Anticolonial Feminism, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, and the Female

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Anticolonial Feminism, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, and the Female Anticolonial Feminism, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, and the Female

Gothic: A Textual Analysis of Mexican Gothic Gothic: A Textual Analysis of Mexican Gothic

Hana Vega

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ANTI-COLONIAL FEMINISM, SYLVIA MORENO-GARCIA, AND THE FEMALE

GOTHIC GENRE:

A TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF MEXICAN GOTHIC

A Project

Presented to the

Faculty of

California State University,

San Bernardino

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

Communication Studies

Hana Carolyn Vega Escamilla

May 2023

ANTI-COLONIAL FEMINISM, SYLVIA MORENO-GARCIA, AND THE FEMALE

GOTHIC GENRE:

A TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF MEXICAN GOTHIC

A Project

Presented to the

Faculty of

California State University,

San Bernardino

Hana Carolyn Vega Escamilla

May 2023

Approved by:

Dr. Ece Algan, Committee Chair, Communication Studies

Dr. Liliana Conlisk-Gallegos, Committee Member

Angela Peñaredondo, Committee Member

iii

ABSTRACT

Latinx authors writing in English are challenging the western literary canon

and the way stories are told through a western-centric lens. I argue that Mexican

Canadian author Sylvia Moreno Garcia and her novel Mexican Gothic redefines

the genre by telling the story of a British family living in 1950’s Mexico from an

anti-colonial feminist lens. After a review of the literature on the gothic genre and

how authors of color use it to respond to western-centric ideas in their own gothic

novels, I am approaching the text using postcolonial and decolonial feminist

theories to conduct a textual, genre, and ideological analysis. My analysis

reflects a portrayal of the gothic genre that centers and promotes anticolonial

feminist ideologies such as having a decisive female protagonist of color who

drives the story, a variety of characters that challenge gender and racial

stereotypes, and contextualized depictions of Western characters and motifs. By

analyzing the storyline and character development in Mexican Gothic, my

research presents a feminist and anticolonial reading of the novel.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work would not have been possible without the support of my family,

professors, and community on campus. First thanks go to my mother, who has

worked no less than two jobs to put me and my sister through college, set money

aside to make sure I went to campus for classes and events even when money

was scarce, and didn’t hesitate to let me run towards this Master’s program even

though was still tying up the loose ends of my last Bachelor’s degree class.

Thank you to my sister, our conversations have kept me sane and grounded

these last few years. I look forward to our movie and tv marathons after this, but I

am even more excited at seeing what we’ll be up to next. Also, let this be the

official announcement to your friends, that second concert ticket is mine! To my

father, for teaching me how to be remembered and for introducing me to films,

videogames, and music from eras I would not have gravitated to on my own. My

cinephile and bibliophile skills would not be the same without you.

To the three splendid committee members without whom I would not have

had a fighting chance at this, starting with Dr. Algan, for always making the time

for those not-quite-one-hour meetings, for patiently guiding me through mind-

melting topics, and for sharing my excitement over the very dramatic drafts I

came up with. To Dr. Machete, because what I am doing now would not be

possible without the work you are choosing to do, thank you for making the time

and space for students like me to have a chance. To Professor Peñaredondo, for

all your insightful questions and warm support, you are the best listener a

confused student and writer could ask for, and I hope both life and I are able to

pay you back accordingly.

Lastly, I want to thank all the wonderful faculty and staff at CSUSB that

make the communications department such a welcoming and supportive space:

Dr. Corrigan, Dr. Nerren, Dr. Grant, Dr. Muhtaseb, and Dr. Hygh. College is an

intimidating and at times grueling experience, so thank you all for making it count

for something.

DEDICATION

To my family, you all have made the investment in me, and I am

determined to make it count.

To the people at GCCA: Miguel Contreras, Elena Bautista, Cindy Gibbons,

Issac Contreras, Kathy Bywater, Kim Hatzhold, Linda Montgomery, Mercedes

Sapien, Misty Locks, Samatha Hager, Scott Jacobs, Valerie Smith, Zach Taylor,

and Robin Acosta. You all chose to make a living out of opening doors for

students like me to stumble through and have the opportunity to make something

out of ourselves, and for that I will always remember you. Thank you.

vi 
 
    TABLE OF CONTENTS 
ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...iii 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………...iv 
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION……………………...……………………………1 
Methodology……………………………………………………………………..6 
Textual, Genre, and Ideological Analysis…………………………….6 
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………………………8 
Author Diversity and Representation in U.S. Storytelling: Anti-colonial 
Feminist Theoretical Perspective……………………………………………...8 
Postcolonial Feminism………………………………………………….9 
Decolonial Feminism…………………………………………………..10 
Feminist Applications for Storytelling………………………………………..12 
The Gothic Genre……………………………………………………………...19 
The Female Gothic…………………………………………………….20 
CHAPTER THREE: REPRESENTATIONS OF FEMINISM IN MEXICAN GOTHIC 
…………………………………………………………………………………………...25 
Heroine Protagonist……………………………………………………………25 
Feminism Through Noemi…………………………………………….28 
Benevolent Sexism Through the Father Figure…………………….30 
Hostile Sexism Through English Civility…………………………….32 
Subversion of Tropes………………………………………………………….35 
The Clash of the Heroine/La Malinche and the Byronic Hero…….37 
Damsel in Distress/The Mad Woman/Marianism…………………..40 
The Ghost………………………………………………………………45 

vii 
 
Feminist Collective…………………………………………………………….47 
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...51 
CHAPTER FOUR: REPRESENTATIONS OF ANTICOLONIALISM IN MEXICAN 
GOTHIC………………………………………………………………………………52 
Humanizing the Colonized: Depicting the Family and Working Class 
Values…………………………………………………………………………..53 
Nuance Through the Protagonist……………………………………. 54 
Vertical and Horizontal Thinking…………………………………….. 57 
Depicting the Atrocities of the Colonizers…………………………………... 59 
Impersonal Family Dynamics………………………………………… 60 
Doyle and the Ouroboros…………………………………………….. 61 
The Mushroom Hierarchy……………………………………………..63 
High Place & The Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets………… 65 
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………... 66 
CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION…………………………………………………….68 
Limitations………………………………………………………………………68 
Conclusion……………………………………………………...………………68 
REFERENCES………………………………………………………………...74 
 

CHAPTER ONE:

INTRODUCTION

According to the recent article, “Just How White Is the Book Industry?”,

ninety-five percent of the published authors in the US from 1950 - 2018 are

White, which reinforces a western-centric worldview (So & Wezerek, 2020).

Feminist, decolonial, and postcolonial theories have worked to deconstruct said

worldview and reveal how whiteness and misogyny get reproduced through

literature. This thesis draws from feminist literature because while not all its

theorists focus on the intersection of race and sex, Disch & Hawkesworth (2016)

in their article explain that the feminist theorists that do, begin by conceptualizing

them as “the product of particular ways of thinking that privilege some while

disadvantaging others” (p. 4). Postcolonialism on its end also deals with those

kinds of intersections, but it also critiques “Eurocentrism [and rejects]

universalizing claims and [emphasizes] difference and the local” (Mendoza,

2016, p. 123). On a similar vein, decolonial theory analyses, among other things,

how “European knowledge production was accredited as the only valid

knowledge, [while] indigenous epistemologies were relegated to the status of

primitive superstition or destroyed” (Mendoza, 2016, p. 129).

Analyzing storytelling as a practice gives an opportunity to understand

how both western-centric and alternative ideas get reproduced. It also helps in

analyzing and creating gradual shifts in what people who are exposed to these

stories consider normal or even possible. This research project connects

anticolonial (both postcolonial and decolonial) forms of feminism to literature by

critiquing how some authors are presented as the authorities in the production of

culture and knowledge (Mediatore, 2016, p. 951).

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a Mexican-Canadian author of speculative fiction.

Born in Mexico and raised in Canada, she obtained a master’s degree in science,

and technology from the University of British Columbia. Later, she began her

career as an editor of horror anthologies, evolved to become a writer of short

science fiction, then finally into the best-selling novelist known today. After

publishing several science fiction and fantasy stories in magazines, in 2015 she

published her first of nine novels, Signal to Noise. By the time she fully shifted

from short stories to stand-alone novels, she had developed a background in the

subjects of horror, science and technology that complemented the Mexican-

culture focus of her novels. One of her latest releases, Mexican Gothic, is the text

I will analyze further.

Set in 1950’s Mexico, the novel follows Mexican socialite Noemi Taboada

as she rescues her cousin Catalina from her abusive husband Virgil Doyle, his

wicked family, and their cursed house. The novel features twelve different

characters that I will be introducing in order of appearance, starting with Noemi,

her father Leocadio Taboada, and her older cousin Catalina. At her father’s

request, Noemi travels from her home in Mexico City towards High Place, a

secluded English manor in the Mexican countryside town of El Triunfo. She is

introduced to her cousin’s in-laws and learns that the living members of the

family are Virgil, his stern older cousin Florence, her shy son Francis, and the

sickly family patriarch Howard Doyle. Once she arrives, she is surprised by the

rundown state of the house and how all members of the family, with exception of

Virgil, look ill, even when both her and her father were aware that Virgil’s family

had lost most of their fortune during the Mexican Revolution. Her mission is first

stalled because she is told that Catalina is bedridden by a strong tuberculosis.

