Review: Helene Meyers. "Femicidal Fears. Narratives of the Female Gothic Experience." Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.

By Aldona Bialowas Pobutsky, Wayne State University, Detroit, United States

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review: 

Meyers's engaging study on romance and the contemporary appropriation of conventional tropes of the Gothic joins feminist debates about essentialism, victimology, female agency and the body. Instead of dwelling on traditional Gothic trends such as madness and maternity, Meyers argues that feminist critics should turn to the contemporary female Gothic which highlights violent crimes and murder in particular, and which "explores the difficulties of, and the necessity for, taking gender oppression seriously without positioning women as pure victims" (xii). This aspect of her work, essentially the analysis of recent narratives through the grid of the Gothic as well as contemporary debates among feminists and postfeminists, makes the volume particularly valuable in its contribution to cultural studies, feminism, and genre studies. Meyers delineates how women writers have used the Gothic romance to mediate the connection between gender norms and female victimization. The diachronic transformations of the genre are the focus of Meyers's analysis that shows how contemporary women writers adopt Gothic conventions to address the sexual politics of their time.