계몽주의와 여성의 이성:『이탈리아인』을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper argues that women and Gothic novels written by women can be firmly situated within the discourse of Enlightenment, despite the commonly held misconceptions that women simply have no rational faculty, and that Gothic novels depict a dark and supernatural, irrational world. As recent feminist historical research shows, many seventeenth and eighteenth-century women embraced Descartes' philosophy which lay the ground for arguments for the equal rational capacities of the sexes, and they employed those arguments to speak up against the inferior education bestowed upon women. Ann Radcliffe can be viewed as fully taking part in these efforts. Her novels deliberately focus on the power of female reason, and the heroine's refined mind that may lack knowledge gained through experience, but is illuminated by pure reason. Radcliffe explores the extensive range of the female mind through intense inner reflection prompted by gothic devices such as confinement and oppression, and affirms the ability of the rational mind to rise above all difficulties. Furthermore, Radcliffe depicts female sensibility as a combination of reason and feeling, and recognizes its moral and spiritual force as female virtue. Through a close reading of Radcliffe's The Italian, this paper shows how the emphasis on female reason in Gothic novels by women can reveal a strong critique of the patriarchal world, as well as an aspiration for a new order regulated by a rational female sensibility. Through this reading, we can see how the female Gothic can be read as participating in the construction of the new ideology that locates "virtue" in the private sphere.