QUEER GOTHIC NOTES
- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick -founder of the Queer Gothic.
- The Gothic was used as a way to explore existence outside of social norms and
question mainstream versions of normality.
- Queerness marks a character as ‘other’ and therefore makes them a symbol of
fear and a threat to the social order. This ‘other’ often serves a dual function:
they represent both social anxieties and desires as they are often eroticised
- The resistance to queerness, as well as its taboo nature correlates with the
supernatural due to sharing similar characteristics.
- Gothic metaphors like vampirism served as a warning against non-normative
gender expressions and sexual behaviours, however they were also seen to
represent psychological repression and fetishised sexuality.
- Queerness can be seen as a part of the Freudian uncanny, as the concept
explains an eerie feeling when the known and familiar reveals itself to be strange
due to repressed secrets and desires from the past.
-
- Maggie Kilgour explains how Queerness is used in Gothic in order to ensure the
reader feels terror through the ‘momentary subversion of order’, making an
ending restoring the norm more desirable.
- George Haggerty- the Gothic themes of terror, fear and desire hold sexual
undertones that challenge heteronormative structures.
- Stryker argues Queerness was seen as monstrous throughout Gothic literature:
‘outsiders’ often disobey normative standards
- William Patrick Day argues that by the end of the twentieth century, the vampire
had become a figure of ‘liberation from the fear and terror generated by
ignorance or outdated notions of sexuality’. Through Bram Stoker, queer gothic
can arguably be a reflection of the author’s repression
- Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker: vampirism is associated with queerness as a
threatening cautionary figure or an erotic outsider. Through Bram Stoker, queer
gothic can arguably be a reflection of the author’s repression.
- Carmilla (1872) by Sheridan Le Fanu introduces a vampire woman that preys on
innocent and vulnerable young women like Laura - sexualised through intimate
romantic attachments as she feeds on her breasts at night.
- Horace Walpole’s ‘The Castle of Otranto’ (1764) set the notion of Gothic
themes of transgressive sexuality.
- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick -founder of the Queer Gothic.
- The Gothic was used as a way to explore existence outside of social norms and
question mainstream versions of normality.
- Queerness marks a character as ‘other’ and therefore makes them a symbol of
fear and a threat to the social order. This ‘other’ often serves a dual function:
they represent both social anxieties and desires as they are often eroticised
- The resistance to queerness, as well as its taboo nature correlates with the
supernatural due to sharing similar characteristics.
- Gothic metaphors like vampirism served as a warning against non-normative
gender expressions and sexual behaviours, however they were also seen to
represent psychological repression and fetishised sexuality.
- Queerness can be seen as a part of the Freudian uncanny, as the concept
explains an eerie feeling when the known and familiar reveals itself to be strange
due to repressed secrets and desires from the past.
-
- Maggie Kilgour explains how Queerness is used in Gothic in order to ensure the
reader feels terror through the ‘momentary subversion of order’, making an
ending restoring the norm more desirable.
- George Haggerty- the Gothic themes of terror, fear and desire hold sexual
undertones that challenge heteronormative structures.
- Stryker argues Queerness was seen as monstrous throughout Gothic literature:
‘outsiders’ often disobey normative standards
- William Patrick Day argues that by the end of the twentieth century, the vampire
had become a figure of ‘liberation from the fear and terror generated by
ignorance or outdated notions of sexuality’. Through Bram Stoker, queer gothic
can arguably be a reflection of the author’s repression
- Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker: vampirism is associated with queerness as a
threatening cautionary figure or an erotic outsider. Through Bram Stoker, queer
gothic can arguably be a reflection of the author’s repression.
- Carmilla (1872) by Sheridan Le Fanu introduces a vampire woman that preys on
innocent and vulnerable young women like Laura - sexualised through intimate
romantic attachments as she feeds on her breasts at night.
- Horace Walpole’s ‘The Castle of Otranto’ (1764) set the notion of Gothic
themes of transgressive sexuality.
