The Gothic mode, typically preoccupied by questions of difference and otherness, consistently imagines the Other as a source of grotesque horror. The sixteen critical essays in this collection examine the ways in which those suffering from mental and physical ailments are refigured as Other, and how they are imagined to be monstrous. Together, the essays highlight the Gothic inclination to represent all ailments as visibly monstrous, even those, such as mental illness, which were invisible. Paradoxically, the Other also becomes a pitiful figure, often evoking empathy. This exploration of illness and disability represents a strong addition to Gothic studies.

Ruth Bienstock Anolik teaches at Villanova University and writes extensively on the Gothic mode. Her articles have been published in Modern Language Studies, Studies in Jewish Literature,, and other journals and collections.

Edited by Ruth Bienstock Anolik
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 244
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2010
pISBN: 978-0-7864-3322-3
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5748-9
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      vii
Introduction: Diagnosing Demons: Creating and Disabling the Discourse of Difference in the Gothic Text
RUTH BIENSTOCK ANOLIK      1

PART I: MONSTROUS DEFORMITY: THE HORRIFYING SPECTACLE OF DIFFERENCE
A Space, a Place: Visions of a Disabled Community in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Last Man
PAUL MARCHBANKS      21
“Colossal Vices” and “Terrible Deformities” in George Lippard’s Gothic Nightmare
CYNTHIA HALL      35
Ominous Signs or False Clues? Difference and Deformity in Wilkie Collins’s Sensation Novels
TAMARA S. WAGNER      47
The Dangerous Mr. Casaubon: Gothic Husband and Gothic Monster in Middlemarch
ELIZABETH HALE      61
Folk Medicine, Cunning-Men and Superstition in Thomas Hardy’s “The Withered Arm”
SIMON J. WHITE      68
Lucas Malet’s Subversive Late-Gothic: Humanizing the Monster in The History of Sir Richard Calmady
CATHERINE DELYFER      80
Encounters with the Monster: Self-Haunting in Virginia Woolf ’s “Street Haunting”
TARA SURRY      97

PART II. VISIBLE SPECTERS: HORRIFYING REPRESENTATIONS OF INVISIBLE PATHOLOGY
Revising Ophelia: Representing Madwomen in Baillie’s Orra and Witchcraft
MELISSA WEHLER      110
The Case of the Malnourished Vampyre: The Perils of Passion in John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Coxcomb
CAROLYN D. WILLIAMS      119
“The Monster Vice”: Masturbation, Malady, and Monstrosity in Frankenstein
CHRISTINE M. CROCKETT      129
Invasion and Contagion: The Spectacle of the Diseased Indian in Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”
RUTH BIENSTOCK ANOLIK      142
Knights of the Seal: Mad Doctors and Maniacs in A.J.H. Duganne’s Romance of Reform
LISA M. HERMSEN      157
“The Secret of My Mother’s Madness”: Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Gothic Instability
CARLA T. KUNGL      170
“Don’t Look Now”: Disguised Danger and Disabled Women in Daphne du Maurier’s Macabre Tales
MARIA PURVES      181
Deviled Eggs: Teratogenesis and the Gynecological Gothic in the Cinema of Monstrous Birth
ANDREW SCAHILL      197
“Journeys into Lands of Silence”: The Wasp Factory and Mental Disorder
MARTYN COLEBROOK      217

Contributors      227
Index      231

“Recommended”—Choice.