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repositioning Radcliffe’s novel – and many that follow – as part of a Gothic tradition distinct from that represented by Walpole’s parodic and satirical work. The contrast between the depictions of incest, sexuality and female agency in The Romance of the Forest and Otranto are marked in that Radcliffe’s representations of father–daughter incest allow the heroine access to desire, voice
particular type of attack on the patriarchy. While the genre functions as a space in which writers articulated these views it does so as part of the wider Gothic genre rather than from within a Female Gothic tradition that questions patriarchy by presenting incest as a sexualised abuse of the power imbalance inherent in the familial and social structures. When Fred Botting and Dale Townshend state that
incest allow texts to be considered masculine or ‘real’ Gothic, while incest that is averted, non-violent or implied is considered part of the Female Gothic tradition. Such a view is apparent in James Watt’s argument that Lewis’s deployment of sexuality ‘amplified the suggestion of impropriety that was only implicit in the work of a writer such as Ann Radcliffe’. 33 Similarly, Vartan P. Messier
section on ‘Irish gothic and after’ in The Field Day review , though he argues that the novel has no ‘direct link to the gothic tradition’. 72 Julia M. Wright nevertheless identifies the novel's use of gothic conventions as significant, contributing as it does to a literary hyper-hybridity as well as an ambivalence towards the cultural nationalism promoted by The wild Irish girl . 73 Raphaël Ingelbien, moreover, links The princess; or, the Béguine (1835) to fin-de-siècle Irish gothic fiction in its ‘[turn] to continental material to write indirectly about Ireland
Ibid. , p. xxiv. 124 Piper, Dreaming in books , p. 6. 125 As Ann Davies writes, ‘Spain does not apparently have a Gothic tradition. With the rise of Anglophone Gothic in the eighteenth century, Spain appeared to serve at best as part of a Southern European location for Anglophone encounters with the
Littlewood examines the higher social stigma against cross-generational incest due to the sexualisation of power and the erosion of care-giving involved in such relationships (p. 145). 87 The illness may be what robs Sir Lusignan of his desire for extramarital affairs; Thomas draws on the Gothic tradition