When she finally gets to meet the family physician in charge of Catalina’s

recovery, Dr. Cummings, he condescendingly dismisses Noemi’s questions

concerns about finding her cousin psychiatric help, forcing her to stay in the

house longer. Unconvinced with Dr. Cumming’s diagnosis, Noemi becomes allies

with Francis, who helps her learn the family’s history and travel to the town of El

Triunfo for a second opinion where she meets Dr. Camarillo and Marta Duval, the

local healer. Over the rest of her visit, Noemi starts experiencing strange

hallucinations and dreams, similar to what her cousin Catalina described in her

letter to Mr. Taboada at the beginning of the story. Through the recurring dreams

and some investigation, Noemi learns of deceased family members like the

matriarch Agnes Doyle, her sister Alice, and Virgil’s older sister Ruth. In the

process of learning the disturbing details of the tragedies surrounding the Doyles,

Noemi discovers that Virgil married her cousin because of both her money and

her partially European bloodline, and that Howard plans to add Noemi into the

family as well. In a supernatural twist, Noemi finds that the reason why Howard

was able to rise to power was his acquisition of a local species of mushroom that

extends life and creates a psychic connection between its consumers. In an effort

to weaponize the mushroom, Howard engages in incest, cannibalism, and

slavery, using his mastery of the fungus to take over the minds of people working

for him and ensure the cooperation of his family members. With the help of allies

like Marta Duval, Dr. Camarillo, and Francis, Noemi and Catalina manage to

destroy the Doyle family’s mind controlling weapon and escape. Using genre and

storytelling conventions such as point of view of a woman to decenter the White

European experience, the novel plays on gothic elements such as the damsel in

distress, the mad woman captive by a wicked husband, and the ghost to give an

anticolonial twist to themes like feminism, imperialism, and eugenics.

Storytelling can be applied not only to explain difficult and complex

themes, but to contextualize and reveal western-centric parts of literature as well.

Author Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2020) and her novel, Mexican Gothic, make for

ideal subjects of study because of how she manages to bring well-established

gothic elements into dialogue with elements of the anticolonial feminist theories

such as contextualizing English characters’ actions and culture with their history

as colonizers. For example, Moreno-Garcia is part of a long and established line

of Latin American authors (Somers, 1950; Fuentes, 1980; Aridjis, 1993;

Enriquez, 2016; de Fez, 2020; Ojeda 2020; Roche, 2020; Rodriguez, 2020;

Ampuero, 2021; Bombal 2021; Rivero, 2021) that have used storytelling and

notably the gothic genre to process subjects like coloniality, modernity, and

patriarchy—which speaks to the richness of Moreno-Garcia’s work and its

potential as a focus of research. Although Mexican Gothic exists alongside

several novels that fit a global aspect of the gothic genre (Aleman in Sotomayor,

2021) that is usually categorized under Latin American gothic and an additional

descriptor like Andino (in reference to the countries of Bolivia, Peru, Columbia,

Ecuador, and Chile), decolonial, or feminist (Sotomayor, 2021), Mexican Gothic

stands out because of the global recognition it has strategically managed to

achieve. I will be explaining some of the things that the success of Mexican

Gothic implies later.

To demonstrate my point on what elements Mexican Gothic contains, I will

approach the text using the feminist postcolonial and decolonial theories to

conduct a textual, genre and ideological analysis. While the last report of the So

& Wezerek (2020) article was that the number of White authors being published

in the US had decreased to eighty-nine percent by 2018, Moreno-Garcia is still

one of the few authors of color published in the last five years. Mexican Gothic

has earned several literary awards, appeared in multiple bestseller lists, and

recently secured a limited series to be eventually released on Hulu. The definitive

part of this piece of Moreno-Garcia’s work, however, is how it subverts some of

the foundations of the gothic genre itself. In other words, my argument in this

thesis is that through Mexican Gothic Sylvia Moreno-Garcia is redefining the

genre with an anti-colonial feminist lens.

Methodology

Textual, Genre, and Ideological Analysis

For this thesis, I am conducting a textual analysis on Sylvia Moreno

Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, published in 2020. Textual analysis is associated with

the discipline of cultural studies, which operates on the axioms “that knowledge is

power, that discourses define reality, and that there is no such thing as ‘objective’

knowledge” (McKee, 2001, p. 1). This type of analysis focuses on making

educated guesses about what the most likely interpretations of text are (McKee,

2001). Subcategories or techniques in this type of methodology include genre

and ideological analysis. Genre analysis on its part also involves studying the

text, but its focus is on the tropes used in reference to create the characters, the

representations of their social identities in the form symbols and metaphors,

aspects of the plot such as who are the heroes battling a villain, and strategic

choices about the setting like the inclusion of an isolated gothic manor. Lastly,

ideological analysis is about identifying and interpreting recurring themes that

emerge as the story progresses.

I conducted the analysis by looking for feminist and anticolonial elements

in Mexican Gothic in the form of character representations, literary archetypes as

rooted in both Mexican and British storytelling traditions about the supernatural,

and an ideological analysis of the patriarchal and imperialist themes. I

researched the gothic genre, especially the female gothic category, to establish a

base for what a typical set of gothic characters is and then interpreted in what

ways these differed from the characters found in Mexican Gothic. I then

organized and interpreted the different symbolic representations that characters

fell under and how literary archetypes of Mexican origin were used to help

subvert the ones of British origin. Afterwards, I looked for evidence of imperialist

and/or patriarchal messages in the text, followed by anticolonial and/or feminist

rebukes that address those messages. The result is a portrayal of a revamped

gothic genre that centers and promotes anticolonial feminist ideologies such as

having a woman of color as the heroine and an English patriarch that is written to

symbolically stand for English colonialism as the villain.

CHAPTER TWO:

LITERATURE REVIEW

Author Diversity and Representation in U.S. Storytelling: An Anticolonial Feminist

Theoretical Perspective

Weinberg and Kapelner (2022) published a study they conducted in 2020

titled “Do Book Consumers Discriminate Against Black, Female, or Young

Authors?” to see if the alleged discrimination in publishing was justified based on

profit-focused arguments. The subject emerged into discussion when,

encouraged by the #PublishingPaidMe protest on Twitter back in the summer of

2020, authors began disclosing their advances and providing proof of pay

discrimination on Black authors. This study further revealed that the book

publishing industry began as a “historic cultural gatekeeper [...] editors

purportedly used to call the shots based on taste and cultural importance…”, but

that has since changed to a business that bases their choices on the expected

performance of the book or author on the market (Weinberg & Kapelner, 2022, p.

2). Weinberg and Kapelner’s article then proceeds to put into question the

hegemony in publishing choices by pointing out that “publishers have also played

an active role in creating and cultivating markets and crafting their expectations

about book pricing, as in [for example] the structure of the female dominated

romance market which focuses on mass market production of inexpensive books

by women for women” (Weinberg & Kapelner, 2022, p. 2).

To clearly understand how the breakthrough of authors of color like

Moreno-Garcia makes an impact in the U.S. literary canon, I will be relying on the

framing of the anticolonial theories: postcolonial feminism and decolonial

feminism, to cover both the importance of diversity in literature and the way

Mexican Gothic decenters Eurocentric views on the gothic genre. The essential

takeaway from the Weinberg and Kapelner study is that book consumers do not

discriminate the material they read based on the author’s race, gender, or age,

merely on personal taste that has to do with the content of the book itself

(Weinberg & Kapelner, 2022). The lack of discrimination on the consumer end

indicates that the publishers are driven by “their own self-fulfilling prophecies

about anticipated performance and market behavior”, but what are those

prophecies saying? On what are they based?

Postcolonial Feminism

Postcolonialism made itself noteworthy by being “[a]ttentive to the power

of discourse, [scholars] relied upon textual analyses to devise critiques of

colonialism and capitalism that supplemented discussions of exploitation and

domination” (Mendoza, 2016, p. 123). However, like in other recognized fields in

academia where feminism has made significant contributions, the feminist

aspects theory took longer than the theory itself to achieve recognition and

validity of their own right (Mendoza, 2016). The main example that Mendoza

(2016) gives is the career of Gayatri Spivak who challenged the choice of

subaltern scholars to not address the dimensions of gender and sexuality in their

accounts of the “postcolonial condition”. Spivak is also credited for

conceptualizing “epistemic violence” as a key feature of knowledge production in

Western societies, especially subjects or concepts like the “third world woman,

[the representation of] silenced women of the global South through a form of

ventriloquism” (Mendoza, 2016, p. 124). The text of Spivak (1985) that informs

this thesis, “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism”, details how

third world women are represented in fiction in a way that blurs the boundary

between animal and human so that their entitlement to humane treatment is

easier to question and so they are reduced to tools that help glorify the imperialist

project. Spivak also shows how third world female authors respond to these

stories in their writing, humanizing those same characters and contextualizing the

stories within the culture they were written, it being the culture of the British

empire (Spivak, 1985).

Decolonial Feminism

Mendoza (2016) suggests in his research that while decolonial feminism

has roots in the scholarship of Native-American, Chicana, and African feminists

published in the 1960s and 1970s, its foundation is clearer in Gloria Anzaldua’s

work in 1987. Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera presents her theorized

concepts like that of mestiza consciousness and pensamiento fronterizo, which

proposed “the subversive character of subjugated knowledges that fracture

colonial languages and epistemology in ways that change the terms of debate”

(Mendoza, 2016, p. 129). Another influential scholar, who notably draws from

postcolonial theory as well as theorists from Latin America, is Emma Perez with

her book The Decolonial Imaginary (1999), which focuses on the topics of

Chicano, nationalist, and patriarchal historiography (Mendoza, 2016). There are

also indigenous and African anticolonial scholars who study “both the impact of

colonization on women and the colonizing discourses of Western feminism”

(Mendoza, 2016, p. 130). Decolonial theory in itself is recognized as influential

for scholars in Latin America, the Caribbean and is achieving recognition in “the

US feminist academy, although it has not had the instant success that

postcolonial theory experienced in the 1990s” (Mendoza, 2016, p. 131). Part of

the reason is that some theories, such as Maria Lugones’ coloniality of gender,

are still being contested. For example, one of the criticisms on Lugones’ (2010) is

related to her concept that proposes “that indigenous societies did not have

“gender” before European intrusion” (Mendoza, 2016, p. 131).

