| Title: | The Gothic as Mass Hysteria: the Threat of the Foreign Other in Gaskell’s Lois the Witch |
| Author: | Irina Raluca Ciobanu |
| Publication: | Philologica Jassyensia, X (1 supl.), p. 139-148 |
| p-ISSN: | 1841-5377 |
| e-ISSN: | 2247-8353 |
| Publisher: | Institutul de Filologie Română „A. Philippide” |
| Place: | Iaşi |
| Year: | 2014 |
| Abstract: | The paper focuses on Elizabeth Gaskell’s revision of the female Gothic, where Evil does no longer belong to the supernatural realm but comes into being from erroneous and unbalanced behaviour. Our intention is to reveal Gaskell’s accuracy and acumen in achieving the picture of the destructive power of mass hysteria as rejection of Otherness, of its implications and consequences in a way that was several decades later theorized by the social psychologist Gustave Le Bon in The Crowd: A study of the Popular Mind (1896). Gaskell’s own analysis of mass hysterical behaviour points at the three categories subsequently detailed by Le Bon: suggestibility, contagion, and anonymity. Making use of a highly symbolical composition and of various forms of excess (visual, lexical, or formal), Gaskell’s Gothic shorter fiction proved to be the perfect means for her to express repressed concerns an obsessions that she could not fully develop in her social novels. The novella Lois the Witch (1859) works therefore as a metaphorical but powerful intervention into the social, political and religious discourse of the 19th century. |
| Key words: | Lois the Witch, female Gothic, mass hysteria, social and religious discourse |
| Language: | English |
| Links: |  pdf  html |
Citations to this publication: 0
References in this publication: 0
The citations/references list is based on indexed publications only, and may therefore be incomplete.
For any and all inquiries related to the database, please contact us at [Please enable javascript to view.].
Preview:
