The paradox of catholicism in New England women’s gothic

Critics analyzing Gothic literature have often pointed to the dubious appeal of Catholicism in Gothic texts. The power of Catholicism was seductive to Gothic New England women writers, who could momentarily break away from the prescribed roles or conventional perspectives imposed upon them. Grace Greenwood, a mid nineteenth-century American writer traveling through Europe, found the appeal of Catholicism tantalizing. References to the liberating aspects of Catholicism in New England women’s Gothic inevitably lead to the opposite extreme, to discussions of slavery, but they also paradoxically point a way out of the quagmire of servitude within a patriarchal system. Catholicism becomes the source of Gothic horror, in its association with slavery, but it also serves, perversely enough, as a way out of the Gothic horror the institution has created. The tyrannical rigid church of patriarchs is not the maternal church of the woman who would appreciate and celebrate the physical charm, intuition, and adoration of a mother goddess.