![]() It's certainly better than the aforementioned rendition of Jane Eyre. Once again, it’s not a great film – although Vacillation in the woman's desire: what peace, or what transgression, What horrendous truth is uncovered, there is still that ambiguity, a Stories, these personal revelations get connected to even wider evils: wars and Sometimes, in the hallucinatory whirl of such That well up in Female Gothic stories: long-buried or repressed revelationsĪbout rape, abuse or betrayal. There are so many dark truths from the past Man, one mere cad or villain it implicates an entire male order or system, anĮntire, steely, patriarchal regime that runs (variously and contradictorily) on Because this truth usually implicates more than just one bad apple of a Paranoid or drugged hallucination, or in a dream – is at the heart of the Female Idea of a woman’s terrible flash of truth – even if it comes in a fevered, Her or, in fact, she has rightly intuited some dark and terrible truth. Here you will recognise aĬlassic plot device: the ambiguity as to whether a woman is just imagining that her husband wants to kill Reveries and nightmares, which cast the husband into the rôle of the sadistic murderer”. In a celebrated article discussing those movies (often dubbed the wife in peril cycle), Thomas Elsaesser suggested, in a Freudian vein, that they wereįull of “strange fantasies of persecution, rape and death – masochistic Model, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) or the that perennial property, Gaslight (1940, 1944). Zany robot that he is created in his own image – and both are incarnated by theĬan go back a few decades in film history to all those mystery-thrillers of theġ940s with women in the leading roles, deeply influenced by the 19th century Gothic-Romantic There are modernĬomedies like Susan Siedelman’s fascinating Making Mr Right (1987), where a woman (Ann Magnuson) deals with a repressed scientist and the As that list of chaps already indicates, theįemale Gothic story can appear in many different guises. Or she copes withĪ man who is two men in one: figures like Rochester,Ĭlark Kent or Dr Henry Jekyll. Two men, such as the righteous cop and the slimy businessman. ![]() ![]() Tales of the Female Gothic, we usually have a woman who is positioned between Portray this kind of desire is precisely the pressure on the central woman toĬhoose one kind of man over the other – and the impossible dream of somehow What is so tearing and so fascinating in films that Serene, deep, beautiful one, or the beast? What desire is involved in her Quite simply, which man is it she desires: the Is he really a soulful, lovable guy underneath all the misery,Ī moot, ambiguous point all by itself. Has made him unclear, an ambiguous sort of double-image, a walking Rochester, however, has a far murkier past, mysterious and Gothic – and it Of fortune and fate hamper her, she moves spiritedly toward the light of a newĭay. That Jane is a clear, not ambiguous character although melodramatic reversals Present, the gauntlet of social oppressions and humiliations that beset her,įirst as an orphan and then as a governess. Jane wrestles with the demons of her past and Love and independence of spirit and there’s the object of her desire, sad-eyed Jane (Charlotte Gainsbourg), soulfully pining for That’s not much of a movie,Īnd it offers a rather soft rendition of the Female Gothic but some the basicĮlements of the form are still there, affecting and resonant in all their 19th For instance, consider Franco Zeffirelli’s version of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1996). With intricate variations and powerful founding ambiguities – and it staysĪmbiguous, whether or not the director at the helm is male or female, straight Is a vast narrative form that cuts across many genres: the Female Gothic. ![]()
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