How Does Gothic Literature A Form Of Human Sacrifice

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One of the main themes in Gothic Literature is a form of human sacrifice, the sacrifice of the innocent woman. Innocent and idealized women were sacrificed for many reasons, but mostly for the benefit of a male patriarchal power that has control over their lives. These sacrificial women do vary, but there are commonalities between them: they are usually young women, of higher class, non-married, their innocence borders sainthood, and virginal innocence. The sacrificial women in both short stories The Old Nurses Story and Good Lady Ducayne meet these criteria but also depart from it as there are some discrepancies regarding their class and age, and they survive their attempted sacrifices. The characters Rosamond in The Old Nurses Story and Bella …show more content…

By the end of the story all three except Rosamond died for the benefit of Lord Furnivall in the classic patriarchal fashion but they are not innocent, so the story is not satisfied. Maude had a child out of wedlock and brought the child to their home, which removed her of her virginal innocence. The old lady Furnivall witnessed her father killing the child and casting out his daughter and did nothing to stop it and the child committed the crime of simply being born. Rosamond on the other hand is also a sacrifice, but here Maude uses her to oppose the patriarchal power structure. Rosamond is drawn outside by the ghost of the dead child who leads Rosamond to the holly trees where her and her mother died. The spirit of Lord Furnivall tries to thwart this attempted usurping of power by loudly playing the organ whenever Maude and her child try and entice Rosamond to her death. This resistance against the patriarchal power structure is odd for this theme as it is resisting the structure itself rather than simply trying to usurp it. At the end of the story, the dead father, sister, and child are together, seemingly under the father’s control once again, which is where the old lady Furnivall dies, and her ghost joins her family, and the structure remains

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