Victorian Femininity in Carmilla, by Sheridan Le Fanu

Stewart Canales, Chantel
del Río Álvaro, Constanza (dir.)

Universidad de Zaragoza, FFYL, 2018
Filología Inglesa y Alemana department,

Graduado en Estudios Ingleses

Abstract: In the Victorian period, women were relegated to the private sphere of the home and were frequently no more than house caretakers, since their main function was to take care of the house, husband and children. Furthermore, female sexuality was always unavoidably connected to reproduction. In this dissertation, my intention has been to delineate the profound changes in gender roles and the consideration of female sexuality that took place in the second half of the nineteenth century, particularly in the last three decades, a period known as le fin de siècle. These changes were brought about fundamentally by the rebellious attitude of middle- and upper-class women, who began to ask for the vote and for similar opportunities than men in the labour market. This type of independent and activist woman, who wanted to control her own life, came to be known as the New Woman, and was the object of praise as well as of hatred and scorn. Misogyny against the New Woman was often displaced onto the terrain of the supernatural, leading to the apparition of monstrously female artistic figures: Gorgons, Medusas, Harpies, witches, specters and vampires. It is within this context that this dissertation interprets Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, a text deeply informed by the gender and sexual discourses of Victorianism and of le fin de siècle.

Tipo de Trabajo Académico: Trabajo Fin de Grado