ABSTRACT

Change is terrifying, and rapid change, within a small amount of time, is destabilizing to any culture. England, under the tutelage of Queen Victoria, witnessed precipitous change the likes of which it had not encountered in generations. Wholesale swaths of the economy and the social structure underwent complete recalibration, through the hands of economic progress, industrial innovation, scientific discovery, and social cohesiveness. Faced with such change, Britons had to redefine the concept of work, belief, and even what it meant to be English. Victorians relied on many methods to attempt to release the steam from the anxieties incurred through change, and one of those methods was the horror story of everyday existence during an age of transition. This book is a study of how authors Elizabeth Gaskell, Emily Brontë, and Anne Brontë turned to horrifying representations of everyday reality to illustrate the psychological-traumatic terrors of an age of transition

chapter |15 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|53 pages

“If Ever I Saw Horror in the Human Face, It Was Then”

Victorian Horror and the Terrifying Aesthetic of the Taboo in an Unstable World

chapter 2|51 pages

“The Monstrous Serpents of Smoke”

The Hellscape of the Industrial Factory in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton and North and South and Victorian Fears of an Industrializing Economy

chapter 3|64 pages

Greeks, Freaks, and Raving Lunatics

The Monstrous World of Science in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

chapter 4|65 pages

Hysterical Angels and Loud-Mouthed Hussies

Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and the Transformation of Gendered Voices in Victorian England