本文探討女性志異小說的重要主題，即，志異傳統如何呼應女性自主意識的抬頭及女性主義的崛起。透過觀察中產階級女性在志異小說中所扮演的腳色，本文討論了文本中女主角與文本外女性作者、讀者之間的互動，並發現，十八世紀中產階級建構起的家庭意識形態、性別化的空間與性別規範不僅跨越了文本、穿越時代，仍舊陰魂不散地糾纏著(haunting)現代女性。此外，本文將透過分析、比較兩本經典的女性志異小說－《簡愛》(1847) 與《蝴蝶夢》(1938)，進一步討論女作家們如何以志異小說作為媒介，表達女性在父權體制下生存與發展的困境，進而批判、逃逸以及反抗既有的社會框架。

雖相隔百年，夏綠蒂·勃朗特於十九世紀創作的《簡愛》與達夫妮·杜穆里埃於戰間期所撰寫的《蝴蝶夢》在情節上具有明顯的相似之處，並同樣側重於描寫女主角的僭越(transgression)。藉由將女主角塑造成脫離社會秩序的中產階級的女性，兩位作者嘗試鬆綁女性的自我認同與理想化的女性特質間的糾結，探索女性身分的多元可能性。通過延續、改動志異小說的主題架構，如: 殺妻與家庭禁錮，這兩本作品不僅建立起女性志異小說的系譜，也描繪出從維多利亞時期到戰間期女性特質的變遷，指出女性特質本身的矛盾。

This thesis will explore the major issue of Female Gothic, namely, how women' s writing of Gothic genre correlate to women' s liberation and independence. It will focus on the roles that the middle-class women play (with)in the Female Gothic to further probe into how women Gothic authors capture the shifting female identity and negotiate about it with given patriarchal society through this particular genre. With this focus, the thesis will also look into the middle-class idealization of domesticity and femininity that had entrapped women in the past and is still haunting women nowadays. Furthermore, this thesis will further probe into how later women writers express their circumstances through Gothic fictions. It will compare two Female Gothic texts, Charlotte Brontë' s Jane Eyre (1847) and Daphne du Maurier' s Rebecca (1938). The two texts not only share a stark similarity in the plot but also have the same focus on the transgression of Gothic heroine. Both of the authors characterize their heroines as middle-class women who fall out social order of their times to explore the possibility to loosen the bonds between women’s identity and patriarchal idealization of femininity. By continuing as well as transforming the Gothic frameworks of uxoricide and domestic entrapment, the two novels depict women during the Victorian era and interwar period faced crucial historical changes that shift the gender roles of given society.

Table of Contents
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………. 1
I. Female Gothic as a Coded Feminist Voice…………………………………………… 1
II. Literature Review…………………………………………………………………….. 4
III. Female Gothic Lineage in Jane Eyre and Rebecca…………………………………... 7
IV. Chapter Overview………………………………………………………...........…… 12
Chapter One: The Origin of Female Gothic…………………………………………....... 14
I. Female Gothic and Female Anxiety…………………………………………...……. 14
II. Ann Radcliffe: The Danger of Female Writing/Reading of Gothic Fiction…..…….. 19
III. Mary Wollstonecraft: Feminist and Female Gothic………………………………… 22
Chapter Two: Jane Eyre’s Rebellion against Victorian Femininity…………………….. 24
I. Jane Eyre as Female Gothic Novel…………………………………………………. 24
II. Governess as Gothic Heroine: Rebellious Femininity in the Victorian Era………… 28
III. Brontë as the Icon of the First-Wave Feminism…………………………………….. 34
Chapter Three: Rebecca’s Reconstruction of Postwar Femininity…………...………… 36
I. Rebecca as the Twentieth-Century Jane Eyre……………………………………….. 36
II. Killing Rebecca: Postwar Backlash against Women…………...…………………… 41
III. Rebecca’s Ghost and Modern Gothic……………………………………………….. 48
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….. 53
Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………........... 55

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