“Affected Indifference, or Momentary Shame” : Gothic Awareness in Northanger Abbey and Mexican Gothic

Sammanfattning: Feminist scholars have focused on the Gothic as a medium for expressing the horrors of female experience in a patriarchal society. This study examines Gothic awareness in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic.The first part of the study focuses on Gothic awareness in relation to female sexuality and the threat of sexual violence from a feminist and psychoanalytic point of view.The second part of the analysis focuses on Gothic awareness in relation to domestic entrapment from a feminist point of view. In the third and final part of the study, Gothic awareness is analysed in relation to class and ethnicity from a Marxist and a postcolonial perspective. It is concluded that in Northanger Abbey, Catherine's lack of Gothic awareness stops her from becoming a victim, but also stops her from recognising the Gothic dangers surrounding her, whereas in Mexican Gothic, Noemí’s growing Gothic awareness enables her to take action against the Gothic dangers she faces. In both works, Gothic genre conventions are appropriated in order to convey the dangers faced by women in the worlds of the novels, but also subverted in order to show that women are more than passive victims.