مجلة قبس للدراسات الإنسانية والاجتماعية
Volume 10, Numéro 1, Pages 1473-1497
2026-06-08
The Poisoned Inheritance: Patriarchal Violence, Incest, And Female Madness In Wilkie Collins's The Haunted Hotel
Authors : Kercenna Racha .
Abstract
This article reassesses the position and guilt of Countess Narona in Wilkie Collins's The Haunted Hotel (1878), arguing that innate evil does not cause her initial villainy and subsequent madness but is rather the product of patriarchal violence and abuse. Drawing from trauma theory, feminist gothic criticism, and Foucaultian biopower, the article posits the Venetian palace as an externalization of Narona's traumatized psyche and conceives of Baron Rivar as a patriarchal sovereign exercising scientific control over his sister's body. The article argues that Narona's incestuous abuse functions as a psychological poisoning and mirrors the literal poisoning she had survived in childhood. The final episode of her brain fever represents an identity collapse following the death of her puppeteer. Under this lens, The Haunted Hotel emerges as a Gothic critique of the Victorian family as an institution of male violence.
Keywords
feminism ; gothic ; incest ; The Haunted Hotel ; Trauma ; Wilkie Collins
Les articles similaires
بوسالم أحلام
.
عابد يوسف
.
ص 117-132.
Yahia Zeghoudi
.
pages 74-88.
Said Houari Amel
.
pages 257-268.
Bedjaouia Sihem
.
pages 187-214.