For decolonial scholars, deciphering whether the categories and

organization of gender as we know it today were introduced after colonization or

not is important because this influences “revolutionary theories and feminist

proposals for state policies, laws, and practices as well as political imaginaries”

(Mendoza, 2016, p. 133). However, Mendoza (2016) proposes that “the question

of whether gender is a colonial construct or an ancestral practice may pose a

false dilemma” because in either case, the contesting scholars agree that the

European gender system was key to the arguably genocidal conditions that

followed (p. 133). Due to the impact of gender in understanding colonialism,

hearing women’s stories of their experience with it becomes crucial, uncovering

how storytelling is a legitimate way to study the conditions that women have

endured in societies that have been in contact with colonialism. In the next

section, I will review the literature on how feminist scholars have used the literary

canon for their agenda.

Feminist Applications for Storytelling

Since the western literary canon poses too broad of a topic, this thesis

narrows down to the evolution of its system of genres. A study by Tzvetan

Todorov & Richard Berrong titled “The Origin of Genres” explains that “[t]here

has never been a literature without genres; it is a system in continual

transformation, and the question of origins cannot be disassociated, historically,

from the field of the genres themselves” (Todorov and Berrong, 1976, p. 161). In

other words, genre is a system that is dependent and limited by the culture that it

emerges from and the conventions that constitute each genre reflect that. Gayatri

Spivak describes imperialism as “England’s social mission, [...] a crucial part of

the cultural representation of England to the English” that is transmitted even

through novels that are not meant to address that subject directly (Spivak, 1985,

p. 319). The idea that western ideologies are propagated through the genre

conventions is further supported by Todorov & Berrong’s (1976) conclusion that

genres are created through discourse and thus are essentially meant to change

along with the people who engage with them. A way that postcolonial and

decolonial feminist scholars seek to address the need for the western literary

canon to include ideologies that deviate from the western-centric is by

contributing to said canon with their own stories.

For starters, feminism is a “mutifaceted, multisited project” that takes place

across the globe (Lisa Disch & Mary Hawkesworth, 2016). In the facet that deals

with literature, Shari Stone-Mediatore (2016) sets out to investigate the potential

that storytelling might have in advancing such a project. One of the first

observations she makes is that feminist thinkers use stories that feature some

form of personal struggle to push boundaries in academic and political debates

so they can amplify the voices that would not otherwise receive “a public

audience or intellectual credibility” (Stone-Mediatore, 2016, p. 949). In the

second observation however, she qualified the findings by saying that

“storytelling has no unique affinities to feminist goals and, moreover, that feminist

enthusiasm for storytelling risks providing a guise of liberatory speech to

practices that reproduce structures of exclusion and domination” (Stone-

Mediatore, 2016, p. 950).

The cautionary argument puts Stone-Mediatore (2016) in agreement with

Todorov & Berrong’s (1976) article, which states “[g]enres communicate with the

society in which they flourish by means of institutionalization” (Todorov and

Berrong, 1976, p. 163). In other words, if storytelling is not inherently tied to any

goals or agenda, its effects depend on what conventions are institutionalized at

the time a published story is added to the canon. The “structures of exclusion

and domination” that Stone-Mediatore (2016) warns about include 1) placing too

much emphasis on personal problems, 2) developing a debilitating lack of self-

awareness, and 3) that by turning to storytelling authors of color can buy into the

idea that they hold the same kind of authority than that of the elites that have

helped silence them in past. In the end, however, Stone-Mediatore (2016)

concludes that even if storytelling is not inherently feminist, thinkers in the

discipline still turn to it because it nonetheless helps in making sure the

intellectual styles and universal standards are challenged by both readers and

storytellers. Moreover, the versatility of storytelling then brings up the matter of

content versus form or audience that decolonial authors grapple with before they

can have their work reach larger audiences, a concept that I will explain with

examples in the section of the gothic genre. Nevertheless, storytelling and with it

the western literary canon form part of the discourse where dominant ideas

become institutionalized, making it worth participating in for feminist thinkers.

Gayatri Spivak’s (1985) does exactly that when she sets out to

deconstruct the Western creation of the Third World Woman. Using the novels,

Jane Eyre (1847), Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), and Frankenstein (1818), she

examines the “the operation of the ‘worlding’ of what is today 'the Third World’”

(Spivak, 1985, p. 320). The first two texts portray two different accounts of the

character Bertha, who Spivak argues is used as “an allegory of the general

epistemic violence of imperialism, the construction of a self-immolating colonial

subject for the glorification of the social mission of the colonizer” (2016, p. 326).

In Jane Eyre, Bertha is the ex-wife of the male protagonist (Mr. Rochester)

whose marriage was arranged when she was a popular debutante in Jamaica. In

Bronte’s novel, she is portrayed as an unhappy woman who was unstable from

the beginning of the marriage and who lives captive under Rochester’s care to

prevent her from hurting others or herself. The author of Wide Sargasso Sea,

however, treats the character with sympathy by writing her a backstory that

portrays her as more than an animalistic “other” figure meant to humanize Jane

by contrast, who begins the story as a woman of lower status and therefore an

“other” herself.

The last text, Frankenstein, is described as “a text of nascent feminism

that remains cryptic, I think, simply because it does not speak the language of

feminist individualism which we have come to hail as the language of high

feminism within English literature” (Spivak, 1985, p. 329). Instead of a

straightforward conflict between a vulnerable female protagonist and a

dangerously obsessive man, “Frankenstein’s apparent antagonist is God himself

as Maker of Man, but his real competitor is also [the] woman as the maker of

children” (Spivak, 1985, p. 330). Spivak reads Frankenstein’s different feminist

messages using psychoanalysis and Freudian theory, “I could urge that, if to give

and withhold to/from the mother a phallus is the male fetish, then to give and

withhold to/from the man a womb might be the female fetish” (Spivak, 1985, p.

330). Spivak finishes her chapter by qualifying that just because the writers’ work

exhibits certain messages of imperialism (Charlotte Bronte) and cryptic feminism

(Mary Shelley), that does not necessarily indicate the writers harbor those

sentiments or convictions themselves. What the texts do help indicate is that

“[h]ere the language of racism - the dark side of imperialism understood as social

mission - combines with the hysteria of masculism into the idiom of (the

withdrawal of) sexual reproduction rather than subject-constitution” (Spivak,

1985, p. 331). Spivak’s (1985) work argues that English storytelling has

imperialist messages interwoven because the English are indoctrinated into

propagating the ideology since youth. My study operates on the assumption that

Spivak’s claim is true to explore how Moreno-Garcia uses the already critical

nature of gothic fiction to challenge imperialist ideologies, such as the idea that a

third world writer is less qualified to tell stories that are relevant in first world

spaces.

The concepts of the Third World and storytelling are both revisited in Trinh

Minh-ha’s (1989) Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism.

Coherent with the arguments of Stone-Mediatore (2016) and Spivak’s (1985),

Minh-ha asserts that “[i]mputing race or sex to the creative act has long been a

means by which the literary establishment cheapens and discredits the

achievements of non-mainstream women writers” (Minh-ha, 1989, p. 16). In other

words, Minh-ha critiques how writers who are divergent from the White

heteronormative identity tend to be identified with a qualifier in front of their

profession title and that such qualifier implies the writer's work is thus less

relatable and valuable. Weinberg & Kapelner propose in their study that the bias

that affects writers of color does not lie with the book consumers but with the

publishers’ own self-fulfilling prophecies.

According to Minh-ha’s work, the bias takes form in organizing identity

through two traps: forcing the writers to choose a label to conform to and then

pushing them to use it as a starting point for their assimilation process into the

‘author’ identity. These strategies are traps because first the labels are

oversimplifying a writer’s essence in ways that White, European male writers are

not expected to. Second, since the unspoken standard is to be a White,

European, male and ‘objective’ writer, a woman of color who aspires to the title

can only strive endlessly without full success. Minh-ha (1989) concludes by

saying that storytelling and researching identity in relation to writing is relevant for

postcolonial feminism because it questions the assumptions of patriarchy and

modernity, in this case who gets to bear the title of a writer without needing

additional descriptions.

The most direct benefit that storytelling has been found to have in

research is revealing the components of western concepts like how patriarchy

and modernity affect the categorization different stories and their authors, but

another postcolonial scholar has shown that it can also help those who engage

with it in negotiating the norms that their society has indoctrinated them into. This

is especially valuable for people who do not have access to higher education and

with it, participation in the discussions taking place in academic and political

circles. Anne McClintock’s (1996) article “Imperial Leather: Race, Cross-

Dressing, and the Cult of Domesticity'' analyzes the diaries of a couple in

Victorian society, recording the clandestine and eventual marital relationship

between Arthur Munby and Hannah Cullwick. Through a textual analysis,

McClintock observes that Cullwick uses what she learns from her experiences in

role playing and the reflections in her journal to take “her place among the

countless women for whom fetishism was an attempt - ambiguous, contradictory

and not always successful - to negotiate the boundaries of power in ways that do

not yield simple lessons about dominance and submission” (McClintock, 1996, p.

650).

