Synopsis
Tracing the use of legal themes in the gothic novel, Bridget M. Marshall shows these devices reflect an outpouring of anxiety about the nature of justice. On both sides of the Atlantic, novelists like William Godwin, Mary Shelley, Charles Brockden Brown, and Hannah Crafts question the foundations of the Anglo-American justice system through their portrayals of criminal and judicial procedures and their use of found documents and legal forms as key plot devices. As gothic villains, from Walpole's Manfred to Godwin's Tyrrell to Stoker's Dracula, manipulate the law and legal system to expand their power, readers are confronted with a legal system that is not merely ineffective at stopping villains but actually enables them to inflict ever greater harm on their victims. By invoking actual laws like the Black Act in England or the Fugitive Slave Act in America, gothic novels connect the fantastic horrors that constitute their primary appeal with much more shocking examples of terror and injustice. Finally, the gothic novel's preoccupation with injustice is just one element of many that connects the genre to slave narratives and to the horrors of American slavery.
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About the Author
Bridget M. Marshall is assistant professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, USA.
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The Transatlantic Gothic Novel and the Law, 1790-1860
Seller: killarneybooks, Inagh, CLARE, Ireland
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Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. Hardcover, viii + 190 pages, NOT ex-library. Book looks unread, clean and bright throughout with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. In a fine dust jacket. -- This book investigates the relationship between Gothic fiction and legal discourse in Britain and the United States between 1790 and 1860. Bridget M. Marshall examines four novels - William Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly (1799), and Hannah Crafts's The Bondwoman's Narrative (c. 1855-61) - as case studies in how literary texts engage with legal institutions, procedures, and concepts. Rather than treating Gothic fiction as escapist or apolitical, the book presents it as a narrative form well suited to exploring ambiguity, coercion, and systemic authority during a period of legal and political transformation. The introduction outlines the theoretical and historical context for examining legal motifs in Gothic fiction. Subsequent chapters address how each novel incorporates legal structures - such as trials, punishment, surveillance, and evidentiary logic - into its plot and formal strategies. Caleb Williams is read in relation to imprisonment and the epistemology of legal evidence. Frankenstein explores how misinterpretations of the body and forced confessions shape perceptions of criminality and justice. Turning to the American context, Edgar Huntly highlights distinctions in legal frameworks, particularly around documentary evidence and the jury's interpretive role. In The Bondwoman's Narrative, the analysis focuses on the intersection of Gothic and slave narrative, using themes of entrapment, coded communication, and institutional silence to explore the legal mechanics of slavery. Recurring motifs include wrongful accusation, extralegal punishment, and the use of personal documents - letters, confessions, depositions - as instruments of control or resistance. These textual artifacts complicate truth claims and underscore the Gothic's preoccupation with unreliable narration and interpretive instability. The study draws connections between these literary features and legal developments of the time, such as Britain's Black Act and the United States' Fugitive Slave Act, situating the novels within wider cultural responses to evolving notions of justice, citizenship, and authority. Marshall's analysis contributes to multiple fields, including Gothic studies, legal humanities, and transatlantic literary history. By integrating canonical texts with lesser-known works, and framing them against contemporaneous legal thought, the book offers a framework for understanding Gothic fiction as a medium for legal critique. It will be of interest to scholars examining the intersection of genre fiction with legal and political theory, as well as those exploring how literature reflects and interrogates the ideological foundations of institutional power. -- Contents: Introduction: Legal Tangles and Gothic Trappings; 1. Things Are Not as They Should Be: The Legal System in William Godwin's Caleb Williams; 2. Questioning the Evidence of Bodies and Texts in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; 3. Reading Unreadable Texts and Bodies: Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly; 4. Slave Narrative and the Gothic Novel: Hannah Craft's The Bondwoman's Narrative; 5. Closing Arguments; Works Cited; Index. Seller Inventory # 011473
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The Transatlantic Gothic Novel and the Law, 1790-1860
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The Transatlantic Gothic Novel and the Law, 1790-1860
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