"I looked at her, with my mind full of that other lovely face which had so ominously recalled her to my memory on the terrace by moonlight. I had seen Anne Catherick's likeness in Miss Fairlie. I now saw Miss Fairlie's likeness in Anne Catherick."
- Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
We are joined for this episode of Risking Enchantment by Catholic author Eleanor Bourg Nicholson. Eleanor has recently published two Gothic novels, A Bloody Habit (2018) and Brother Wolf (2021). She joins us to talk about the Gothic genre, and why it's both relevant and interesting to Catholic writers and readers. We also delve into the theme of gothic doubles, a theme powerfully explored in many of the classic novels of the genre including Dracula, Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
We also look at how the trope is explored in Sensation fiction, a genre adjacent to Gothic fiction, in particular in the novel The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. While Gothic fiction has the source of its uncanny doubling in the preternatural and phantasmagorical, Sensation fiction looks to the find the horror in the real societal problems found in the Victorian Age. Where the former genre examines how find ourselves reflected in the falleness of literal monsters, the latter genre examines how we find ourselves reflected in the villany and duplicity of our society.
Hosts: Rachel Sherlock, Eleanor Bourg Nicholson
Follow Rachel on social media: @seekingwatson
Follow Eleanor on Facebook here.
Follow the podcast on Instagram: @riskingenchantmentpodcast
Find out more at www.rachelsherlock.com
Sign up for our email list at www.rachelsherlock.com/podcast
Buy A Bloody Habit by Eleanor Bourg Nicholson here.
Buy Brother Wolf by Eleanor Bourg Nicholson here.
Find out more about Eleanor Bourg Nicholson's work with Homeschool Connections here.
Related Risking Enchantment Episodes:
Dracula: The Presence of Evil and the Power of Sacramentals
Monsters and Morality in Romanticism
Works Mentioned:
A Bloody Habit by Eleanor Bourg Nicholson
Brother Wolf by Eleanor Bourg Nicholson
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Victorian Age in Literature by G.K. Chesterton
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