ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -women are presented as objects of desire, maternal figures, supernatural beings and are often defined by their biological roles.

Detailed explanation-2: -From this statement can be deduced that in Male Gothic fiction, women are seen as unnatural and artificial. Consequently, women are always presented in a negative way. This is of course in contrast with Female Gothic fiction, that mostly presents women as victims and questions their identity.

Detailed explanation-3: -The Gothic, then, has been a particularly significant place for women, as, erased from the pages of history by a patriarchal lens, this genre has served as a space for female writers to reclaim history, a space to examine such matters as marriage and subjugation, the female body and autonomy.

Detailed explanation-4: -Although Horace Walpole’s (1717–1797) The Castle of Otranto (1764) is widely considered to have been the first gothic novel, it was a female author, Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823) who popularised the form in the final decades of the eighteenth century. Radcliffe was a bone fide literary star.