Feminine Fortitude and Elements of the Gothic

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“Christabel” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is about a young woman separated from her betrothed who shows feminine fortitude in caring for a woman she finds in the woods. As they crossed the field and came to the gate, “The lady sank, belike thro’ pain / And Christabel with might and main / Lifted her up, a weary weight, / Over the threshold of the gate: / Then the lady rose again, / And mov’d, as she were not in pain” (124-129). “Main” as used here can mean a couple of different things: Firstly, it means physical strength, which is understandable as Christabel needed physical strength in order to carry Geraldine over the threshold. But the other meaning is that of power or virtue, which Christabel also exhibits. She shows power in making the decision to allow Geraldine into the castle and virtue by taking care of her in the first place. Although we can’t ever know for sure because the poem was never finished, the reader can assume that Christabel and her knight are eventually reunited because no one would ever learn of her tryst with Geraldine, since the spell prevents her from speaking of it to anyone.

In Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, the heroine, Catherine Morland, is separated from the object of her affection through a spiteful lie to his father, who in turn, turns her out of their home as immediately as possible. She shows feminine fortitude in making the sudden journey alone and of being confident that she should arrive home safely. “There can be no doubt of my getting home safe” she tells Miss Eleanor Tilney (Austen 169). And the “journey itself had no terrors for her; and she began it without either dreading its length, or fearing its solitariness” (Austen 170). The “solitariness” can refer not only to being forced on the journey without so much as a servant for companionship to be sure she arrives safely, but also the solitariness of being separated from Henry Tilney on such short notice without even being able to say good-bye. Her fortitude is shaken, as we see that she “lean[s] back in one corner of the carriage, in a violent burst of tears;” but she ultimately makes the journey on her own regaining her lost strength (Austen 170). Catherine maintains her femininity because she does not allow the general to incite her anger; rather she remains calm and collected throughout the ordeal, until she leaves. Furthermore, by acknowledging the general’s ploy of a forgotten engagement and recognizing that the engagement must be kept if at all possible, Catherine also maintains her femininity. Because Catherine was able to maintain her feminine fortitude and her poise and composure through such an horrid ordeal, she and Henry are eventually given leave by the general and her parents to be married.

In Jane Austen’s Letters, edited by R.W. Chapman, we get a glimpse into the life of Austen. We also see one reason why she deems it so important for her heroine to maintain her virtue and femininity in the face of being turned out of the Tilney home on such short notice for a bogus reason. Although Austen writes in her 12 May 1801 letter to her sister, Cassandra, that the constant stream of small parties are “stupid” and “intolerable,” she is still expected to attend (128). Just as Catherine Morland, although she knows that it must be due to some unknown offense, is expected to simply accept General Tilney’s flimsy explanation and move on. Society is determining what it means to remain feminine and that the ladies are expected to act in such a manner at all times regardless of the circumstance. In these cases, femininity is defined as following societal expectations, being socially aware and adept.

The core argument of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s chapter one “The Structure of Gothic Conventions” of her book The Coherence of Gothic Conventions is that the Gothic novels are formulaic and that the meaning adheres to the surface of the texts. She states, “Once you know that a novel is of the Gothic kind (and you can tell that from the title), you can predict its contents with an unnerving certainty” (Kosofsky Sedgwick 9). To “adhere” is to cling to, to stick, to remain. If the meaning sticks to the surface, then that is where we must look to find the means by which the female characters maintain their virtue and femininity.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick also wrote a book called Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. The core argument of chapter five, “Toward the Gothic: Terrorism and Homosexual Panic,” is that homophobia was used as a means to terrify men into the belief that their male-to-male relationships could be construed as improperly intimate and could therefore be punishable. We see this possibility in Northanger Abbey between Catherine’s brother, James, and John Thorpe. Catherine must showcase her feminine fortitude in dealing with the men, who are good friends that met while at Oxford. They spend a great deal of time together and their relationship could be seen as improperly intimate and therefore they must always have the company of Catherine and Isabella in order to thwart that notion. Catherine remains feminine in her dealings with them by dancing with John at the balls, and attending them on their excursions even though her heart was not engaged in the activity. She would have much rather spent her time with Henry Tilney. Her fortitude shines through in her continuous desire to be with Tilney.

James Lindemann Nelson wrote as his core argument in his essay “How Catherine Does Go On: Northanger Abbey and Moral Thought” that fellow writer, Alice Crary, does not take her argument that “moral thought can proceed without employing moral judgments” far enough (Nelson 89). Nelson goes on to use several of Jane Austen’s works to show that “gothic sensibility highlights a feature of the world in which Catherine [of Northanger Abbey] actually lives – the stark difference in power between the genders and the consequent precariousness of women’s lives” (Nelson 199). The women in the stories are subjected to the whim of the “men of high rank,” and yet able to maintain their sensibility, virtue and femininity in the face of many adversities.

In chapter six “The History Women and the Population Men” of Karen O’Brien’s book Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain, the core argument is based on Mary Wollstonecraft’s position on the “models of social progress at work during the first real flowering of women’s history in the early nineteenth century” and “the enormous challenge to advocates of female progress” (O’Brien 201). Part I of the chapter is concerned with the education of women, particularly their education in history, in order for them to be more accepted when speaking of civic and other public affairs. The second