ABSTRACT
Robinson repeatedly invokes this 'Gothic structure' to define the essential characteristics of her own contemplative mind and to prove that she has always had strong propensities to melancholy meditation. The gothic gloom thickens as Robinson focuses on one particular chamber whose dismal and singular construction left no doubt of its having been a part of the original monastery. In recent years, comparisons between Robinson's Memoirs and gothic fiction have become something of a critical commonplace. Robinson's insistence that she has 'ever been the reverse of volatile and dissipated' clearly defines the thematic emphases of the narrative tradition that she is writing against as she begins her own Memoirs with a brief account of St Augustine's Cathedral in Bristol, the city where she was born. Anne Close emphasizes, Robinson's Memoirs are not simply capitalizing on the gothic vogue associated with Radcliffe but also continuing the revisionary project of her own gothic novels, such as Hubert de Sevrac.
