In this essay, I will argue how domestic violence throughout the Gothic highlights women’s issues through the texts of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat and Stephen King’s The Shining
TW: discussion of domestic violence/animal abuse
A study carried out by the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) showed that in 2018 an estimated 1.6 million women and 786,00 men aged between seventeen and seventy-four had experienced domestic abuse in the UK. That’s roughly seven in every one hundred women and four in every one hundred men. The statistics show that women are more likely to fall victim to domestic abuse than men, often a crime that occurs ‘behind closed doors’ and is rarely reported to the police. Occurring in the home, domestic violence and abuse often involve controlling behaviour, assaults, threats, and ‘punishment’ towards a partner or family member. Due to reported instances of domestic violence and rape remaining disclosed in UK and American law, the Second Wave feminists of the 1970s and early 1980s fought for domestic violence and ‘wife-beating’ to be taken seriously by both mainstream media and the legal system. Kate Millett, a prominent theorist in the Second Wave movement, argued that male supremacy creates violence, and domestic violence is a gendered issue within western culture. She states that violence in men is generalized and taught, whereas women do not use physical violence, not because they are inferior physically as they could use weapons instead, but because it is not taught nor trained socially to women as a way for them to assert dominance.
Domestic abuse occurs often throughout Gothic literature. Novels such as The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole and The Wrongs of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft deal with domestic violence as a Gothic trope. Common themes of the Gothic are fear and power often set against a domestic backdrop. Ruth Bienstock Anolik states that ‘the world of the Gothic novel is a dangerous place for women of every station and status’.
A common trope used within the Gothic is the Virtuous Heroine. The Virtuous Heroine is a beautiful and often innocent woman who suffers great misfortune at the hands of a male villain. She is marginalised, moral, and often displays characteristics opposing the evil force that is against her. The Virtuous Heroine is often limited within her power as a woman and commonly is entrapped within a marriage or the household. She upholds the misogynistic standard of the ‘perfect woman’, often policing the way that femininity should be performed and enforcing the idea of women being ‘powerless’.
Fred Botting states that the often ‘virtuous women’ within the Gothic are constantly in different states of oppression and suffering as a result of the lack of security that can occur within the domestic space. Thus making the home ‘a prison rather than a refuge’. The house is often acknowledged as a safe domesticated space for women and the family, especially within the role of the mother and housewife - the home is a feminised domestic sphere. By subverting the safety of the house through the means of the Gothic, the house becomes ‘uncanny’ - the familiarity and the safety of the home becomes violent and twisted. The victim often being the mothers and housewives who would commonly see the house as a safe space.
In contrast to the Virtuous Heroine is the Satanic Male. Often driven by a sense of white male supremacy and dominance, this Gothic trope plays on gendered stereotypes of toxic masculinity. The Satanic Male displays the repressed feelings, desires and actions of a patriarchal man, often displaying violent, out of control or oppressive behaviours upon others in which they view to be inferior to them, especially women. In Punter and Byron, it is stated that the role of the Satanic Male is a patriarchal product that defines men within terms of power, control and aggression.
One example of domestic abuse within the Gothic is The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe. Written in 1843, The Black Cat is a dark romantic short story based around the character of ‘the narrator’. Awaiting death in his prison cell, the narrator recites a story in which he describes has terrified, tortured and destroyed him ever since it took place. The story begins with the narrator expressing his love for animals, particularly his favourite animal, his cat Pluto. The narrator's disposition throughout the story grows worse through alcohol abuse, he is violent towards his wife and his pets. This downward spiral leads him to hang Pluto from a tree, but is afterwards then haunted by it. Pluto is replaced by a new cat, which acts as a constant reminder to the narrator of his wrongdoings. The guilt and rage the narrator feels towards the new cat makes him attempt to strike it down, but instead the narrator strikes his wife - subsequently killing her.
The Black Cat shows themes of guilt, hate and ego from the male protagonist. An exploration of hyper-masculinity, patriarchal insecurity, the fragile ego and domestic abuse. The narrator begins the story by explaining the narrative as a ‘series of mere household events’, by setting the story in the household, Poe places the protagonist into the ‘feminised domestic sphere’ of the 1800s. Setting the scene on an ordinary, married couple who live in a house together alongside their many pets. The narrator describes the marriage as one of equals, ‘I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind.’
When describing his feelings towards the animals, the narrator portrays himself as a nurturing and empathetic man. He says that he was ‘noted for the docility and humanity of (his) disposition’ since his childhood when it comes to animals, and had a ‘tenderness of heart’. It seems as though the narrator recognises the femininity of these emotions, and therefore attempts to reinforce his masculinity. By describing himself as finding pleasure in his ‘manhood’ while ‘feeding and caressing’ the animals, the narrator is taking a maternal trait that he has towards the domestic animals and denying the ‘femininity’ of his behaviour. Stating to the reader that this affection towards the domestic animals is what should be preferred over ‘the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man’. - this insinuates that the narrator sees femininity as inferior and a weakness, something he does not want to display. Pluto also displays a similar affection towards the narrator, much like a child to its mother, the narrator ‘alone fed him’, by attending to the narrator wherever he went around the house and attempting to follow the narrator ‘through the streets’.
The narrator's wife also displays a similar kind of affection towards the animals, which could reinforce the feelings of maternity towards the pets as inherently feminine.
The narrator then explains that his alcoholism caused him to turn, and what initially seemed to be a marriage of equals turns into the narrator inflicting violence upon his wife and his pets. Although it is not explained what caused this turn in the narrator, he is quick to blame his actions as a ‘disease’ and ‘blush(es) to confess’ his ‘fiend intemperance’, never taking any responsibility nor acknowledges his awareness of how badly his actions affect those around him. This violent behaviour is stereotypically defined as masculine as a way to act upon repressed insecurities and assert dominance, the narrator states that acting upon these impulses ‘give direction to the character of Man’. It seems as though the narrator is beginning to suppress and reject his initial feminine and maternal characteristics through acting out violently.
