Introduction

This chapter offers an analysis of the complex nexus between Female Gothic and law as it has developed over at least two centuries. From its point of origin in the late-eighteenth century, the extent to which the Female Gothic mode has foregrounded, and often sharply interrogated, the position of women in relation to patriarchal legal systems could be regarded as one of its structuring thematic principles. Even in its most conservative forms (see, for instance, the fictions of Eliza Parsons discussed below), Female Gothic repeatedly deploys the conventions of Gothic fiction in order to represent the extent to which the law in various ways facilitates the incapacitation and maltreatment of the female subject.

As it developed in the 1780s and 1790s, Female Gothic came to establish certain precedents in terms of the ways in which later Female Gothic fictions were to conceptualise and critique the rule of law. This chapter examines the juridical and literary contexts out of which Female Gothic emerged and developed. It considers aspects of eighteenth-century English civil law that began tentatively to construct a certain civil legal identity for women in response to modern democratic ideals, only to render this new mode of female juridical subjectivity exceptionally problematic in so far as it conflicted with well-established patriarchal juridical norms. Certain connections also emerge in this period between developments in literary theory and literary culture, and shifts in juridical theory and practice from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. Legal and literary theory begin to converge upon questions to do with verisimilitude, authenticity and authority, and both discourses came to posit the ‘feminine’ as inimical to questions of truth and reason in literature and law. This had significant implications for the production and reception of Female Gothic fiction and the manner of its engagement with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century legal and literary contexts. The second section of the chapter considers these early Female Gothic negotiations of textuality, female identity and law, particularly in terms of the complex figurations of Gothic space that emerge in the fictions of Sophia Lee, Ann Radcliffe and Eliza Parsons.

Moving from nineteenth-century Female Gothic through to the new millennium, this chapter seeks finally to establish a connection between early Female Gothic and the most popular contemporary form of Female Gothic fiction in the early-twenty-first century – vampire romance.