Women in White and the New Gothic Cinema: Reinventing the Gothic Heroine

There has been a revival of interest in the Gothic heroine in the twenty-first century, in big budget films such as Crimson Peak, Poor Things, Nosferatu, Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights.

This talk traces the history of the Gothic heroine back to the eighteenth-century novels of Ann Radcliffe, the highest paid author of her day.

Paying particular attention to costume and the iconic image of the woman in white running from a dark house, Professor Catherine Spooner explores the ways in which contemporary writers and film-makers have positioned the Gothic heroine as embodying feminist resistance and dark romance.