Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

In this essay, I set out to explore and analyze how Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and the character of Eleanor Vance in particular, disrupts and redefines the traditional conventions of the Female Gothic within the context of the 20th century. I utilize Tania Modleski's gendering of Freud's theory of psychoanalysis in her exploration of the ‘Female Uncanny,’ arguing that the source of the Uncanny in the Female Gothic can be found in the "fear of being lost in the mother." I argue that Jackson's complex personal life, including her fraught relationship with her mother and her difficult marriage with literary critic Edgar Hyman, color her fiction and the primary motivations of her protagonist, Eleanor Vance. I also outline the traditional structure of the Gothic novel and the heroine's journey. With the necessary context provided, I then explain how Eleanor Vance’s character rejects these Gothic traditions and ushers in a new era of Female Gothic fiction.

Modern media meant for light consumption tends to lean heavily on tropes and assumptions that don't really exist in literary fiction. Authors writing today are aware of this manner of reading and often tailor their messages to it. However, the framework doesn't really work for older novels. They were not written for this modern lens, and therefore, make their criticisms in ways that modern readers might not understand. So what does this mean for modern readings of these books, modern adaptations of these stories, or even modern original stories set in these time periods? This thesis explores these questions through perusing Bram Stoker's Dracula, Jane Austen's Persuasion and the 2022 Netflix adaptation of such, and the first season of Netflix's Bridgerton.