Gothic Heroine Roles

The girl’s inner characterization resembles a coming of age character. She develops because of the action and her traits as a child are presented in contrast with her traits as a teenager. This contrast is emphasized using the third-person narrator at the beginning of

“A&P” and “Girl” both symbolized the protagonists’ oppression by an older, more experienced generation. However, Kincaid’s “Girl” was artistic with an undercurrent of selfless love and hope while Updike’s “A&P” was uninspiring with selfishness and lust. The protagonist of “Girl” discouraged her daughter’s dreams out of love. The protagonist of “A & P” encouraged the antagonists’ out of a selfish desire for self-promotion.

Miss Emily is also decaying, but it is subtle and internal--the awful smell that begins to permeate from her dwelling is a reflection of the withering woman within rotting. Perhaps most tragically, Miss Emily’s isolation is far from self-inflicted. Her blind devotion to the ones she loves; her father, her husband, her home; only serves to further condemn her actions. Her neighbors disregard toward her inabilty to let go of her father after his death, despite the delicacy of her being, caused for her madness to fester. “She told them her father was not dead.

Of the genres being explored, gothic fiction in particular has often emphasized the stereotypical damsel in distress. This image of women has generally been depicted by describing them as superficially beautiful, but incompetent in all matters of the mind. In Beautiful and Damned: The Sexual Women in Gothic Fiction, it is stated that fiction often mirrors conservative values (Mussell). At its pique popularity, the gothic genre has been used to escape or deter an increasingly promiscuous world. In gothic works, conservative values have been presented by portrayals of women being unable to sustain from acting on their feelings of lust, and consequently, being punished or defeated. This opposes the heroine archetype of the gothic, whom is generally a more conservative and

Gothic literature has a long and complex history, which has spawned many different subgenres and even helped give rise to new ones altogether. One of the early subgenres of the gothic, was that of the female gothic. Based on the work of Ann Radcliffe, the female gothic takes the dark themes of it’s predecessors, but focuses on a central women figure, that is the heroine of the story. Since its inception, the female gothic has evolved in many ways. Even though it began as a way to reasses the depiction of women, the form still had many ways it could improve, and for the most part, it has, though it took time. A sense of agency was always a problem for women in these tales, and over time female gothics have acted to address this. In the same vein, gothics of old, wanted to reinforce many gender roles, as time passed, this changed for many stories. The major role that gender tended to play in these stories, was that of a male tyrant/monster, and the female prey, but even this was subject to change. In these ways, the female gothic has become something more than just a simple genre. Because of its focus on women, the power of the female gothic, it to give a voice to those who throughout history, didn’t have one.

Early gothic literature would use female stereotypes as literary techniques, usually placing women as a victim or placing them as the dangerous predator that should be avoided. Sometimes the Gothic text would not even include a woman. They were often used as a plot device to generate fear in the reader or audience. Often if the woman was not the victim, then the female ‘predator’ would be hunted and punished for her ‘crimes’. Carter uses gothic elements but seems to turn them upside down, placing women as the main protagonist in texts such as ‘Werewolf’ where the entire story is female dominant. She explores the use of women being victims and instead manifests a fearless, dominant girl. Where gothic texts would have the female predator in

In order to properly view a story from a feminist perspective, it is important that the reader fully understands what the feminist perspective entails. “There are many feminist perspectives, and each perspective uses different approaches to analyze and interpret texts. One is that gender is “socially constructed” and another is that power is distributed unequally on the basis of sex, race, and ethnicity, religion, national origin, age, ability, sexuality, and economic class status” (South University Online, 2011, para. 1). The story “Girl” is an outline of the things young girls

Our final glimpse of Miss Emily before she dies is a picture of a soul which is nearly shut off from life. Now and then the townspeople see her through one of the downstairs windows. The upstairs and that part of her

It seems that nothing bad is possible to say about an honest woman who resembles a ghost. The words “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” describe Emily as a woman of dignity (Faulkner.). In fact, the reader understands that the protagonist’s world of imagination and her eternal secret will belong to the old family house which hides the mystery. Observing its interior covered with dust and darkness, one may think that it is a precise symbol of death. Moreover, the presence of much dust emphasizes Emily’s indifference to the surrounding and the lack of her desire to obey reality including its cruel and relentless laws of life.

In William Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily” his main character Miss Emily Grierson’s deranged behavior leaves the reader questioning her mental status.

author employs this message to show how Emily fails to adapt to inevitable historical and social

The transition from childhood to adulthood for this young girl expresses the power that most men do not realize women contain leading to the advancement of the girl from Little Red Cap. The

Dealing with all the pressure from the outside world. For instance the in-law treat her like she was an old out of style lady. Instead of a young confident woman. This is what the world is starting to realize that women are not old and boring but young and hippie. Also that today’s world widow are speak up and standing for what they deserve. Which is what happen when the widow had to stand for not being taken advantage of by the family down stairs. I made a personal connect with the character Betsy. Betsy is a keep to yourself kind of person also she is the approachable one in her flat. This is me because I don’t go out on the weekend and people seem to ask me about another people then about me. I didn’t related to Christine the other women on the flat. I think that most teenage girls would want to be Christine. The author tells us the that Christine is “tall, slim, and good -looking”(89). Based off of this I thought Christine would only care about the way other people thought of her. But I was wrong she didn’t care about the way other saw her. I wish that I was able to do that right now in life. But I’m like Betsy keep to your-self because of nervous. Lastly connection is how passive women can

Moers’s coinage contributes to the cleavage of the Gothic into male and female. This gendering of this tradition displays the incompatibility between male and female writers who “employ two distinct sets of literary conventions” (Anne Williams 100). Although female gothic shares many of the literary aspects of the male genre, it not only strives to challenge them but also to encumber them with ideas related to women which conveniently leaves the reader with a positive image of female novelists and their vigorous potency to create a their own tradition that conveys their fears and anxieties of incarceration within the private space of domesticity and within the female body. I will go beyond that arguing that Female Gothic differs from the Male formula “both in

Emily behaves the way she does for numerous reasons. She is born into an aristocratic family. Emily is brought up as a Southern belle by her father and is placed on a pedestal by the townspeople. The Grierson’s are known in town for being extremely wealthy and having the nicest house in Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha County. Due to the fact that her father, Mr. Grierson, keeps her isolated and socially restricted as a child, she behaves abnormally. Emily feels as if she is pressured to live up to her father’s expectations. Because Emily is kept away from everything, she is not yet exposed to the real world.