Brooklyn & Give me Liberty or Give me Decadence?

[Terrance Flaherty]

>From the perspective of the 1990s, we might regard the Britain of the
1790s as marked by a pervasive neurosis of the social order. Nowhere is
this more evident than in the position assigned to women, who were
subjected to a range of legal and social disabilities. Although these
disabilities were
not new to the 1790s, they acquired a special intensity in the aftermath
of the French Revolution and the reaction against all things Jacobin. 

The physical ideal of womanhood that evolved toward the end of the
eighteenth century was equally damaging. Increasing restrictions on body
shape and clothing meant, in Lawrence Stone's account, "extreme
slimness, a pale complexion and slow languid movements, all of which
were deliberately inculcated in the most expensive boarding schools"
(Family 445). Weakness of body and mind seems to have given women
greater sexual attractiveness by increasing the scope for male control. 

Besides the heroines' illnesses, their childlike qualities contribute
directly to their attractiveness.



Despite these significant accomplishments, however, the Radcliffe
heroine oddly fails to  mature either socially or psychologically.
Although she survives her ordeals in order to marry and, presumably,
bear children, she seems
quite untouched by the succession of terrifying experiences she has had
to endure. Udolpho, in the words of Macdonald (1989), is "a novel of
education in which her heroine starts out with nothing to learn, a novel
of maturation in which her heroine ends up as
innocent, and as infantile, as she began" (203; also Kiely 78, Howells
9). This analysis applies to the heroines of all the novels. Radcliffe's
vision, then, cannot encompass maturation. At the same time, the Gothic
heroine is a survivor, as Punter has
suggested (11). Representative of some aspect of actual female
experience, she survives
amidst the social disruptions and gender politics of the late eighteenth
century,
but only at the cost of considerable psychological injury. She is the
plaything of a Gothic machinery that involves removal of parents,
extreme social isolation, prolonged incarcerations, and states of
excessive terror, all of which symbolize a predicament that in reality
is too threatening to be adequately comprehended. 

The Preceptor as Fiend: Radcliffe's Psychology of the Gothic David S.
Miall 

http://www.ualberta.ca/~dmiall/RADCLIFF.HTM

As was noted several times here, see Edmundson. 

Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism and the Culture of
Gothic   Mark Edmundson (Harvard University Press, 190 pp.,  Paper
0674624637) 

Horror and especially the Gothic, Edmundson argues in this compelling
new study, permeates contemporary culture...Edmundson demonstrates in
the chapter, "The World According to Forest Gump" there is an
anti-Gothic world inspired by the belief that self-transformation is as
simple as a fairy-tale wish or facile transcendence - witness the men's
movement, New Age fads, or the angel craze. This dueling sense of our
culture fascinates Edmundson (in much the same way he is bothered by his
own fascination with horror films and visionary poetry). In an attempt
to understand this he looks back to the work of Nietzsche and Shelley's
"Prometheus Unbound". These two writers treated the Gothic in their work
but also sought means overcome them and avoiding a culture of
sadomasochism. Edmundson sees this process continuing in our own
culture....

The Circulation of Sado-Masochistic Desire in the Lolita Texts
Krin Gabbard


http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/articles/psyart1997/gabbar01.htm

The Now Decade
http://future.newsday.com/century/10cv1213.htm

But for many Long Islanders, the decade will always be remembered as the
era of Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco. 

Mason is on the ring. A shadowboxer. 
He looks to a neutral corner. Is there a neutral corner? 

And you fill your space so sweet if I let you get too close you'll set
your spell on me 

I was onto every play

I just wanted you. 

Yeah right. 

It's so evil....stay weary of your love...shadowboxer baby.....

Mason and Dixon are puppets again. Mason employing the metaphor here as
the narrator did way back in the early chapters and as the RC has here
as well. Say, what's going on? 
A theatre of puppets. 

I've been a bad bad girl.....when a girl will break a boy just because
she can 
I done wrong and I want to suffer.....what I need is a good defense
cause I'm feelin like a criminal....

Mixing memories improperly desired
she haunts me in April bleeding what little life
has not expired
from the issues of our bed
with a fiduciary knife 

The Miller tells the tale of the tub
the boys kneed
She turns a whiter shade of pale