Industrial Gothic: Workers, Exploitation and Urbanization in Transatlantic Nineteenth-Century Literature

(Hardback)

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An archival literary study positing the Industrial Revolution as a site of Gothic excess and horror.

Stories about the real horrors of factory life frequently employed the mode of the Gothic, while nineteenth-century Gothic literature began to use new settingsfactories, mills, and industrial citiesas backdrops for the horrors that once populated Gothic castles. This study carves out the Industrial Gothic as a new area of study that places the literature of the Industrial Revolution in dialogue with the Gothic. The book explores a significant subset of transatlantic nineteenth-century literature that employs the tropes, themes, and rhetoric of the Gothic to portray the real-life horrors of factory life. Using archival materials, Bridget Marshall frames the Industrial Revolution as a site of Gothic excess and horror.

Reviews

"Industrial Gothic is a succinctly written, well-researched study, which demonstrates how in its early stages the Gothic offered a reservoir of rhetoric and imagery to powerfully expose and vilify social injustice suffered by the most vulnerable in an era of unprecedented and uncontrolled industrial expansion. Its great merit is undoubtedly creating a new critical category of 'Industrial Gothic' which goes beyond geographical, political and class divisions and encompasses a wide selection of texts, British and American, fiction and non-fiction, canonical and by unknown factory workers. By exploring the way the Gothic was used to depict damage caused by industry not only to human beings but also to the natural environment, Bridget Marshalls book broadens our understanding of the Gothic as a powerful and effective mode directly engaged with the most acute problems of contemporary times." --Agnieszka owczanin, University of d -- Agnieszka Lowczanin, University of Ldz * University of Wales Press *
"By drawing our attention to a literary form that was used by writers in both England and the United States, Marshall also reminds readers of the impact that industrialism had and continues to have on the global economy. Her study focuses on works that depict the horrors of the textile industry in the nineteenth century, but we in the twenty-first century are perhaps even more aware of the ongoing damage done by forces that have only become even more monstrous with the passage of time." * Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts *

Author Bio

Bridget M. Marshall is Associate Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, where she teaches courses on the Gothic, New England witchcraft trials, and disability in literature.