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from her childhood. But family secrets already provide the intrigue in some of Rivette’s 1970s films. In Merry-Go-Round (1978, released 1983), Léo (Maria Schneider) learns that her father’s death in a plane crash may have been faked, whilst in Céline et Julie vont en bateau (1974), the eponymous heroines (Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier) seek to rescue a young child from the family that is plotting her slow death
This chapter analyses four films written and directed by Mario Bava between 1960 and 1966: La Maschera del demonio, La Frusta e il Corpo, Operazione Paura and Sei donne per l'assassino. The first three titles belong to 'the supernatural horror film', the latter to the Italian genre of the giallo. The first point worth noting is that the three examples of 'supernatural horror' are all 'period pieces', set in the nineteenth century, whereas Sei donne per l'assassino is set in the contemporary period. Since he is directing a 'period piece', Bava chooses to concentrate on questions of honour, the family, patriarchy and the selfishness of a power that goes without saying as everyone accepts it. La Frusta e il Corpo extends the notion of submission to take in the male members of the family, but the concomitant notion of adapting for the woman remains intact: now two women are unhappy.
Out of his Mind is a study of the consequences of a diagnosis of insanity for men, their families, their friends, and the culture at large.
Studying the madman allows for an exploration of the cultural expectations of male behaviour, how men responded to those norms in their lived experiences, and what defined the bare minimums of acceptable male behaviour. Men’s authority in society was rooted in control over dependants within their household and beyond; without that power, the foundation of their manhood was in question. As such, madness touched on a key tenet of nineteenth-century masculinity: control. Building on accounts from sufferers, doctors, government officials, journalists, and novelists, Out of his Mind offers insight into the shifting anxieties surrounding men in mental distress. Exploring everything from wrongful confinement panics, to cultures of shame and stigma, to fears of degeneration, this study makes an important contribution to histories of gender and medicine.
This text puts the madman at the centre of the history of Victorian masculinity and helps us better understand the stigma of men’s mental illness that continues to this day.
the character Isabel/Isabelle is denied, she being the possible secret progeny of an extra-marital relationship; in this way it could stand for the family secret, therefore, an element so central to the naturalist tradition in late nineteenth-century fiction. Carax in interview himself reminds us that it is suggestive of that which is taboo, and that it could therefore mark the space and time of the incestuous sex between Pierre
the interior self. It also, like many of her works, is preoccupied with the unspoken and the burden created and imposed by family secrets. Amongst its accomplishments is its ability to evoke trailing Gothic effects which are subtly insinuated into the text but remain teasingly open. Haunting is at once a trait of the heroine and of the several families in the novel that all
’ novel Of One Blood; or, the Hidden Self , originally serialised in Colored American Magazine , 1902–03 . Of One Blood is difficult to categorise, but many of its features – haunted houses, family secrets, ghosts and incest, just to name a few – indicate its place within the Gothic tradition. Several critics have remarked on its Gothic characteristics: Yogita Goyal describes the novel as having ‘a particularly Gothic twist’ 7 ; Eugenia DeLamotte notes that it is filled with ‘Gothic mysteries’ and provides ‘great Gothic insight’ 8
The last decade has seen a diffusion of the Gothic across a wide range of cultural sites, a relative explosion of Gothic images and narratives prompting a renewed critical interest in the genre. However, very little sustained attention has been paid to what we might term 'Gothic television' until this point. This book fills this gap by offering an analysis of where and how the genre might be located on British and US television, from the start of television broadcasting to the present day. In this analysis, Gothic television is understood as a domestic form of a genre which is deeply concerned with the domestic, writing stories of unspeakable family secrets and homely trauma large across the television screen. The book begins with a discussion on two divergent strands of Gothic television that developed in the UK during the 1960s and 1970s, charting the emergence of the restrained, suggestive ghost story and the effects-laden, supernatural horror tale. It then focuses on the adaptation of what has been termed 'female Gothic' or 'women's Gothic' novels. The book moves on to discuss two hybrid forms of Gothic drama in the 1960s, the Gothic family sitcoms The Munsters and The Addams Family, and the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows. Finally, it looks at some recent examples of Gothic television in the United States, starting with a discussion of the long-form serial drama, Twin Peaks, as the initiator of a trend for dark, uncanny drama on North American television.
This book recounts the little-known history of the mixed-race children born to black American servicemen and white British women during the Second World War. Of the three million American soldiers stationed in Britain from 1942 to 1945, about 8 per cent (240,000) were African-American; the latter’s relationships with British women resulted in the birth of an estimated 2,000 babies. The African-American press named these children ‘brown babies’; the British called them ‘half-castes’. Black GIs, in this segregated army, were forbidden to marry their white girlfriends. Up to half of the mothers of these babies, faced with the stigma of illegitimacy and a mixed-race child, gave their children up for adoption. The outcome for these children tended to be long-term residency in children’s homes, sometimes followed by fostering and occasionally adoption, but adoption societies frequently would not take on ‘coloured’ children, who were thought to be ‘too hard to place’. There has been minimal study of these children and the difficulties they faced, such as racism in a (then) very white Britain, lack of family or a clear identity. Accessibly written and illustrated with numerous photographs, this book presents the stories of over forty of these children. While some of the accounts of early childhood are heart-breaking, there are also many uplifting narratives of finding American fathers and gaining a sense of self and of heritage.
, and cohabitation. Though welcome, the reforms were highly limited; far-reaching transformations occurred only in the late twentieth century. The first five chapters centre on legal consequences of illegitimacy, but the next three focus on social issues. Chapter 6 explores the family crisis brought by illegitimacy. Children living with their families had advantages over those who did not, but these arrangements were often unstable, since illegitimacy was a powerful family secret. Indeed, Chapter 7 analyses the movements of these children from family to family and in
times disturbing. In her book exploring changing attitudes to family secrets, Deborah Cohen has argued that ‘Contrary to the old saying’, you can ‘at least to some degree, choose your family, at least the extended and mythical version of it.’ 35 For the Hibberts this meant the erasure of Jane Harry from the family Bible, although in more recent times she has been reclaimed. For the nation this dynamic explains