Gathering at Samhain: Women Writers and the Irish Gothic Tradition

This thesis explores seven women writers in the Irish Gothic tradition, focusing on the intersection of Gothic aesthetics, folklore, and cultural identity. Moving within conventional definitions of the Gothic as a fixed set of motifs, the study approaches it as a flexible literary mode shaped by historical and social anxieties. In the Irish context, these anxieties are rooted mainly in colonial history, religious division, and the instability of Anglo-Irish identity. The first chapter establishes the theoretical and historical framework, drawing on key concepts such as the sublime, and situating the emergence of Irish Gothic within the socio-political context of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Particular attention is given to the role of folklore as a form of gendered cultural memory and narrative practice. The second and third chapters examine Charlotte Riddell, Jane Francesca Elgee Wilde, Isabella Augusta Gregory, Rosa Mulholland, Katharine Tynan, Anna Maria Hall, and Ethna Carbery, both Anglo-Irish and Catholic women writers, highlighting how their different cultural, religious and class positions influence their engagement with Gothic and folkloric elements. Through a selected corpus of seven tales, the thesis analyses recurring motifs such as female supernatural figures, haunted spaces, and the sublime inspiration of the Irish landscape. Ultimately, the study argues that women writers reshape the Irish Gothic into a space of cultural negotiation, where issues of gender, marginality, and national identity are articulated through the supernatural.