Date of Award

Spring 5-17-2025

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

MA English

Department

English

Advisor

Angela Weisl, PhD

Advisor

Mary Balkun, PhD

Keywords

Jane Austen, Frances Burney, Feminist, Gothic, Subaltern, Postcolonial

Abstract

Evelina by Frances Burney and Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen are two woman-authored, Gothic texts that explore themes of feminism and coming of age as subaltern in a patriarchal context. The main character in each must enter the world and become disillusioned to the reality that they are treated as subhuman because they are women. The term subaltern refers to those living in the margins and their suppressed “potential for life and creativity, in given historical circumstances” (Pandey 4735), and primarily focuses on ethnic or racial oppression in postcolonial settings; however, this thesis explores the idea of women in patriarchal Britain as subaltern. Jo Stanley writes on how men and women each refer to people outside of their own groups and argues that men use the term “‘Other’ to define and confine women themselves” (356). Women have been colonized and oppressed by men for thousands of years all over the world, and Burney and Austen both capture this in their work. These texts connect in theme and narrative, but they are also unconventional forms of the Gothic. Evelina is a more than commonly lighthearted Gothic novel, and Northanger Abbey is a parody of the Gothic. These novels show men and women in excessive stereotypes to allow for extreme examples of performative gender binaries. Evelina Anville, in the novel by her own name, is raised by her beloved adoptive father, Mr. Villars, and he has always treated her with love and respect, sheltering her from the world outside their family. When she goes to London, however, she records in her letters to Mr. Villars how different the world is than she had imagined it. Men treat her as a creature with no autonomy, asserting their wills over her emotionally and physically. She slowly begins to realize that this is the behavior to be expected of men and that she will probably suffer this her entire life. Northanger Abbey shows Catherine Morland experiencing similar dissilusionment, traveling from her loving country home to the city of Bath, where she encounters for the first time men who lie to her because she is a woman. Not only do they lie, but they try to take advantage of her mind and body, compromising her reputation. She comes to town ripe with naivete, but, like Evelina, must learn that it is normal for men to treat her less well than they treat other men and that many women support this behavior. Evelina and Catherine experience this disillusionment for the first time just after each of their novels begin, and the reader watches their innocence fall away as the young women recognize their identity as subaltern in patriarchal England.

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