Ann Radcliffe's female counter-publics

Abstract

We know so little about Ann Radcliffe's life that it is difficult generate a complete image of who she was. We can, however, situate the few facts of her life within the context of her gender, class, and historic moment. First, while Radcliffe achieved notoriety and influence within the dominant, male-centered, bourgeois public sphere, she began and ended her life in country retirement. Her fiction, often contrasted with the "low" Gothic of Matthew Lewis, features smaller public spheres of women--what I will call counter-publics--that speak to her real-life subject position as a woman writer of the middling class. Unlike other scholars, who restrict their critical frames to categories such as male/female or horror/terror Gothic, this thesis will turn its attention to the nuances of Radcliffe's work, examining the ways in which the women of these counter-publics engage in education, commerce and politics--all in opposition to the patriarchal public. When we examine these counter-publics outside of the binary constructions that have come to dominate literary criticism about the Gothic, new readings of Radcliffe can emerge. In particular, the marriage plots of A Sicilian Romance and The Italian begin to look less stereotypical and more political, linking women's happiness to alternative communities made possible only by the unique dynamics of Radcliffe's counter-publics.