ABSTRACT
Laura Purcell’s 2018 The Corset is a neo-Victorian Gothic crime novel that is deeply concerned with transgressive feminine identities within a patriarchal system and the different ways in which each female character faces this oppressive system in order to take control of her life. This chapter argues that the novel sets the two female protagonists up as transgressive quasi-doubles, but by resolving this duality, another duality is revealed: that of men versus women. Women, despite being perpetrators, are ultimately also victims of a larger patriarchal system, which forces them to adopt its strategies to survive. This analysis is supported by a theoretical foundation of the double in Gothic fiction and within neo-Victorian fiction in particular.
