The Measure of a Man: Refashioning Masculinity Through Sensibility and Gothic in Charlotte Smith's Emmeline: The Orphan of the Castle and Ethelinde or the Recluse of the Lake

Abstract

<p>While eighteenth-century Gothic fiction typically constructs masculinity as tyrannical in a rigid patriarchal structure, Gothic writers such as Horace Walpole were challenging this structure as they were instituting it. Walpole uses Gothic conventions to establish and criticize the cruel, oppressive patriarchal structure in <em>The Castle of Otranto</em>. However, he offers no alternative structure, since even the male characters are powerless to act outside of it. Charlotte Smith introduces Gothic conventions into her sentimental novels in order to undermine patriarchy and to offer an alternative structure of power in which she creates a new social order, challenges gender roles, and demands a more refined masculinity. In <em>Emmeline: The Orphan of the Castle</em>, Smith challenges traditional understandings of masculinity. By incorporating sensibility, she redefines masculinity by affirming its dependence on social status. Thus, Smith effectively establishes social authority as a more powerful force than patriarchy. In <em>Ethelinde or the Recluse of the Lake</em>, Smith further refines masculinity as she uses the power of society to advocate for an equalization of genders, not to degrade masculinity, but to indicate that both men and women are subject to social expectation, and thus to each other. Through her incorporation of sensibility and Gothic elements, Smith promotes a purified masculinity as her male characters must, under the more authoritative force of society, act with selflessness and charity. Smith’s new social structure constructs society as a disciplinary force to which men and women are equally subjected, and which replaces the tyrannical authority and gendered hierarchy evident in the traditional patriarchal structure. Ultimately, Smith promotes a new understanding of society as a gender-neutral space, which demands respectability determined not by wealth or status, but by morality and compassion for others.</p>