Looking for the gaze of love: Paranoia, hysteria, and the masochism in the Gothic (Charlotte Dacre, Charlotte Bronte, Ann Sophia Radcliffe, Shirley Jackson)

This dissertation focuses on representations of masochism in Gothic novels by female writers to investigate the ways in which they appear as a means for the heroine to cope with, manipulate, or subvert the patriarchal system. This study also reconsiders the significance of the other frequently referenced mental disorders in the Gothic, paranoia and hysteria, to demonstrate that these disorders also illuminate an important thematic of female Gothic: management of the gaze. Masochism, which informs the fate of the Gothic heroine, results from the patriarchal system that requires her to accept male domination, not from her willingness to expose herself to harmful situations, as some critics have argued. The Gothic masochism is clarified by addressing the issue of the gaze: the necessity of the gaze that produces the heroine's subjectivity and sustains her life forces her to submit to male power. Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho exemplifies the prototype of female Gothic, in which the masochistic acceptance of the male gaze is presented as an inevitable solution after a thorough examination of male domination. In this novel, the heroine shows the paranoiac fear of gaze and the hysteric desperation of gaze until she reaches the masochistic acceptance of gaze.; The latter half of the dissertation investigates three women writers' subsequent experiments in representing heroines' quests for a manageable domination, focusing on various types of masochism---male masochism, religious masochism, and masochism as a means of defiance---that emerge in the process. Charlotte Dacre's Zofloya represents a bold attempt at a woman's resistance to a society that assigns her the submissive position, which the heroine unknowingly takes in an effort to play the role of dominator. Charlotte Bronte's protagonist displays sophisticated strategies of masochism, willingly submitting to the tyrant and even magnifying his power with religious overtones only to control him. Shirley Jackson represents an even more drastic solution for managing domination: the protagonists' obedient retreat to a hidden space, where they entirely evade the gaze of men. The study concludes with a discussion of possibilities of survival outside patriarchy, achieved through Gothic heroine's perfect management---elimination---of the gaze.