| While traditional families are settled upon heteronormative values that are passed down in a patriarchal system, the Gothic family deviates from this pattern; the Gothic family works according to individually established values, as well as its own spatial and temporal rules. I argue that in its deviation from normativity, the Gothic family is necessarily a queer one. I will determine the function of "Gothicizing" the family in post-World War II literature and film, and how this process relates very closely to the categorization of "queering." The queer Gothic family utilizes its time and surrounding space to obsessively pursue various non-normative goals; because of their unusual objectives, queer Gothic families are often represented as "unsuccessful" in terms of heteronormativity, involving the termination of a family line, rearranged gender roles, and ambiguous emotional interactions. In this project, I explore the queerness of the Gothic family, examining the specific roles of Mother, Daughter, and Husband and considering their potentially monstrous dynamics. Finally, I argue that the condition of the queer Gothic family is in actuality far more ambiguous than the simple binary of "success" and "failure," and that representations of positive queer fulfillment are indeed possible in Gothic literature. |
