Gothic fiction & The Female Writer

What do Gothic novels and the supernatural have to do with feminism? A surprising amount.

Back in the 18th century, Gothic novels and ghost stories – many written by and for women – began to gain serious popularity. Behind the eerie castles and haunted houses, many of these stories explored big questions about women’s roles in society: their work, education, independence, and sexuality.

This talk looks at how women writers used horror and the supernatural to push back against the expectations of their time. By turning everyday anxieties into eerie, unsettling fiction, they revealed the darker sides of patriarchy and colonialism. From Ann Radcliffe’s *The Mysteries of Udolpho* to Charlotte Brontë’s *Jane Eyre*, women have long used Gothic fiction to explore what it really costs to be independent. And as the popularity of horror films and series like *The Haunting of Hill House*, the ghosts of lost female histories don’t stay buried for long.

**Speaker Bio:**

*Dr Emma Liggins is a Reader in English Literature in the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University and Co-Director of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies. She has published widely on the short story, Victorian women’s writing and the supernatural. Publications include (with Andrew Maunder and Ruth Robbins), The British Short Story (Palgrave, 2010) and The Haunted House in Women’s Ghost Stories, 1850-1945: Gender, Space and Modernity (Palgrave, 2020).*

Presented by Seed Talks

This is an 16+ event