Women's Agency and the Gothic in Spain and the Americas - by Megan Devirgilis & Sandra García Gutiérrez (Hardcover)

About the Book

This volume explores the relationship between women and the Gothic in Spain and the Americas through transhispanic and feminist interpretive frameworks. It examines how women writers have engaged and reimagined the Gothic to challenge patriarchal norms and oppressive laws within the frameworks of bourgeois capitalism and neoliberalism.

Book Synopsis

This volume offers a unique transnational and transhistorical exploration of the relationship between women and the Gothic in Spain and the Americas. By examining how women writers have reimagined Gothic conventions, the book delves into the intersection of gender, culture, and fear. It highlights how themes such as domestic abuse, alienation, and death have been transformed over time, with particular attention to feminist perspectives and shifting degrees of agency. Contributors analyse a diverse range of authors, from the 19th century to the present, revealing how women's Gothic narratives challenge societal norms and offer new possibilities for empowerment. Exploring historical, ecological, and cultural concerns, this volume is an essential resource for anyone interested in the evolving role of women in the Gothic.

From the Back Cover

This groundbreaking volume uncovers the longstanding and dynamic relationship between women and the gothic mode across Spain and Latin America. Focusing on literary production from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, the book exposes how shifting ideological coordinates have shaped women authors' use of gothic strategies over time to challenge patriarchal norms and oppressive laws within the frameworks of bourgeois capitalism and neoliberalism. Moving away from critical approaches that center women's vulnerability and distress, the volume situates women's agency--as authors, readers, and protagonists--as fundamental to the Gothic. Bringing together a dynamic collection of essays, the volume offers fresh insights into the intersections of cultural production, feminism/activism, ecological crises, colonialism, and neoliberalism. Domestic violence and femicide, for example, are not simply "private" horrors but symptoms of national and global crises that women have been actively challenging for centuries across political, legal, and literary landscapes with nuance and success. Similarly, women authors of the Gothic engage bodily mutations and zombification not only to criticize ecological destruction and the exploitation of bodies, but to propose alternative models and ways of knowing. Through its feminocentric and transhispanic approaches, this collection challenges traditional readings of the Gothic, offering readers deeper insight into its manifestations beyond the English canon and the transformative power of women's writing.

About the Author

Megan DeVirgilis is Associate Professor of Spanish at Morgan State University
Sandra García Gutiérrez is Junior Distinguished Professor Beatriz Galindo at the University of León