As the account progresses, McClintock notes that while Cullwick is a

willing participant in the role-playing dynamics of the relationship, she resists the

idea of marriage and refuses to appear in public as Munby’s wife. McClintock

writes “[i]f, on one hand, she called Munby ‘Massa’ [the dated slang form for the

word ‘master’ enslaved people used in the US] and seemed to [adhere]

symbolically to Rousseau’s dictum that the husband should be a ‘master for the

whole of life’; [...] there is every evidence that she saw Munby’s ‘mastery’ as

purely theatrical” (McClintock, 1996, p. 671). Munby’s and Cullwick’s accounts

over a period of decades reveal and highlight, first, the strong similarities

between the expectations for a wife, servant, and slave. “Cullwick’s slave-band

[one of her more prominent identities in the dynamics with Munby] exposes a

fundamental contradiction within classical liberal theory: women are naturally like

slaves and thus cannot make contracts, but women must enter into contracts in

order to become wives and thereby waive their right to contract-making”

(McClintock, 1996, p. 673). Second, the accounts demonstrate Cullwick’s

insistence on angling for the rights that drive feminist agendas: agency over her

body, labor, money, and reproductive freedom–all derived from a person who did

not have the traditional/academic introduction and space to test those ideas.

The Gothic Genre

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica (2022), the gothic novel is a

pseudo medieval piece of fiction that kicked off with The Castle of Otranto in

1764. It became known for featuring medieval buildings and ruins, castles,

monasteries, subterranean passages, hidden panels, and trap doors. After

solidifying itself with authors like Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker, the genre lost

popularity and then resurfaced as an influence for authors like the Bronte sisters,

Edgar Allan Poe, and Charles Dickens. It continued evolving into the modern

horror and romance genres known today during “the second half of the 20th

century, [when] the term was applied to paperback romances having the same

kind of themes and trappings similar to the originals” (Encyclopedia Britannica,

2022).

Those who study the gothic genre usually divide it into two schools, the

Female Gothic and the Male Gothic, although what determines each category is

still being contested. To some, it is a distinction about the author’s gender while

for others it comes down to the themes that emerge. Angela Leonardi (2016)

explains in her article, “The Function of Gender in Female and Male Gothic,” that

it was scholar Ellen Moers who coined the term ‘female gothic’ to refer to Gothic

fiction written by women after studying and comparing the two first Gothic novels,

Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764) and Anne Radcliffe’s The

Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). Moers research is known for several insights,

starting with the observation of how Radcliffe created a narrative with a female

protagonist who is “a heroine and a victim at the same time, which would become

one of the typical characteristics of the Female Gothic” (Leonardi, 2016, para. 5).

Another key point in Moers’ work is the claim that the category is a “coded

expression of women’s fears'' such as entrapment, the cult of domesticity, and

their lack of control and agency with regards to their bodies, especially during

childbirth (Smith & Wallace, 2004). Despite being contested since the research

and term first emerged in 1976, the main theme associated with stories that fall

into the ‘Female Gothic’ category remains to be the tendency to portray

eighteenth-century patriarchal society as one that tilts the political, social, and

economic power in favor of men and is thus the main threat to the protagonists

(Leonardi, 2016). This theme is what makes for either the backbone of

contemporary gothic stories or for a key idea to which writers respond to in their

own work, especially in the case of feminist and postcolonial feminist scholars.

The Female Gothic

The Mysteries of Udolpho is the second text published that fits the gothic

genre (Britannica, 2022) after The Castle of Otranto, a male gothic, and is

perceived as one of the two quintessential gothics. The male gothic, sometimes

described as the ‘true gothic’ emerged as a category in response to Anne

Radcliffe’s female led novel (Leonardi, 2016). Leonardi (2016) explains that the

male gothic is considered to be ‘the true gothic’ because of its characteristics and

the message they present: supernatural is always left unexplained, rape is shown

more directly, and the universe in the story is merciless and confronted by an

insubordinate protagonist. In other words, the gothic novel is only true to its

genre if the villain is ‘the Other’ and the protagonist’s job in the plot is to force it

into submission and solve the conflict it inspires (Paravisini-Gerbert, 2017). The

theme becomes even more problematic from an anticolonial feminist perspective

once the reader begins to understand what, or whom, this “Other” is. Across the

texts the list of “Others” includes but is not limited to Italian antiheroic men, Black

men, and any other dimension of “race, landscape, erotic desire and despair”

that presents an unknown to the usually close-minded protagonists–which in the

Male Gothic includes all the female members of their own species. “[I]n Male

Gothic fiction, women are seen as unnatural and artificial. Consequently, women

are always presented in a negative way. This is of course in contrast with Female

Gothic fiction, that mostly presents women as victims and questions their identity”

(Leonardi, 2016, para. 10).

I will be expanding on both the research done on the use of the “Other” in

gothic storytelling and the subcategories of the Female Gothic during my analysis

in the next chapters, as that is the category I will be primarily using to inform my

research. This section will first clarify the other way in which researchers divide

the two gothics. By relying on themes, the choice comes down to the horror

(male) and terror (female) gothic. Leonardi’s (2016) article explains that “the

difference is that, while men fear [the horror of] ‘the Other’ (women included),

women fear ‘the terror of the familiar: the routine brutality and injustice of the

patriarchal family, conventional religion, and classist social structures’” (Leonardi,

2016, para. 14). Because of the specific ways in which the experiences of either

men or women get centralized, the divide still tends to include many authors

whose gender matches the category of gothic they write for.

However, the argument that there is a correlation between the author’s

gender and the plot has been widely studied and since discarded, mainly by

Alison Milbak in a compilation of book and several essays that look at the male

writer appropriation of the Female Gothic, which is supplemented by Anne

Williams’ (1995) research using different Greek mythology and psychoanalysis.

“[Williams] looked back through the use made of Greek mythology by Freudian

psychoanalysis to locate the origins of the Female Gothic narrative (typified by

female point of view, happy ending, explained ghosts and an adherence to

terror), in the myth of Psyche and Eros, as opposed to the Oedipal myth which

underpins the male version” (Smith & Wallace, 2004, p. 2). Thus, the debate has

since evolved to asserting that female gothic is too wide of term because it

oversimplifies the subject and does not present a fitting source of contrast on its

own.

A good example of that oversimplification is a study that researches

characters that “could be considered Gothic protagonists that operate both inside

and outside the boundaries set by traditional Gothic motifs''. Michail

Markodimitrakis (2016) analyzes the works of Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventures

in Wonderland (1865), Through the Looking Glass (1871), and Guillermo Del

Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). Markodimitrakis centers his analysis around the

female protagonists Alice and Ofelia, who undergo journeys meant to be a

portrayal of resistance against the norms of the world they reside in. He explains

his focus on the gothic genre by describing it as a revolutionary mode of

expression since its beginnings, when it adopted its namesake from the Goth’s

known for overthrowing the Roman empire, which stood as a symbol for order

and divinely given power in its time. “It is used by multiple authors as a means to

convey ideas, beliefs and anxieties, any feelings in general the readers

inadvertently suppress but can never escape from'' when thinking about their

‘modern’ and ‘rational’ world (Markodimitrakis, 2016, p. 2). Markodimitrakis

finishes his reflection about what the genre constitutes by also supporting the

opinions of authors like Moreno-Garcia, who perceive the gothic genre as one

too versatile to be reduced to a single canon or in this case, a pair of narrowly

defined categories.

Del Toro (2006) and Moreno-Garcia (2020) both are building on the Latin

American gothic tradition and what is more, their approach to using male and

female gothic reflects Anzaldua’s (1987) concept of pensamiento fronterizo

regarding the gothic categories. I began the critique of oversimplification as

applying to the female gothic and its limitations, but in the next chapters I will

show that Mexican Gothic extends creates complexity with the entire genre,

incorporates elements categories of both without committing fully to either, and

connects categories based on the Eurocentric and patriarchal elements they

share, as I will explain with details later. Finally, it is also important to note

another characteristic that Del Toro’s and Moreno Garcia’s work has in common:

both have achieved global recognition because they have grappled with the

conflict of content, meaning an anticolonial story, versus form, mainstream

western audiences. By choosing to codify their texts with symbolism, strategically

assimilating Eurocentric tropes and conventions to appeal to audiences who are

not yet ready to entertain decolonial ideologies, they have managed to create

decolonial texts that got published at the expense of clear alignment with

decolonial ideologies. Again, I will only be able to allude briefly to the

negotiations that take place for Mexican Gothic to appeal to general audiences

and look forward to dedicating its own section to the limitations of decolonial and

postcolonial mainstream published texts in a later study.

CHAPTER THREE:

REPRESENTATIONS OF FEMINISM IN MEXICAN GOTHIC THROUGH THE

FEMALE GOTHIC

In this chapter I argue that feminism is depicted in Mexican Gothic by

choosing to have a heroine as the protagonist, the subversion of sexist tropes

and stereotypes, and the portrayal of a feminist collective. First, I am looking at

one of the subcategories of the female gothic called ‘Gothic Feminism’ which I

use to outline how the character of Noemi sets herself apart from other gothic

female protagonists. The section will be followed by tangible examples from the

book that showcase the feminism portrayed through Noemi grounded in her

interactions with the patriarchy as represented through the other characters in

the book. After discussing how the gothic genre told through Mexican storytellers

helps understanding the story through a marginalized person’s experience, I will

review some tropes or stereotypes that have roots in the gothic genre. These

include the damsel in distress, the mad woman, and the ghost (Hogle, 2002),

along with how Moreno-Garcia responds to them using her own adaptation of

those tropes into her novel. Lastly, this chapter will show how the book

characters portray a feminist collective that drives the plot.

