Broders S (2016)
Publication Language: English
Publication Type: Journal article, Original article
Publication year: 2016
Book Volume: 8
Pages Range: 917-930
Journal Issue: 98
DOI: 10.1080/0013838X.2016.1254472
In the eighteenth century, the gender bias against female curiosity marginalises it with the stigma of “gossip”. Situating Radcliffe’s Gothic novels in discourses of knowledge, this article offers a new reading of female curiosity as a positive side-effect of the heroine’s “mobility”, regardless of whether her state of being in motion is the result of invitation, flight or abduction. Simultaneously, the female Gothic heightens their implied readers’ curiosity without actually satisfying it. This technique creates a self-reflexive process ridiculed in Catherine, the “virtual reader” of Gothic adventures in Austen’s Northanger Abbey. Thus the female Gothic creates a “Grand Tour of the Mind” which enhances the transmogrifying power of female curiosity by dispensing knowledge either forbidden or unavailable at the beginning of the journey.
APA:
Broders, S. (2016). The Fast and the Curious: The Role of Curiosity in the Gothic Heroine’s “Grand Tour of the Mind”. English Studies, 8(98), 917-930. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2016.1254472
MLA:
Broders, Simone. "The Fast and the Curious: The Role of Curiosity in the Gothic Heroine’s “Grand Tour of the Mind”." English Studies 8.98 (2016): 917-930.
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