Emily Dickinson'S Gothic: Goblin With A Gauge

by Daneen Wardrop

Emily Dickinson's Gothic, the first full length study of Dickinson as a primarily gothic writer, is based upon a recognition of women's gothicism. Daneen Wardrop develops first a definition of the female gothic by reading Helene Cixous reading Freud reading E. T. A. Hoffmann on the uncanny. The result is a language based model for the gothic that exposes some of Dickinson's most encrypted figurations and coerced language, which she used to subvert cultural norms.
Emily Dickinson's Gothic also addresses sociohistorical concerns, from hallowed gothic conventions dating from Horace Walpole's eighteenth century to such modernist neogothic topics as rape, the void, and disjunctive language that appear in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Wardrop recognizes the full extent to which the gothic pervades Dickinson's canon and the means by which that gothic determines her aesthetic. Such full consideration of women's gothicism allows the placement of Dickinson within a literary context, both in terms of American writers and in terms of women writers.

218 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1996

Reviews

[Uday · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pity. Could have been absolutely top notch, but ended up a bit of a disservice to Emily and more of a disappointment to me.

[Jamieanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too often the critic generalized Dickinson based on a narrow reading of one or a small group of related poems. Many arguments are essentialist (feminist), and although this book was written in 1996, the arguments just haven’t aged well. I skimmed through to compare my own close readings of certain poems with the critic’s here. We do have some similar readings, but now I know I can stretch my thinking farther.

[Anna Goerner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sadly one of the only studies I've found on Dickinson as a gothic.