Heroine Protagonist

How feminism is portrayed in gothic novels has been discussed and

explored by authors before Moreno-Garcia thanks to the evolving lens of the

female gothic genre (Smith & Wallace, 2004) and the novels of Latin American

authors (Somers, 1950; Fuentes, 1980; Aridjis, 1993; Enriquez, 2016; de Fez,

2020; Ojeda 2020; Roche, 2020; Rodriguez, 2020; Ampuero, 2021; Bombal

2021; Rivero, 2021). Due to the scope of this research, I will be narrowing my

focus to the female gothic and using the anticolonial feminist elements to

compliment the research, leaving the full connection to the Latin American gothic

genre to be a future direction for research. Thus, the main subcategory informing

this chapter is known as Gothic Feminism, coined by Diane Long Hoeveler

(1998) after examining how the heroines in these novels posed as “blameless

victims of a corrupt and oppressive patriarchal society while utilizing passive-

aggressive and masochistic strategies to triumph over the system” (Hoeveler,

1998, in Smith & Wallace, 2004, p. 2). Due to the found vagueness of the overall

genre, several of the subcategories of the female gothic are named as slight

variations of the original. For example, analysis of texts that have gender as their

subject of focus are referred to as “Feminine Gothic”, while when the texts are

examined for queer messages they are referred to as “Lesbian Gothic”. Gothic

feminism emerged as a response to the position of some scholars like Anne

Williams (1995) who proposed that the male and female gothic differed in their

Greek-myth-typified formulas. The male gothic in the formula analysis is informed

by the myth of Oedipus, a tale about male taboo transgression, and the female

gothic by the myth of Psyche and Eros, which depicts female victory through

sacrifice. The contention between the two scholars is centered around Williams’

endorsement of the female gothic genre as a subversive or even revolutionary

depiction of female characters and their agency for its time. Hoeveler (1998) on

the other hand proposes that depictions of women in female gothic literature

make it the originator of what is currently viewed as a type of ‘victim feminism’,

one meant to instruct middle class women how to strategically play-act at passive

femininity to gain a “fictitious mastery” over the patriarchy.

In addition, based on the framing provided for other female gothic

subcategories (Smith & Wallace 2004), Latin American gothic should be able to

fit as one of the subcategories that sprung from research in the female gothic. It

deals with feminist aims, is able to decenter dominant perspectives like

postcolonialism encourages and thus should easily fit into the analysis, but it

does not. The Latin American gothic brings back into discussion concepts like

pensamiento fronterizo (Anzaldua, 1987), which rejects binaries and operates on

a fluid space in the in-between. Mexican Gothic draws from both categories

because it prioritizes a decolonial framework that communicates the complexity

and nuance of the intersection of a woman of color with indigenous heritage that

is faced with patriarchy and imperialism in a way that female gothic is too limited

to do as it operates from a Eurocentric framework. The nuance, the fluid

uncertainty is what I aim to include in the analysis not only to acknowledge

properly the depth of decolonial work that has gone into Mexican Gothic that I

cannot yet cover, but also to leave open future research directions.

Feminism Through Noemi

To set Noemi apart from other gothic protagonists, Moreno-Garcia

chooses a couple characteristics that communicate both her protagonist’s role in

the story and her ability to participate in it. She is a twenty-two year old Mexican

socialite from a large family, both of her parents are alive and she has a brother

to inherit most of the pressing responsibilities. Her status as a daughter of a

stable, affluent family deviates from the trope of helplessly vulnerable and

subservient women.

Noemi has a European-Catholic upbringing, she is bilingual, well-read and

determined to be one of the few women trying to pursue higher education in the

fifties. This means that she is not just better prepared to navigate the systems of

the imperialist and patriarchal society than the average person, but she also has

the means to pursue ‘unconventional’ routes like higher education with minimum

consequence. Given the fall of the British empire years prior to the 1950’s when

the story takes place, along with the bankrupt state of the Doyle family’s wealth,

Noemi’s economic and social status places her on equal–if not superior–ground

according to the classist and patriarchal society she lives in. Her level of privilege

is what gives her room to challenge and question the English family that others

do not have, either because they are of the working class as shown with the

house staff and town residents, or for being too closely monitored as shown with

younger or newer members of the family like her cousin Catalina, or black sheep

like Ruth Doyle and Francis Doyle at later parts of the book.

Unlike other novels like Jane Eyre or The Mysteries of Udolpho, where the

female characters are either a full spectator or a train wreck of a villain, the book

opens with Noemi leaving a late-night custom party with her date struggling to

keep up, inversing the idea that women either pursue or work in attracting men.

Another point that is clarified by the first chapter is how despite having more

strengths and advantages than an average protagonist in the genre, she is still

vulnerable. By showing how she is responding to the summons of her father,

fuming for being called home early, it communicates that she is a capable

woman who is neither helpless or invincible, especially in an era where Mexican

women were still fighting for the right to vote.

Furthermore, while most of the canonized gothic novels include

protagonists who just serve the purpose of exploring womanhood as an abstract

in a patriarchal society, the author takes the first chapters to convey Noemi’s

personality and traits as a person one could actually encounter in real life. She is

independently minded, scorns at the limiting idea that “[g]irls were supposed to

follow a simple life cycle, from debutante to wife”, but does not dismiss it in a

postfeminist fashion. She understands that her privileges, like attending high-end

parties, driving in her convertible, or being able to aspire for exciting experiences

are all conditional to her social status and its responsibilities.

Noemi, by virtue of being a fleshed-out character, is then able to give a

deeper exploration of womanhood and Indigenous identity showcased in how

she alternatively pushes and adheres to the social roles assigned to her. For

instance, she describes getting permission to attend the party as is done in

conservative households (p. 6) and takes critiques on her work ethic from her

father (p.11) but omits information from him that might alter his willingness to

support her decisions, like how her companion to the party is a suitor of lower

status who she is not allowed to or interested in marrying. She expresses how

she received the proper education of socialite where “[she] learned rebellion

while muttering the rosary” (p. 23) during her education in a private Catholic

school, which in context of her Indigenous identity also alludes to the

rebelliousness to fully assimilate a colonial religion. She is also shown facing

consequences for her ‘insubordination’, like being called flighty when changing

her major three times but stubborn in refusing to let her parents dissuade her

from finishing her education (p. 11), labeled as impertinent and spoiled by most

of the Doyles, and an instigator by her cousin’s lewd husband Virgil (p. 261).

Most importantly, none of these insubordinations are depicted as morally flawed

in themselves, nor are the consequences presented as justified as they would be

if the story promoted patriarchal values and aligned with a Virgin/Whore binary

ideology. I will expand on the definition of the binary archetypes further in another

section.

Benevolent Sexism Through the Father Figure

The displays of sexism are portrayed as harmful incrementally as the story

progresses, and they all play a part in how Noemi’s situation worsens to the point

that it does. The first type of display is of benevolent sexism that is represented

by Noemi’s father, Leocadio Taboada. For the purposes of this chapter, I will

define benevolent sexism as well-intentioned but condescending attitudes

towards women that imply the innate superiority of men to justify traditional

gender roles (Glick & Fiske, 2016). Noemi only shares one scene with her father

in the book, but many of her decisions are framed by the behaviors she exhibits

in her interaction with him. Meaning, how she goes about making choices in a

way that maintains her father ‘indulgent’ as a way to protect her own autonomy.

For example, she has hobbies that indicate independence and are perceived as

masculine, especially for the time period, like driving and formally studying

history (p. 42), but her father ‘allows’ them because they indicate that her

personality takes after his (p. 11).

Noemi's own beliefs challenge the idea that her leanings or decisions are

unusual for a woman, framing the diversity in her interests as a natural result of

her own capabilities and desires: “Noemi’s father said she cared too much about

her looks and parties to take school seriously, as if a woman could not do two

things at once.” Moreover, even though she has a degree of understanding over

the flaws in her father’s way of thinking, she is not able to perceive it clearly

enough to see it as problematic as much as she does find it irritating. For

example, when Mr. Taboada calls Noemi home early from a party because he

has received a letter from Catalina, he explains to her that while he is worried, his

main suspicion is that his melodramatic niece might just need someone to talk to.

Noemi’s internal dialogue qualifies that her cousin might be emotionally fragile to

a point, but that she does not think it is fair to write off Catalina’s trauma from

losing both parents at a young age as an innate tendency to be irrational (p. 10).

Noemi then reflects that Catalina and Mr. Taboada have a difficult relationship

because he broke off her first engagement, which Noemi thinks is the reason

why the courtship with Virgil was a secretive affair right up until the courthouse

wedding.

In summary, although it is extreme to hold Mr. Taboada as responsible for

all the events that Catalina and Noemi endure in the book, the ideology that

encourages him and other men to think that they have the obligation and right to

make the decisions for women in their lives is characterized as what left the

heroines vulnerable to the Doyle’s in the first place. The story portrays how her

uncle’s controlling behavior is what first inspired Catalina’s rebellion and helped

Virgil manipulate her into the romanticized notion of a rushed wedding. The

negative influence of the paternal character is also what drives Noemi to prioritize

being likable, at times at the cost of her own boundaries.

Hostile Sexism Through English Civility

Noemi’s arc throughout the story is arguably defined by what she learns

from her interactions with Virgil. In a sense, her interactions with him are an

escalation of what she experiences from her father, minus the respect that Mr.

Taboada has for her as a human being. For the purposes of this chapter, I will

define hostile sexism as antagonistic attitudes that place members of the male

sex as superior and members of the female sex as an inferior threat that must be

conquered (Glick & Fiske, 2016). Although she is decisive and clever in how she

handles situations, such as when she keeps the conversation on topic despite

Virgil’s attempts to dismiss her (pp. 33-34), her confidence is grounded in her

privilege. When her confidence is shaken in front of Virgil’s intimidating

skepticism, she regains calm by reminding herself that she comes as an

emissary of her father, who she perceives to be a highly respectable man (p. 32).

