Politics of Gothic: A Study of Silence in Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black

Abstract

his research on The Woman in Black tries to clarify that the contemporary social concern plays a wide role while writing the text. Hill’s novel,The Woman in Black was written in 1983. So, it centers on the social and political discourses that purported to define the family in early 1980s. Taking into its cultural context,The Woman in Black could be read as a social critique of these issues. This research aims to expose the fact that the society which is dominated by patriarchal traits has the potential of define and confine woman in their own way.The Woman in Black is in dialogue with contemporary rhetoric about families. It probes social anxieties associated with hierarchies of authority in families, legal responsibility, the isolation of unmarried mothers and the rights of parents or those in logo parent is. Consequently, the novel contributes to new and less idealized perception, about women and women as mother. In this respect, Hill’s novel belongs to a tradition of women’s radical novel.