Welcome to the Course!

Welcome to British Literature from 1800, "Gothic Women"! This course will examine the development of British literature through three key periods: Romanticism, the Victorian Age, and Modernism/Post-Colonialism through many of the women who shaped the discourse. All too often, women writers, though they were extremely prolific and influential, are written out of the story of British literature in favor of the male authors they often worked with and inspired. Reading their works together shows a different perspective to the growth of several key genres in British literature, such as the novel and short stories, and helps us appreciate how their works challenged what it meant to be British, as well as female, during these revolutionary times. 

To quote the ground-breaking writer, Mary Wollstonecraft, “I come round to my old argument: if woman be allowed to have an immortal soul, she must have, as the employment of life, an understanding to improve. And when, to render the present state more complete…she is inclined by present gratification to forget her grand destination, nature is counteracted, or she was born only to procreate and rot” (Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman). 

In other words, women have as much right--and as much instinct--to create literature as men, and by denying their birthright, they would doom their entire sex to mere procreation and rot. The writers in this class were determined to prove, often at great risk to themselves, that they could respond to their male counterparts and create bold new visions to inspire humanity. And in the case of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, they could also warn us of the terrors of technology in the hands of a would-be god. Though far from being a lone example of female insight, Shelley was merely one of a long-line of female writers, learning from and responding to her mentors and heroes (one of which was her own mother, Mary Wollstonecraft!). 

BE SURE TO BUY THE BOOKS FOR CLASS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! We'll start reading Mary Wollstonecraft over the weekend, so don't fall behind! E-mail me with any questions or concerns at jgrasso@ecok.edu.