In her mind, her words and endeavors have value only because they are

supported by her father’s, instead of their innate value of coming from a family

member who can see the suspicious treatment of her cousin happening in front

of her.

The privilege of her status as the young and educated daughter of an

affluent family is what has enabled her to avoid a direct attack almost until the

end, and it is also what keeps her blindsided to do anything of use to help

Catalina or herself. In the story, the plan is for Doyles to bide their time until

Noemi inhales enough spores from the mushrooms growing inside the house

walls. The particular species of fungi is what enables them to establish a psychic

connection, called the Gloom, that allows them to control others and so they hold

back from doing anything other than expressing disapproval for the first few days

of her arrival. Noemi, however, does not really see the connection between her

privilege and the treatment the Doyles give her. She instead exhibits the belief

that her power depends on being perceived as likable, that the transgressions

that she can get away with are proportionate to how much others like her (p. 58).

Her arc completes as she accepts reality. In the middle of the story, there

is a scene in which Virgil finds Noemi as she is sleepwalking (p. 118), an

uncomfortable conversation ensues while he leers at her in her nightgown. When

he insists on walking her to her room, she is portrayed as hesitant to voice that

she wants him to leave her alone and accepts when he insists on escorting her

through the dark hallways instead. The novel at one point also communicates

explicitly that it is important for Noemi to avoid antagonizing other people:

It bothered her to be thought of so poorly. She wanted to be liked.

Perhaps this explained the parties, the crystalline laughter, the well-coiffed

hair, the rehearsed smile. She thought that men such as her father could

be stern and men could be cold like Virgil, but women needed to be liked

or they'd be in trouble. A woman who is not liked is a bitch, and a bitch can

hardly do anything: all avenues are closed to her (p. 58).

In addition to communicating Noemi’s understanding of what attitudes are

allowed for women, these statements serve as feminist assertions that show how

the habits learned by conforming to the ideologies of benevolent sexism leave

women vulnerable to the ideologies of hostile sexism because both are rooted in

the same patriarchal narrative. In the scene with the nightgown is when it

becomes fully apparent, at least from the outside, that the ’power’ Noemi gains

by being liked is an illusion that encourages her dependence on the approval of

the upholders of patriarchy around her. In the next section, I will outline the

tropes, and the subversions, that form the myth that presents the patriarchal

exclusion of femininity from power as the natural order.

Subversion of Tropes

Female identity in Mexico, and therefore in Mexican Gothic iterations of it,

is informed by two archetypes: la Virgen de Guadalupe and la Malinche (Subero,

2016). It might be tempting to simplify these identities to opposing binaries, but

both have complicated and conflicting meanings. Marianism is meant to embody

values like virginity, piety, and selfless motherhood, among others, but also stand

for the component of patriarchy that positions women as spiritually superior yet

subservient to their male counterparts. In Indigenous spirituality, the Virgin was

even fused with Tonantsi, a complicated female goddess who was stripped of

their darker characteristics by the male-dominated facets of Azteca-Mexica

culture (Anzaldua, 1987).

Malinchism is the reference to the enslaved woman who ‘betrayed’ her

nation by choosing to work with Cortes. She, in the Mexican collective

imagination, embodies both the nation’s reverence to its partially lost Indigenous

origins and the attraction to the values and traditions of the conquerors as a path

to their own superiority. Anzaldua (1987) even shows the link of splitting Tonantsi

original form into parts (Tonantsi, Coatlicue, Tlazolteotl, Cihuacoatl) to make her

the good, one-dimensional mother and Coatlicue and Tlazolteotl into the whore

aspects. Moreover, La Malinche’s story and symbolism are central to the

mythology of La Llorona (who is at times depicted as the same person), who

further develops her plight into a metaphorical stand-in for the Indigenous people

who experience the grief of being seduced then discarded by the Western

invaders.

Based on these archetypes of Malinchism and Marianism, Subero (2016)

expands on the idea of Malichism as a foundation for the idea of femininity as a

monstrous entity (not necessarily in the form of La Llorona) that women must be

protected from tapping into by God and the men in their life. The idea is further

rooted in gender by asserting that women are crippled with hysteria due to their

condition as mothers, essentially helpless to conditions like grief and resentment

(usually triggered by the loss of their children and the abandonment of their

lovers). The specific and punishing circumstances are meant to direct women

towards being good, God-fearing women who will avoid becoming like La Lorona

through the path of chastity until marriage to a virtuous Westernized man (as

exemplified by Marianism and its own set of problematic characteristics). This in

turn leads to the interpretation that, in what Subero (2016) admits is a misguided

intention, La Llorona then becomes an attacker and corrupted mother figure who

aims to rid the Indigenous women of both the domestic and foreign invaders that

seek to take root in Mexico through them. This painful and dark reflection is how

Subero (2016) explains the severe reality that Mexicans need to come to terms

with: mestizaje (the mixing of indigenous and colonial cultures) happened

through a brutal process, but the resulting identity must be accepted and

celebrated for healing to occur.

These actualizations of the gothic narrative have gone to great lengths to

explore and process Mexico’s conflict with its opposing cultural identities–

embodied in a woman nonetheless–but have yet to address the limiting

depictions of womanhood. Depictions of La Llorona, a female vampire, and a

witch all serve the same purpose in Mexican gothic narratives: to blur the lines

between the binary identities of indigenous and colonial by contrasting them to

the firm and condoned ones of the virgin and whore dichotomy. I argue that part

of Moreno-Garcia’s contribution with her female characters is expanding the

ways in which womanhood can be depicted in the gothic genre in ways that align

with feminism in challenging the duality of the Marianism and Malinchism

archetypes, like her Latin American gothic predecessors have done, but with a

complicated set of codifications that can still be presented to western audiences

even as the distinguishing details are rooted in Indigenous spirituality.

The Clash of the Heroine/La Malinche and the Byronic Hero

Noemi has the markings of a strong hero, she is capable, decisive, and

intelligent. Her strengths are subversively communicated as her interest in her

looks, her curiosity for the arts, and interest in men even though these are also

stereotypically feminine interests. More importantly, she has traits that make her

vulnerable because they are characteristics that she has in common with the

archetype of la Malinche, like her ability to knowingly wield her sexuality as well

as her attraction to Western values and traditions–such the ones that dictate that

men like Virgil who fit the trope of the byronic hero are an ideal or more

compelling type of European masculinity (Stein, 2004). The byronic hero trope is

assigned to male characters that fit the description of being tortured,

individualistic, and representative of an unattainable ideal that is not meant to be

a role model (Stein, 2004).

Virgil himself is described across the story by Noemi as a handsome and

polished man (p. 10). His speech and mannerisms are melancholic, intense, yet

constantly civil; his ability to be threatening without raising his voice or using foul

language is a key trait for his character and something I will explore further in the

section of the mad-woman/damsel-in-distress (p. 284). By playing off Noemi’s

and Virgil’s chemistry, the novel executes the subversion in three forms, starting

off with how the relationship between the two never develops into a romance.

Instead, Moreno-Garcia uses their dynamic to showcase the predatory nature of

Virgil’s–and therefore the byronic trope’s–characteristics. Derived from his own

father’s worldviews, Virgil reasons his actions through a philosophy of

predetermination (p. 89) where he takes what he wants regardless of what others

around him, including Noemi, want. For example, near the end of the book he

traps Noemi in a room after her forced wedding ceremony to his cousin Francis

Doyle and then tries to assault her (p. 261), the language he uses deliberately

frames symptoms of Noemi’s chemically induced arousal as consent despite her

explicit verbal refusal. The assault serves as a moment of feminist assertion in

the plot because it challenges the attractiveness with which the byronic hero’s

obsessiveness and selfishness is presented, choosing to highlight instead how it

normalizes abusive tendencies towards women.

Mexican Gothic’s second subversion to the conventional dynamic between

the byronic hero and the gothic heroine is by giving Neomi unconventional traits

for a gothic heroine that interfere with her disposition to be subservient. There is

her habit of smoking, some knowledge on anthropology, and her sense of identity

developed through strategic rebellion. Smoking, which at the time was regarded

as a refined and aesthetically pleasing habit is also toxic to the mushrooms that

the Doyles are trying to poison her with, giving a small but precious immunity as

it fights off the spores accumulating in her lungs. When she meets her cousin’s

British in-laws, her education allows her to discern not only the racist politics that

the Doyles live by, but also how to fight back once she gathers enough clues.

Lastly, the willfulness that she has cultivated is what gives her the strength to

break away from the Doyle family's mind controlling device, it being the Gloom,

long enough to destroy it.

Finally, the last subversion is how Noemi avoids giving in to the

weaknesses she shares with the archetype of La Malinche by developing a

romance with Francis Doyle, Virgil’s mutinous cousin, by the end of the novel.

Even though Francis Doyle is a member of the Doyle family and British, he is

depicted as one who stands opposed to his family’s way of life in whatever way

he can. He is the only one capable of speaking Spanish, he shows respect for

local customs and people, and the desire to grow and distance himself from his

roots in a way that the rest of his family does not. Through her relationship with

Francis, Noemi is depicted rejecting the idealized version of European

masculinity but European masculinity itself. Adding the dimension of Malinchism,

Noemi’s rejection of her potential relationship with Virgil also serves as symbolic

rejection of patriarchy’s implied supremacy from a Mexican female who refuses

to assimilate that system even as she negotiates by working with the resources

she had access to like Francis’ help.

