The Gothic Child The Palgrave Gothic Series Series Editor: Clive Bloom Editorial Advisory Board: Dr Ian Conrich, University of Nottingham, UK, Barry Forshaw, author/journalist, UK, Professor Gregg Kucich, University of Notre Dame, USA, Professor Gina Wisker, University of Brighton, UK. This series of gothic books is the fi rst to treat the genre in its many inter-related, global and ‘extended’ cultural aspects to show how the taste for the medieval and the sublime gave rise to a perverse taste for terror and horror and how that taste became not only international (with a huge fan base in places such as South Ko- rea and Japan) but also the sensibility of the modern age, changing our attitudes to such diverse areas as the nature of the artist, the meaning of drug abuse and the concept of the self. The series is accessible but scholarly, with referencing kept to a minimum and theory contextualised where possible. All the books are readable by an intelligent student or a knowledgeable general reader interested in the subject. Barry Forshaw BRITISH GOTHIC CINEMA Margarita Georgieva THE GOTHIC CHILD Catherine Wynne BRAM STOKER, DRACULA AND THE VICTORIAN GOTHIC STAGE The Palgrave Gothic Series Series Standing Order ISBN 978–1–137–29898–0 (hardback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of diffi culty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England The Gothic Child Margarita Georgieva © Margarita Georgieva 2013 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. 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Contents List of Figures viii Introduction ix 1 First Steps 1 ‘Child’ in 1764–1824 Gothic 2 The Child’s Place in the Narrative 7 Appearance, Representation, Characterisation 16 Resemblance and Likeness 22 Frontispieces and Illustrations 24 Naming the Child 33 Dualities and Child Representation 37 2 ‘Becoming as Little Children’ 41 The Gothic Novel as Child 44 Early Texts 47 Mary Shelley’s Monstrous Child 49 Authorship and Readership 53 Gothic and Crude Writing 61 3 Experimenting with Children 65 Rites of Passage 67 Baptism Rituals and Rebirths 70 Blood Baptism 75 Educational Ideologies 78 v vi Contents The Fusion of Male and Female 85 Genders and the Gothic Child 87 Symbols of Growth 89 Gender Differences 90 4 Child Sublimation 93 Sacrifice: the Redeemer Child 94 The Most Capital Sin 95 Repercussions of Parental Sin in The Monk 99 Sacrifice, Fathers and Sons in Melmoth 101 Symbols and Metaphors 103 The Gothic Child of Mystery 106 The Spiritual Roles of the Gothic Child 110 Faith, Church and Child 113 Consuming the Child’s Flesh 117 5 The Political Child 121 Gothic Family Structures 124 Pyramids 124 Family Trees 132 The Gothic Child as Royal Subject 134 The Gothic Child and the Empire 143 ‘Ein Heldenleben’: the Child-Hero 156 6 The Gothic Child on Film 168 Children as Victims 170 Unnatural Fathers 170 Unnatural Mothers 181 Children as Objects 185 Contents vii Conclusion 191 The Sublime Child 191 The Gothic Child as Concrete Universal 194 Twofold Natures 196 The Gothic Child as Foundation 199 Bibliography 202 Primary Sources 202 Gothic Novel 202 Other Books and Novels 206 Press, Journals, Magazines, Reviews 210 Secondary Sources and Suggested Readings 211 Images 212 Films (1960–2012) 213 Index 215 List of Figures 1.1 Frontispiece to William Godwin’s St. Leon 7 1.2 Frontispiece to Elizabeth Helme’s The Farmer of Inglewood Forest 19 1.3 Illustration from Wilhelmina Johnson’s The Ranger of the Tomb 24 1.4 Illustration from Wilhelmina Johnson’s Eva; or, the Bridal Spectre 26 1.5 Frontispiece to Eliza Parsons’s The Mysterious Warning 27 1.6 Frontispiece to John Moore’s Zeluco 30 2.1 Frontispiece of Elizabeth Sibthorpe Pinchard’s The Blind Child 46 2.2 Illustration from Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho 63 viii Introduction ‘The man who never tried the companionship of a little child,’ wrote Caroline Norton, ‘has carelessly passed by one of the great pleasures of life’ (The Myrtle, 1:128). An early feminist and author promoting wom- en’s rights to child custody, Norton also wrote novels on the margin of the gothic (Stuart of Dunleath, 1851) and advocated responsible, non- authoritarian fatherhood. Her opinion was in line with the view voiced by Elizabeth Bonhote, a sentimental and gothic author from the small town of Bungay who purchased a gothic castle and later breathed life into the decaying building through her fiction. A century earlier than Norton, Bonhote maintained that ‘the delightful satisfaction’ (Olivia, 13) of embracing a child is not exclusively reserved for females. In this same vein Norton composed the poem Child of the Islands (1845). The socio- political implications of her verses do not become immediately obvious, but when she writes that Nature’s sweetest fount, through grief’s excess, Is strangely turned to gall and bitterness; When the deserted babe is left to lie (Norton, 10) her rhymes are built on the solid foundation of a long sentimental and gothic heritage which gave importance to orphaned or abandoned child characters. ‘Excess’ and feelings of ‘bitterness’ prevail in the eighteenth- century literary scene when ‘babe[s]’ are ‘deserted’ by their immoral, neglectful, infanticidal parents, frequently fathers. Concern for the child, its destiny and social integration, are often considered proper to nineteenth-century authors like Dickens, when the Industrial Revolution struck down the homeless and poor. But the roots of this practice go further back in time. The anonymous, and only, Amazon.com review of the likewise anon- ymous gothic novel St. Margaret’s Cave (1814) offers one of the earliest tales of child abuse of the early chapters, qualifying it as ‘rather unusual for the period’. In this statement, there are two very important tenden- cies that need to be clarified – anonymity and the allegedly ‘unusual’ appearance of the child. Anonymity is the hallmark of gothic. It was usually employed to alleviate authorial fear of criticism. For this reason many authors, as well as many critics from the early period, still remain ix