Mad or Uncontrollable? Reading Female Madness in Three Gothic Texts

Author

• Amy Marie Bueno, CUNY City CollegeFollow

Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Thesis

Department

English

First Advisor

Lyn Di Iorio

Second Advisor

Robert Higney

Third Advisor

Andras Kisery

Keywords

Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, "If You Touched My Heart, " Gothic Literature, Feminist Disability Studies, Abjection

Abstract

My thesis employs comparative close reading framed by disability studies to analyze representations of female madness in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, and Isabel Allende’s “If You Touched My Heart.” Drawing on theories of socially constructed disability, it argues that Bertha, Antoinette, and Hortensia are framed as “mad women” not through inherent pathology, but through patriarchal violence, colonial domination, and institutional power. By integrating the social model of disability with feminist theory, this thesis examines how women are rendered disabled within societies influenced by Social Darwinism and eugenic ideologies.

This thesis further incorporates Gothic theory and David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder’s concept of narrative prosthesis to demonstrate how madness functions as both a structural and symbolic device that shapes narrative meaning. Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection is used to explore how each character’s perceived madness is intensified through their forced confrontation with the boundaries of social transgression and exclusion. Through this interdisciplinary methodology, this thesis reveals how madness functions as gendered and culturally enforced disability whose representation shifts across Gothic narrative writing and spaces.

Within the Victorian Gothic, Brontë’s colonialist representation silences Bertha which reduces her to a monstrous figure who is stripped of sense of connection to her origin, agency, and humanity. In contrast, Caribbean and Latin American Gothic texts by Jean Rhys and Isabel Allende transform the narrative of female madness from victimization into a testimony, framing madness as strength and resilience while documenting colonial, ancestral, gendered, and racial trauma through culturally specific expression. These characters represent the painful history of women from marginalized communities and reclaim voices denied to figures like Bertha. Ultimately, this thesis argues that Gothic literature has always been a genre beyond fear; it functions as a critical archive for silenced histories, documenting the lived realities of marginalized and disabled bodies that dominant social narratives seek to erase.

Recommended Citation

Bueno, Amy Marie, "Mad or Uncontrollable? Reading Female Madness in Three Gothic Texts" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/1309