Mistressing Fear: Gothic, Gender and Feminism in Angela Carter’s 'The Magic Toyshop' and Margaret Mahy’s 'The Changeover'
In modern cultural history, the gothic novel has been established as a means of expressing contemporary fears. This is made particularly clear by its depiction of gender conflicts. My thesis explores the dilemma of feminine power in two English-language gothic novels of the late twentieth century. In doing so, a feminist perspective is combined with a postmodern point of view. In postmodernity, one’s biological sex can no longer determine one’s social role. Accordingly, the traditional formula of the ‘villain-hero’ and the ‘persecuted heroine’ is applied ever more self-consciously in postmodern gothic fiction. Hence, these novels anticipate a critique of second-wave feminism which would eventually develop into feminism’s third wave. Despite its subversion, the structure of the classic gothic novel is held up in more recent works of fiction. A future analysis of the implications which these works bring on gender politics would be fruitful.