Damsel in Distress/The Mad Woman/Marianism

Catalina is portrayed through the tropes of the damsel in distress, the mad

woman, and the Marianism archetype. The characters that fit these tropes tend

to be subservient to male characters, unidimensional, and in the case of two of

the tropes, regarded as pure. I will be explaining each of them separately for the

sake of clarity in this section. First, the mad woman is a trope that describes a

stigmatized depiction of mental health where a female character is both

presented as a threat and as subservient to a male character (Haralu, 2021). It is

commonly used in gothic literature and can be found in books like Jane Eyre

(1847), Rebecca (1938) and short stories like “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892), to

which this story makes several references (pp. 252, 257, 276). The second trope,

the damsel in distress, is first found applied to a gothic heroine in Horace

Walpol’s (1764) Castle of Otranto, described as a character that is “permitted

only to find herself in danger, scream, flee, and be rescued or protected by

various male characters [...] it would be difficult to pin down a single aspect of her

personality, other than her desire to marry the male hero” (Skopic, 2019). While

Catalina is never explicitly described by this title, Noemi does express that she

regards her as a sweet nurturer who would find living in Highplace unbearable,

even before she has the chance to witness Catalina telling her about the voices

haunting her in person (p. 31). Her compassionate qualities also make her fit with

Marianism, as the archetype is portrayed through a character’s virginity, piety,

and selfless motherhood (Subaro, 2016). In the book, Noemi describes

Catalina’s affinity for motherly duties, she is shown suffering mostly in silence

throughout the story, and the reader is told by other characters about the

inexperience that Virgil took advantage of when convincing her to marry him in a

rush.

She is first mentioned when Mr. Taboada calls Noemi to show her a letter

Catalina sent from High Place, the English manor where she lives with her

newlywed husband, Virgil Doyle. In the letter, she erratically begs her family to

rescue her, claiming that she is being poisoned and that she is hearing voices

from inside the walls. Mr. Taboada in turn expresses concern that his niece might

be struggling with her mental health and is not receiving the right attention, as

High Place is located in the Mexican countryside and Virgil’s family does not

count with a lot of resources.

The way Mr. Taboada frames the events leading to Noemi’s visit for her,

even if she is shown privately disagreeing in the novel, set the stage for the key

messages that Moreno-Garcia conveys with these tropes: the subtle

manifestations of abuse and theme of female rage. The abuse is subtle because

Virgil is treated with the benefit of the doubt, by both Noemi and her father, right

up until the climax. When Mr. Taboada demands to know what is happening via

correspondence, Virgil’s behavior is evasive and aggravated at having another

man meddle in “his business”, as was an acceptable attitude at the time.

Although aware of the suspicious circumstances the hurried marriage took place

in and the way laws and conventions at the time gave Virgil control over

Catalina’s bank account, he chooses to send Noemi to investigate in what he

hopes will be a non-confrontational maneuver.

It is not until later in brief conversations and independent investigation

from Noemi’s part that it is revealed that Catalina used one her few trips to the

town church to ask Marta Duval, the local healer, to send the letter for her.

Noemi, and therefore the reader’s, support of Catalina is how the trope of the

mad woman is first unraveled. The story incrementally validates her account of

the events not only by having Noemi endure the same thing but by choosing to

be careful with the disclaimers. Instead of aiming to distance Catalina from the

trope of the mad woman, Moreno-Garcia works to dismantle its validity all

together, starting with the narratives that might serve to excuse Virgil’s behavior.

When Mr. Taboada first calls Catalina melodramatic, Noemi privately

counters it with her own perception of her: a gentle person who lost her parents

at a young age. When Virgil attempts to portray her as afflicted from opioid-

induced seizures and suicidal, Noemi discovers different evidence and reasons

out the flaws in Virgil’s story. Through conversations with both Marta and Dr.

Camarillo, the town’s physician, she learns that not only does Marta not have the

resources to create an opioid-based tincture, but that even if she did, then it

would help with the seizures, not cause them (p. 160). In a later conversation

with Francis Doyle, he urges her to drink the tincture for herself, as the herbal

remedy is what Catalina was using to fight the effect of the spores and thus

regain her free will, not a poppy-based drug meant to kill her after a seizure.

Following the narratives of Catalina’s ‘hysteria’ comes the hallucinations

that take away from her credibility, until Noemi begins her research. Even before

completely piecing together the inner workings of the Gloom, Noemi hits the

mark in her theory that there is a scientific explanation for the hallucinations that

both her and Catalina have been experiencing (pp. 176-177), further tearing

down the English and patriarchal myth that divides and isolates women in their

struggles. After successfully establishing that Catalina is not the problem, the

story goes on to address the dimension of her mostly private rebellion to escape

her husband and his family.

She attempted to covertly warn Noemi during their first conversations (pp.

26, 50), she tried to escape before being stricken by the seizure for using too

much tincture after being exposed to the spores for too long (p. 140). Finally,

once the Doyles are convinced that Noemi is fully under Howard’s–Virgil’s father

and family patriarch–control, the pretenses are dropped. Catalina then is notably

quiet during the makeshift “wedding ceremony” of Noemi and Francis until the

following ritual where Howard’s consciousness is supposed to be transferred into

Francis’ body. With Virgil’s cousin Florence perceiving Noemi as the main threat,

Virgil himself being incapacitated, and Howard and Dr. Cummins being too

occupied with trying to transfer Howard’s consciousness to Francis, Catalina

finds an opportunity in being ignored. It is worth noting that the events up to this

point solidify her status as a damsel in distress because despite her many efforts,

she does not manage to escape until Noemi helps her directly.

While in a different story she would have been the villain, in here her

decision to move discreetly towards the bed where the sickly Howard lies to stab

him in the eye is one of the most heroic moments in the book. The moment is

what springs the protagonist back into action where, after another sequence of

events takes place where Francis kills his mother Florence, Noemi drags both

him and Catalina out through the house and into the family mausoleum. The

three almost make it out until they are intercepted by Virgil, who gets caught up

in a fight with Francis after trying to attack Noemi. By successfully getting

dismissed from the villain’s notice for a second time, Catalina once again has the

opportunity to take the initiative when Noemi lights the roots of the Gloom on fire

and leaves Virgil vulnerable to her attack.

Again, part of the power of Catalina’s depiction as a vulnerable

damsel/Maria archetype that turns mad woman is that it does not distance itself

from any of the tropes, but instead embraces and reclaims them, turning the

blame not only on Virgil, but also on the “civilized” patriarchy he is meant to stand

for and the violence it inflicts on women. In the next section, I will be looking at

the character Agnes Doyle who is the clearer example of the marianism

archetype. As it is, the story uses the characters of Catalina, Agnes Doyle, and

Florence Doyle to display different versions of what happens to women in the

Doyle family who align with the archetype. Catalina is treated as a hostage,

Florence internalizes the ideologies she has been raised with and exerts them on

those she considers beneath her, and Agnes is sacrificed in the name of the

family’s glory.

The Ghost

A clearer portrayal of female rage and the marianism archetype is seen in

the character of Agnes Doyle through the trope of the Ghost. To clarify, the trope

of the ghost is regarded as a “characterization of supernatural encroachment”

(Frank, 1987). In other words, it is used as a symbolic representation of

something intangible that threatens the protagonist. In the case of Mexican

Gothic, the trope is used to expose the callous type of imperialist patriarch that

Howard Doyle is based on and the nature of the violence he will likely inflict on

others if given the chance. In the story, Agnes Doyle is shown to be the eldest of

Howard’s two nieces, orphaned at a young age then sent to live with him in

Mexico once the mine started flourishing. When time came to find her a suitor,

Howard married her himself, making her the matriarch of the family. When

Howard discovered that he would be able to achieve immortality and a version of

mind-control by fusing the fungus with a human mind, he buried Agnes alive

where the fungi grew. Her traumatic death turned her into the Gloom, a person

turned space where Howard can access the minds of others who breathed the

spores and ate the fungi unknowingly slipped into their food. A space where the

minds of the people who breathed these spores would be connected to and left

vulnerable to Howard’s manipulations.

After her death, Howard remarried to Agnes’ younger sister, Alice Doyle,

who would become the mother of Ruth and Virgil. It is unclear if there were more

children born from either Agnes or her sister, as Noemi narrates visions during

her dreams that show a woman giving birth then being killed (p. 155). The men in

the vision, one of them presumably being Howard, would then lead a ritual where

they would kill and cannibalize the child born with spores already in their system

as a way to strengthen the connection between Gloom and the surviving

members of the Doyle family (p. 281).

While the trope originally described the ghost as representing a

supernatural being that is the manifestation of something that invades and

disrupts the natural order, Noemi’s description reframes the existence of Agnes’

ghost as the indicator that the natural order has been disrupted–not the cause

itself:

And it struck her all of a sudden this fact that she had missed,

which should have been obvious from the very beginning: that the

frightening and twisted gloom that surrounded them was the manifestation

of all the suffering that had been inflicted on this woman. Agnes. Driven to

madness, driven to despair, and even now a silver of that woman

remained, and that silver was still screaming in agony.

She was the snake biting its tail.

She was the dreamer, eternally bound to a nightmare, eyes closed

even when her eyes had turned to dust (p. 289).

In the sense of Agnes’ condition being the signal of a problem instead of a

problem in itself makes it well suited to treat the theme of female rage because of

what it reveals about the standards that women are held to. Like in the case of la

Malinche’s evolution to the myth of La Llorona, the tropes of the ghost and even

that of the mad woman present the victims of trauma in their aftermath as the

monsters. These women are the disruptors of the natural order, they are who

need to be defeated by the protagonist, not the crimes against women that are

still taking place in the modern world. Moreno-Garcia takes the trope and

subverts it by treating the patriarchy and its demands as the curse and her

release the key to breaking it. The use of the serpent as a symbol also links this

scene to Anzaldua (1987) and the Caotlicue state, an Indigenous-based

metaphor the dark night of the soul that, in Anzaldua’s take, prompts people

trapped in their addictions to wake up and engage in life again.

