Embodied Ideology Walpoles Expression Through Characters in Castle of

body forth Ideology Walpoles Expression Through Char make upersThe description of the eighteenth century gothic as ?a confused and contradictory form, ambivalent or changeable about its aver aims and implications? (Kilgour 5) is an entirely fitting one for Otranto - especially with compute to domestic and gender ideology. Valdine Clemens tells us that at the time of Otranto?s publication, ? ethnic conditions ? were highly repressive for women? (31). Women were vulnerable and defenseless, unable to exercise control in most areas of their lives. Men were allowed to control where their children went to school, where they worked, and to whom they got married ? all without any stimulant drug from their mother. As well, it was much easier for a man to break his wife than for a woman to divorce her husband. Clemens cites Lawrence Stone to give us just such(prenominal) an example of the inequalities women had to suffer? a Lady with numerous aristocratic connections sued for divorce fr om her husband, who ?had been unfaithful to her on their wedding night, had debauched all the maidservants in the house, had addicted his wife venereal disease, and was constantly drunk.? Her application was defeated after massive parliamentary debate on the grounds that ?divorce by act of Parliament had traditionally been restricted to husbands, except when there were peculiarly exacerbate circumstances like incest.? (34)Walpole?s novel can be seen as having a feminine bias and being subversive of these social norms. on that point is, however, evidence that supports a conservative ideology as well. This makes it particularly strong to give a definitive answer to the long-debated question of whether or non Walpole was trying to be conservative or subversive of societal nor... ...ranto and succeeding revelation of authorship points to a conflicting desire to circulate and to non circulate his work at the same time. It is not improbable that Walpole was also unsure about wha t he wanted the implications of his novel to be. Like the inharmonious and ambiguous nature of the gothic (discussed in IncongruousCorpus), Walpole himself was ?unsure about his own aims?, whatever his views on society were.Works CitedClemens, Valdine. The Return of the Repressed Gothic Horror from The move of Otranto to Alien. New York SUNY P, 1999.Ellis, Kate Ferguson. The Contested Castle. Chicago U of Illinois P, 1989.Kilgour, Maggie. The acquire of the Gothic Novel. London Routledge, 1995.Marcie Frank. ?Horace Walpole?s Family Romances.? Modern Philology 100 (2003) 417-35.Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto. New York Oxford UP, 1996.