The narrator of The Black Cat fits into the Gothic trope of the Satanic Male, by belittling those around him, especially those physically inferior to him like his wife and his pets, the narrator finds psychological peace within himself.
His wife however, throughout the story, is never named by the narrator. Nor is she described physically, only by her nurturing attributes of which she and the narrator share at the beginning of the story. She is represented as being a ‘good wife’ to the narrator, procuring him with plenty of animals since she knew that he had a childhood affection towards them. She had never complained against his violent behaviours towards her or the animals, and loved the cat that replaced Pluto just as much as she did Pluto - and felt ‘endearment’ towards this new cat because of it being one-eyed. Although she was not the typical housewife stereotype, she was not a mother nor was she solely responsible to keep the house clean as it is mentioned that the couple has a servant that accompanies them, but she was however, passive and shows innocence throughout the story. Her character and status seem to be unimportant to the narrator, his lack of description or empathy throughout his retelling shows his abusive and neglectful nature towards her.
Domestic abuse around the time that The Black Cat was written, in the 19th-century Victorian era, was ‘largely ignored’ within literature and culture, despite its ‘persistent presence’, suggesting that domestic violence was ‘expected’ and the norm. This could be due to the fact that women of that era had a lack of rights and equality in comparison to men. Upon marriage, the women would lawfully become the man's property. Before the Married Property Act of 1882, the wife's wealth was passed onto her husband through marriage and any earnings she made would go directly to him. Because of this lack of autonomy for women, the wives were stripped of their humanity and the husband was socially allowed to ‘treat his property however he wishes’. This could explain the lack of remorse the narrator has towards his wife and the domestic abuse that occurs.
A more modern example of domestic abuse written into the Gothic is Stephen King’s The Shining. The Shining takes place within the Overlook Hotel, where the protagonist Jack Torrance has been hired to be the Overlook’s winter caretaker. He, his wife Wendy and their son Danny move into the hotel but all is not as it seems. Jack becomes possessed by the hotel and his already violent and drunken urges become amplified by it. Similarly to The Black Cat, The Shining also centres around abuse within the domestic family sphere. The Shining was written in 1977, during the height of the Second Wave feminist movement in which domestic abuse and ‘wife-beating’ was beginning to be viewed as a serious cultural issue, as previously mentioned. This gives readers of The Shining a deeper understanding of domestic abuse at the time. Stephen King often writes about domestic male violence against women within his novels. Not only is there violence from Jack Torrance to his wife, but there seems to be a culture of domestic abuse throughout. One of Danny's classmates in the novel tells him that one boy's father ‘had tried to strangle his wife with a stocking when the Red Sox lost a big ball game.’, the Torrance’s before entering the hotel could hear the couple next door to their house’s ‘constant, rancorous fighting’, and the wife repeating ‘Don’t Tom. Please don’t. Please don’t.’ which often would wake them up in the middle of the night, and an instance where Danny hears that one of his friends' ‘daddy had punched his mom right in the eye and knocked her down.’ The themes of domestic violence throughout the Shining highlight the connection between the Gothic and the ‘socially critical subtext about intimate violence and the dysfunctional family’. The ‘casual’ and almost normalised abuse which occurs from the husbands towards their wives.
The Shining also represents the Gothic tropes of the Satanic Male and the Virtuous Heroine. Jack Torrance represents the Satanic Male through his need for supremacy and domination over others. Jack feels insecure in his masculinity and role as the domestic husband and father as it is clear he is frustrated by the lack of money he is earning and his unsuccessful career, he ‘needed’ the caretaker job as he had lost his previous job as a teacher for being violent towards one of his pupils. Jack’s role as the stereotypical white patriarchal male, similarly to the narrator in The Black Cat, is unstable and thus causes his rage - as he believes he deserves to be in a more dominating, masculine, powerful position. Throughout the novel, Jack violently lashes out on those physically inferior to him, his wife and his child. Wendy often expresses fear of her husband's anger, stating ‘it would almost come as a relief if he would lose it, blow off steam’ rather than keeping the anger pent up for a later outburst.
The Virtuous Heroine is represented by Wendy. Wendy is portrayed as a housewife, a stay-at-home mother who cares for her son and the house while her husband is at work.
She has fears of her husband leaving her for another woman, fears of not treating him well enough ‘was she not holding her husband right?’ and heavily relies on her husband for support, like most traditional depictions of a housewife. She does not have her own income, many friends nor a supportive family. Because of this, Wendy endures Jack's violent and abusive behaviour towards both herself and Danny. Although she seriously considers divorce, Wendy at the beginning of the novel plays into the toxic cultural stereotype of victims staying with their abusers due to lack of self-esteem, an inability to defend themselves, or their reliance on that partner for support or income. What makes Wendy into the Virtuous Heroine is that she is trapped in her marriage and her role as a mother, but undergoes a transformation throughout the novel. Starting the novel as a woman who is the victim, passive and frightened to a woman who becomes a hero, resilient and unafraid. She fights to save her son from harm and escapes her abuser.
To summarise, domestic violence against women through Gothic literature emphasises the importance of acknowledgement surrounding the issue which had previously been belittled or ignored. By creating gendered stereotypes within the domestic sphere into ‘satanic’ monsters and innocent heroines, the Gothic shows the abuse of power, control and fear surrounding these issues that target women. Highlighting the instability of patriarchal roles which ‘others’ the genders from each other.
This essay was written as part of the BA(hons) English Literature and Creative Writing degree course at Brighton University
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