Month/Year of Graduation

12-2024

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)

Department

English

First Advisor

Dr. Lisabeth Buchelt

Abstract

There has been great work done by scholars of Anglo-Irish Gothic tradition to assess the place of classic fictional characters within that tradition. Could a character’s identity contain an Irish dimension? Could they be, perhaps, an allegorical embodiment of the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy or native Irish peasantry? All excellent questions; however, this present study looks to explore a different perspective by considering “place” itself across four Anglo-Irish Gothic novels: that of Bram Stoker’s The Snake’s Pass (1890) and Dracula (1897) and Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September (1929) and Bowen’s Court (1942). I seek to highlight the physical landscape in each novel, so as to reveal the political and historical landscapes of Ireland (the “imaginative geographies,” as scholar Kelly Mary puts it) that lie beneath. The physical geography unveils the imaginative geography of the indigenous-colonized and colonial-colonizer. These themes are most present in the images of the native Irish cottage and the Anglo-Irish “Big House,” respectively, and it is these images that I seek to tie key locations to, such as Murdock and Joyce’s cottages in The Snake’s Pass; Castle Dracula, Carfax Abbey, and Dracula’s London apartment in Dracula; Danielstown in The Last September, and Elizabeth Bowen’s family estate, Bowen’s Court. While the locations and those locations’ inhabitants of The Snake’s Pass reflect the identities and anxieties of those “during colonialism,” i.e. during the era of the Land War and Great Famine, Dracula and The Last September’s locations reflect various “postcolonial” identities and anxieties, such as the decline of the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy, their subsequent attempts to migrate back to England, and the Irish War of Independence. Bowen’s Court especially offers important historical context—a tangible element to these otherwise intangible themes. Overarching every novel, meanwhile, is a pervasive sense of dread: a knowledge that no matter how you may try to bury the past … to cover the atrocities of English colonialism in a layer of romance, painterly treatment, or “peaceful” seclusion … it will reveal itself, slowly but surely, as coastal cliffs are gradually eroded by relentless ocean waves.

Available for download on Tuesday, July 14, 2026

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