the pursuit of Gothic men Finale: Daniel Deronda - sensationalised society, gothicized self
