COPYRIGHT AND CITATION CONSIDERATIONS FOR THIS THESIS/ DISSERTATION o Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. o NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes. o ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. How to cite this thesis Surname, Initial(s). (2012). Title of the thesis or dissertation (Doctoral Thesis / Master’s Dissertation). Johannesburg: University of Johannesburg. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/102000/0002 (Accessed: 22 August 2017). The Gothic and Liminality in Three Contemporary British Novels by Taryn Tavener-Smith 200701286 Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS (ENGLISH) in the Department of English of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg supervised by Dr Bridget Grogan Professor Karen Scherzinger (co-supervisor) 2 January 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Dedicated to Professor Karen Scherzinger Firstly, I would like to sincerely thank my supervisor, Dr Bridget Grogan, whose dedication, guidance, and commitment has guided me throughout the writing of this dissertation. Thank you for being generous with your time, kind with your words, and for always encouraging me to “push further”. Your support has been invaluable. Thanks to the University of Johannesburg’s Department of English and specifically, to my English Honours lecturers, whose encouragement during the completion of my postgraduate studies prompted me to pursue this project. In particular, I would like to thank Professor Craig MacKenzie, Professor Ronit Frenkel, Professor Sikhumbuzo Mngadi, Dr Jane Starfield, Dr Dino Galetti, Dr Thabo Tshehloane, and Mrs Dalene Labuschagne. Special thanks to Dr Christopher McWade for his support during the early stages of this project and for his willingness to share his insights and research interests. Thanks to my family and friends for encouraging me throughout this process and for listening to endless reflections on all things Gothic. Special thanks to my mother and sister for sharing with me the comfort of constantly being surrounded by books and stories. Finally, sincere gratitude to my husband, Daniel, for his continued enthusiasm for this project even while reading towards his own MBA. You are my hero. 3 ABSTRACT This dissertation explores how conventional Gothic elements are represented in three contemporary British novels by examining the liminality of spectres, madness, and vampires. Throughout my dissertation, I apply Victor Turner’s theory of liminality to determine how each Gothic symbol named above may be considered liminal. Liminality positions initiates on the margin between two different states of existence: spectres occupy the world between the living and the dead; madness oscillates between sanity and insanity in that lucidity is variable; vampires are caught between the realms of “human” and “monster”. I will evaluate liminality as a theoretical framework that characterises the liminal state forming part of rites of passage; additionally, I will relate this threshold to the Gothic elements including spectres, madness, and vampires that I have identified above. I argue for the resurfacing of the Gothic in the work of Neo-Victorian and twenty-first century British writers’ novels. This analysis is carried out through close readings of Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black (1983), A.N. Wilson’s A Jealous Ghost (2005), and David Mitchell’s Slade House (2015). This close reading examines the ways in which, and to what extent, the texts align with and depart from the Gothic genre in their unique representation of Gothic symbols. My discussion evaluates the spectre in The Woman in Black in relation to the manner in which the novel addresses gender inequality. The novel explores society’s treatment of young unwed mothers during the Victorian era while presenting a plot in which the traditionally gendered roles of victim and villain in the Gothic novel are subverted: instead of the conventional, naïvely represented ‘damsel in distress’, the novel’s victim is a male solicitor while the ‘villain’ is presented as a female spectre. My discussion then moves to A Jealous Ghost, in which the representation of madness is strongly entangled with gender and linked to femininity. Here, the familiar Gothic trope of the protagonist as an unfamiliar, arguably uncanny, character to herself is presented. This aspect of the novel is strengthened in relation to its intertextual references to Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898), and here the female protagonist is characterised as storyteller, victim and villain. I then turn my attention to the vampiric characters presented in David Mitchell’s Slade House, a novel re-evaluating the shortcomings of the present through a postmodern lens while addressing and redressing history and its representations of the vampire figure. Finally, I argue that the texts under study represent the Gothic’s resurfacing in twenty-first century British novels as a means to redress unresolved matters of the past and that their inclusion contributes to our understanding of contemporary Gothic fiction. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page number TITLE PAGE ........................................................................................................................... 1 AFFIDAVIT ............................................................................................................................. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................... 3 ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................................ 5 INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................... 8 1.1. Critical reception of primary texts ............................................................................... 9 1.2. Critical responses to the novels under study ............................................................. 10 1.3. Background to the Gothic .......................................................................................... 13 1.3.1. Introducing Gothic fiction ........................................................................... 13 1.3.2. Introducing the Neo-Victorian..................................................................... 16 1.3.3. Victor Turner’s Theory of Liminality ......................................................... 19 1.4. Liminal elements of the Gothic: ................................................................................ 22 1.4.1. Spectres and hauntings: when the familiar becomes uncanny .................. 24 1.4.2. Madness as a liminal experience ................................................................. 26 1.4.3. Vampires: caught between “human” and “monster” ................................... 26 1.5. The structure of the study .......................................................................................... 28 CHAPTER ONE: SUSAN HILL’S THE WOMAN IN BLACK ........................................ 31 2.1. Summary of The Woman in Black ............................................................................. 33 2.2. Gothic plot devices in The Woman in Black ............................................................ 34 2.2.1. London as a Gothic setting .......................................................................... 35 2.2.2. Crythin Gifford as a Gothic setting ............................................................ 36 2.2.3. Eel Marsh House as a Gothic setting ........................................................... 38 2.3. Gothic children ......................................................................................................... 40 2.4. Arthur Kipps’s experience of haunting .................................................................... 41 2.5. Disrupted narratives and temporal chronology ......................................................... 45 2.6. Foreshadowing as a form of prolepsis ..................................................................... 48 2.7. Arthur Kipps: Gothic storyteller, hero, and victim ................................................... 53 2.8. Jennet Humfrye: spectre, villain, and embodiment of the monstrous-feminine ........ 57 2.9. The impact of gender roles in The Woman in Black .................................................. 60 2.10. Spectres and liminality in The Woman in Black ........................................................ 61 2.11. Creating trauma through haunting ............................................................................. 64 5 2.12. Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 65 CHAPTER TWO: A.N. WILSON’S A JEALOUS GHOST .............................................. 67 3.1. Summary of A Jealous Ghost ................................................................................... 68 3.2. Summary of The Turn of the Screw ........................................................................... 70 3.3. Brief summary of selected scholarly material