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Article: Dead Secrets: Wilkie Collins and the Female Gothic.
- Article from:
- Studies in the Novel
- Article date:
- June 22, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 University of North Texas. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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HELLER, TAMAR. (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1992). ix + 201 pp. $25.00.
Dead Secrets is a book that offers some fine insights into Wilkie Collins early writings, but much of its virtue is undercut by what might be called template feminism. This is a subset of literary criticism that forces texts to obey the patterns laid out by a prescriptive feminist agenda. Although I wish to call attention to the strengths of Dead Secrets. I will first canvass what I consider its principal weakness.
Professor Heller says that "Collins' novels . . . are often paradoxically Gothic plots that end with the containment of the Gothic as the site of subversion and ...