The Continuity of the Traditional Gothic with the Feminist Gothic and the Contemporary Gothic in Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987)

Abstract

The theme of our dissertation is about the traditional, gothic feminism, and the contemporary gothic in Beloved a novel written by a black female author named Toni Morrison in 1987. Our attention is to study the changes that occurred on Gothic as a genre from the eighteenth century to the present day through the use of "Gothic Feminism" as the major theory. This theory indicates knowledge about the slight change, not a radical one on the Gothic from the eighteenth to nowadays, but rather a continuity between the tradition and the contemporary Gothic and we found this in the gothic novel we studied . The interesting events of the novel Beloved and its content guided us to discover the changes on this mode of writing, in addition to the relation between the Gothic elements and feminism in Beloved by examining the characteristics of Female Gothic in our literary work. To be able to achieve this objective, we chose to refer to " Gothic Feminism" as the major theory since it is the most suitable one, which will facilitate our discovery process about the gothic feminism characteristics that can be found inside the novel Beloved referring to the traditional gothic elements despite being in the contemporary period. Our real goal is to prove that there is undeniable relationship between the traditional and the contemporary Gothic which is a complementary relationship.