ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the transgressive female body and the transgressiveness of corporality in the Gothic novel and the Gothic parody of the long eighteenth century. It compares the different framings of involuntary bodily reactions, such as fainting, and the deliberate uses of the body for a certain effect in order to show how a Gothic heroine’s body may subversively ‘speak’ for her to utter the feelings propriety would not allow her to speak. Conversely, the Gothic parody uses the female body in a very different way and rather advocates for normalcy through a reduction of bodily expression to accepted movements and reactions. By not fulfilling the bodily requirements for young women, both the Gothic heroine and the parody heroine become transgressors of contemporary expectations towards femininity.
