Into the asylum: Minds entrapped in great expectations and the woman in white

This thesis explores the relationship between the Gothic novel of nineteenth century and the madness context of the characters in the Victorian time. In the examination of the selected novels of Charles Dickens (Great Expectations) and Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White), the research displays how these authors work within the Gothic genre to explore the issues related to the mental entrapment. It is observed that the Gothic genre provides these authors the ideal vehicle through which to critique the patriarchal definition of the female, the reasons of the villainy and the uncanny representations.Although the image of the mad is employed in the Gothic genre as an archetype, the literary depictions of Dickens and Collins highlight the social significance of conscious. Therefore, the thesis examines the shifts within nineteenth-century literature of gothic by displaying characters that divert from the sterotypical `mad? construction. As such, the binary opoositions such as reason and insanity, consciousness and unconsciousness, familiar and uncanny are progressively worked to reveal the entrapment, to empower the inner structure of the characters.