Doubles and Duplicity: Gothic Themes in The Woman in White Featuring Eleanor Bourg Nicholson

"I looked at her, with my mind full of that other lovely face which had so ominously recalled her to my memory on the terrace by moonlight. I had seen Anne Catherick's likeness in Miss Fairlie. I now saw Miss Fairlie's likeness in Anne Catherick."

- Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

 

We are joined for this episode of Risking Enchantment by Catholic author Eleanor Bourg Nicholson. Eleanor has recently published two Gothic novels, A Bloody Habit (2018) and Brother Wolf (2021). She joins us to talk about the Gothic genre, and why it's both relevant and interesting to Catholic writers and readers. We also delve into the theme of gothic doubles, a theme powerfully explored in many of the classic novels of the genre including Dracula, Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

We also look at how the trope is explored in Sensation fiction, a genre adjacent to Gothic fiction, in particular in the novel The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. While Gothic fiction has the source of its uncanny doubling in the preternatural and phantasmagorical, Sensation fiction looks to the find the horror in the real societal problems found in the Victorian Age. Where the former genre examines how find ourselves reflected in the falleness of literal monsters, the latter genre examines how we find ourselves reflected in the villany and duplicity of our society.

 

Hosts: Rachel Sherlock, Eleanor Bourg Nicholson

Follow Rachel on social media: @seekingwatson

Follow Eleanor on Facebook here.

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Find out more at www.rachelsherlock.com

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Buy A Bloody Habit by Eleanor Bourg Nicholson here.

Buy Brother Wolf by Eleanor Bourg Nicholson here.

Find out more about Eleanor Bourg Nicholson's work with Homeschool Connections here.

Related Risking Enchantment Episodes:

Dracula: The Presence of Evil and the Power of Sacramentals

Monsters and Morality in Romanticism

 

Works Mentioned:

A Bloody Habit by Eleanor Bourg Nicholson

Brother Wolf by Eleanor Bourg Nicholson

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Victorian Age in Literature by G.K. Chesterton

 

What We're Enjoying at the Moment:

Eleanor: The Lord of the Rings on Audiobook

Rachel: The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke