Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik -- Part I: Family Matters -- Heroines in Flight / Angela Wright -- Madwomen and Attics / Laurence Talairach-Vielmas -- Mothers and Others / Ginette Carpenter -- The Gothic Girl Child / Lucie Armitt -- A Woman's Place -- Diana Wallace -- Part II: Trangressions -- Wicked Women -- Anne Williams -- The Female Gothic Body / Marie Mulvey-Roberts -- Spectral Femininity / Rebecca Munford -- Women and the Law / Sue Chaplin -- Female Vampirism / Gina Wisker. Part III: New Directions -- Queering the Female Gothic / Ardel Haefele-Thomas -- No Country for Old Women / Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik -- Virtual Gothic Women / Catherine Spooner -- Formations of Player Agency and Gender in Gothic Video Games / Tanya Krzywinska.

This collection of newly commissioned essays brings together major scholars in the field of Gothic studies in order to re-think the topic of 'Women and the Gothic'. The 14 chapters in this volume engage with debates about 'Female Gothic' from the 1970s and '80s, through second wave feminism, theorisations of gender and a long interrogation of the 'women' category as well as with the problematics of post-feminism, now itself being interrogated by a younger generation of women. The contributors explore Gothic works - from established classics to recent films and novels - from feminist and post-feminist perspectives. The result is a lively book that combines rigorous close readings with elegant use of theory in order to question some ingrained assumptions about women, the Gothic and identity. [page 4 of cover]