Monstrous Marriage: Re-Evaluating Consent, Coverture, and Divorce in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Gothic Fiction
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation demonstrates that a study of nineteenth-century Gothic fiction can broaden our understanding of the ways in which women were imprisoned by period marriage laws. These novelists perpetuated women’s blossoming dissatisfaction with marriage and with ideals of gender encoded by law. My examination offers insight into how nineteenth-century authors of Gothic fiction used their literature as a feminist discourse to shift accepted social views of women’s position in marriage. This study concentrates on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, and Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I examine these works in light of consent and the law of coverture, as well as social expectations that create false narratives about ideal marriages. The intersection of matrimonial laws and Gothic conventions allowed women writers to imagine frightening scenarios in which consent is questioned, in which coverture is exposed as inhumane, and in which abuse, both physical and emotional, is detailed. Readers act as witnesses to abuse that the law does not acknowledge. Sometimes, the wedded ideal contradicts reality in these novels, portraying scenarios that the law needs to address. These novels transform the Gothic Romance into the Domestic Gothic, substituting Gothic monsters with cruel husbands, haunted castles with the home, and the horror, dread, and suspense, of living in an abusive marriage. They challenge the cultural belief that the institution is a haven for women and that self-sacrifice and submission are women’s most valued attributes. These novels disrupt the middle class domestic ideal that is so prevalent in women’s fiction and they challenge the logic behind the law of coverture. The authors used Gothic conventions because they offered a method to express those frustrations. The Gothic genre is also important because its popularity allowed the women’s social discourse to reach a wider audience and to capt…
abstract: This dissertation demonstrates that a study of nineteenth-century Gothic fiction can broaden our understanding of the ways in which women were imprisoned by period marriage laws. These novelists perpetuated women’s blossoming dissatisfaction with marriage and with ideals of gender encoded by law. My examination offers insight into how nineteenth-century authors of Gothic fiction used their literature as a feminist discourse to shift accepted social views of women’s position in marriage. This study concentrates on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, and Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I examine these works in light of consent and the law of coverture, as well as social expectations that create false narratives about ideal marriages. The intersection of matrimonial laws and Gothic conventions allowed women writers to imagine frightening scenarios in which consent is questioned, in which coverture is exposed as inhumane, and in which abuse, both physical and emotional, is detailed. Readers act as witnesses to abuse that the law does not acknowledge. Sometimes, the wedded ideal contradicts reality in these novels, portraying scenarios that the law needs to address. These novels transform the Gothic Romance into the Domestic Gothic, substituting Gothic monsters with cruel husbands, haunted castles with the home, and the horror, dread, and suspense, of living in an abusive marriage. They challenge the cultural belief that the institution is a haven for women and that self-sacrifice and submission are women’s most valued attributes. These novels disrupt the middle class domestic ideal that is so prevalent in women’s fiction and they challenge the logic behind the law of coverture. The authors used Gothic conventions because they offered a method to express those frustrations. The Gothic genre is also important because its popularity allowed the women’s social discourse to reach a wider audience and to capt…
author: Lay, Samantha
language: eng
keywords: Gothic, Marriage
date published: 2015-05
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:31:59Z
provider: University of Houston
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Houston

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/10657/1145