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 has emerged to fulfill two main purposes: Primarily, to constitute the first collaborative work that traces the relationship between the Gothic and Women in Spain and the Americas, but also, to surpass the term 'Female Gothic, ' coined by Ellen Moers, by transferring the focus towards women and their agency as writers, readers and characters. This volume functions as a manifesto per se to open new avenues into understanding how women have interacted with the Gothic between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries in Spain and the Americas. The question, we determine, is not simply about identity, but rather about agency. We define women's agency as the total capacity of characters, authors and readers to act freely within a social framework in relation to gothic texts. In our exploration of authorship, we reject the claim that the Gothic is a simplistic literary genre, instead sustaining that the plasticity of the Gothic has enabled it to survive for centuries; by shifting from a genre to a mode, it has surpassed literary forms and invaded all kinds of media: from film to music and merchandise such as clothing and pop culture collectables, fostering an authentic goth fandom.

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 centre 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 criticise 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 Assistant Professor of Spanish and Iberian Studies at Lamar University