Subjects of Slavery, Agents of Change: Women and Power in Gothic Novels and Slave Narratives, 1790–1865

Analyzing the historical contexts in which female Gothic novels and slave narratives were composed, Kari J. Winter shows that both types of writing expose the sexual politics at the heart of patriarchal culture and represent terrifying aspects of life for women. Careful not to equate the status of slave and female, Winter reads both genres as sites of ideological struggle to examine how they engaged the dominant classist, racist, patriarchal discourse and created possibilities for new, feminist ways of thinking. Authors whose works are considered include Harriet Jacobs, Mary Prince, Nancy Prince, Louisa Picquet, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, and Charlotte Brontë.