Current PhD Students

Regina Zavala Corona

Thesis Title:

From Madness to Ghosts: Haunting In Victorian Women's Fiction

Supervisors:

Dr Emma Major

Description:

This project proposes an analysis of mid-to-late Victorian novels and short stories written by women that share a common element: hauntings. Previously, “haunting” has been associated with notions of the supernatural or persecution. Consequently, various interpretations of Gothic texts have emerged with either of these in mind. In this study, however, I intend to employ both definitions of the term and propose a new focus, “psychological hauntings," understood as the liminal space where the real and the supernatural converge, thereby pushing the boundaries of reason and insanity. Through a close reading analysis of the works of Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Elizabeth Gaskell, Rhoda Broughton, Edith Nesbit, and Margaret Oliphant, I aim to demonstrate that the presence of latent madness reflects anxieties surrounding gender and social conventions of the time: for women, those relating to the traditional domestic space as the “Angel of the House” and for men, the fulfilment of their roles within the public sphere and the evolution of the ideal of masculinity.