Feminist Collective

Mexican Gothic depicts several people assisting Noemi and Catalina in

destroying the Gloom and escaping the Doyle family: Agnes Doyle, Ruth Doyle,

Francis Doyle, Dr. Camarillo and Marta Duval. I argue that the choice to give

Noemi and Catalina a support network is feminist because it demonstrates the

importance of solidarity in the struggle against patriarchy. For example, when

Noemi first arrives at the house, she begins receiving visions from Agnes (pp. 55-

56) about the family history, creating a contrast between the manipulative

narrative that the family presents to her and the actual tragedies that make up its

past. The visions and dreams also serve as exposition for the reader to

understand that the downfall of Howard Doyle and his family is a task completed

by Noemi, but initiated decades prior by Howard’s daughter Ruth. Through the

piece of Ruth’s consciousness that is attached to the Gloom, Noemi learns how

the young girl killed a large number of her family members and wounded Howard

in a way that left his body permanently weakened thereafter, stunting the traction

he had made in taking over the town of El Triunfo.

Although English and treated as a valuable member of the family at the

time, the character of Ruth is portrayed as feminist by showing how she uses her

free will to choose a lover who is not approved by her family and by showing

when she fights back after her fathers tries to force her to marry one of her

cousins anyway. Noemi is shown how in revenge for killing her lover, Ruth took a

shotgun the day of her wedding and killed the groom Howard chose for her, the

groom’s parents, Ruth’s own mother Alice, and then finished by shooting Howard

in the stomach. Her older cousin Florence at this point had hidden with an infant

Virgil, escaping the attack. Despite her efforts, Howard survived the wound and

used the Gloom to force Ruth to point the gun at herself. In Noemi’s visions, she

sees Ruth’s last moments repeatedly, altered slightly to tell her the key to freeing

Agnes and destroying the Gloom. Although Ruth fails to defeat her abusive

family, she does manage to weaken it and establish herself as Noemi’s ally

within the Gloom.

In addition to depicting Agnes and Ruth as informants that help jeopardize

the patriarchal system they exist in from the inside, there is the unlikely ally she

finds in Francis Doyle. He is the one who conspires with her, bends the rules by

taking trips to the town, fills in the blanks about the family history and shares the

weaknesses of the fungus that helps create the Gloom. Francis is depicted as

one of the heroes and also an antithesis to the Doyle family’s belief that people’s

natures are unchangeable from what they are born into, which they use to justify

the genocide and oppression of what they regard as “inferior” individuals. At the

end, he kills his mother in a struggle for a revolver to keep her from shooting

Noemi and he fights Virgil when he tries to attack her and Catalina. His portrayal

comes across as feminist because his more feminine qualities are what is

consistently highlighted throughout the story. He is nurturing and sincere when

Noemi is feeling confused and later defeated when she understands that she will

be forced to join the family through marriage (p. 235). Although he was raised

with the same teachings as the rest of the family, he is depicted as conflicted and

thus increasingly rebellious as the story progresses. The story shows how his

moral code is one of the reasons why Howard chose him as his next vessel as

opposed to Virgil, who grew up to be exactly the type of abusive person he

values. Also, there is another subtler decolonial element that relates to the

relationship and narratives that Indigenous Latin Americans have with different

empires. There is an idiosyncratic relationship between Spain and the Latin

American cultures they colonized where the latter presents itself as the lesser of

two evils because most of the strategy focused on religious conversion of the

Indigenous followed by assimilation attempts through breeding with them,

contrasted with the genocide of the Anglo-Dutch colonists (Gallegos, 2022). By

making Francis a compassionate love interest, the relationship also presents a

counterpoint to that narrative because it portrays an Anglo-Dutch male character

as an alternative ally that nullifies the value of the “lesser evil” that Spanish

colonizers offer.

Then there are the depictions of the specialists Dr. Camarillo, the local

doctor in El Triunfo who Noemi asks for a second opinion on Catalina’s condition,

and Marta Duval, who gives Catalina and Noemi the tonic to fight off the effect of

the fungus. Unlike the family physician Dr. Cummings, the portrayal of Dr.

Camarillo is feminist because he is written to act non-condescending, humble,

and compassionate. When Noemi comes to him for help, he agrees to examine

Catalina even though the Doyles are hostile to him. He is willing to take her

account seriously unlike Dr. Cummings, who dismisses her protests, and he is

honest and transparent when he cannot provide the help she is looking for.

Moreno-Garcia seems to make a point of giving both Francis and Dr. Camarillo

moments where they admit they are out of their depth (pp. 86, 279), challenging

the stereotype that men must always take charge and have the solutions for any

given situation. In turn, Marta is shown helping Catalina send a letter to Mr.

Taboada in secret and serves as Noemi’s main informant in filling in the blanks

about El Triunfo’s history with the Doyles. Although the appearances are

seemingly brief, the participation of all these different characters makes the story

a feminist text because it communicates the importance of making feminist

struggles a group effort, instead of instances of individual empowerment.

Conclusion

Moreno-Garcia places different feminist and patriarchal ideas in dialogue

with each other through Noemi and her interactions with other characters, how

Moreno-Garcia subverts tropes and uses them to unpack and dismantle the

Marianism/Malinchism binary, and how she sets up the plot in way that makes

the defeat of the villains a group effort as opposed to an individualistic pursuit.

While traditional gothic heroines are shown performing unidimensional passive

femininity to navigate the system (Hoeveler, 1998), Noemi is consistently active

in the plot and able to come across as a complex character regardless of

whether she is exhibiting her strengths or her weaknesses. Moreno-Garcia

explains the qualities of Marianism outside of their romanticized framing and

explores how the characteristics associated with the archetype of La Malinche

are used to demonize strong-willed women. Finally, she uses multiple characters

to show the varied direct and indirect forms that resistance can take.

CHAPTER FOUR:

REPRESENTATIONS OF ANTICOLONIALISM IN MEXICAN GOTHIC

Gothic novels are set up to be formulaic stories centered around heroes

and villains (Williams, 1995), usually featuring villains that deviate somehow from

the archetype of an ideal or redeemable British protagonist. Moreno-Garcia uses

her own novel to show how characters actually fall into the categories of the

colonizers and the colonized, with the colonizers being presented as the heroes.

Spivak (1985) argued in her own reading of the British novels Jane Eyre and

Frankenstein that gothic novels by western authors serve to promote England’s

social mission of spreading imperialism around the world. In the individualized

perspectives of gothic novels, imperialism is communicated in the gothic plot by

centering around protagonists who fit idealized versions of English masculinity or

femininity and antagonists who are threatening because of their difference, be it

a disability like Bertha’s in Jane Eyre or a foreign culture and language like in

Dracula. Moreno-Garcia reverses the western gothic novels’ formula by

representing the English colonizers and their romanticized culture as the villains

of the story and colonized Mexican characters as the heroes.

To illustrate why this in an anticolonial novel, I will discuss the depictions

of the colonized and the colonizers. Although the two depiction themes overlap, I

will be breaking down each separately and in-depth. Moreno-Garcia

contextualizes the impact of the British family’s presence in Mexico by telling the

story through the eyes of a woman of color that uses her own culture and values

as a point of reference. In the second part of the chapter, I explain the Doyle

family’s relationship with imperialism and how Moreno-Garcia uses mushrooms

as a metaphor for colonization.

Humanizing the Colonized: Depicting the Family and Working Class Values

Mexican Gothic recounts the fall of a family of British aristocrats that

colonized the Mexican countryside town of El Triunfo, a silver mine turned ghost

town after the Mexican Revolution in 1910. Mexican Gothic features Noemi

Taboada as the protagonist and narrator, which from an anticolonial perspective

presents a challenge to imperialist institutions that work to silence voices that

deviate from the European patriarchal narrative. As a heroine, she is depicted as

an educated affluent family to create a contrast to the limiting way in which

Mexican women are conventionally depicted in western media as strictly

members of the working class but also to add nuance to her character. One of

the decolonial ideologies is to shift away from dichotomies like good and bad to

make space for complexity (Anzaldua, 1987), but also for the negotiations that

take place during the creation of texts that reach the mainstream like Mexican

Gothic (Gallegos, 2022). Finally, by having her as the protagonist in the story, the

novel stands as anticolonial because it shows the value of letting women tell the

stories of their people through their eyes, filling in the blanks that the colonizers

create in their cultural narrative.

Even though she was born into a relatively advantageous position, the

colonizers in the story still treat her primarily as an Other. For example, when

Howard starts conversation remarking on her dark skin and presumed

indigenous heritage (p. 29). Noemi follows the comment with a challenging “what

is your point?” response that Howard uses as a prompt to start a condescending

conversation on Jose Vanconcelo’s book The Cosmic Race, which he uses to

suggest that she, along with some members of the Mexican population,

admiringly display some desirable traits despite their undesirable indigenous

heritage (p. 29). This scene not only explicitly communicates the darker side of

imperialism that is racism (Spivak, 1985), but it also stands for the rejection of

that ideology. By making it an interaction between Howard and Noemi, the

conversation serves to challenge the stance that indigenous traits are

undesirable by focusing on presenting Noemi’s culture in a favorable light as well

as showing what “undesirable” traits look like when found in a member of a high

economic class.

Nuance Through the Protagonist

Before getting into some of those culture markers, I will further address

Moreno-Garcia’s decision to write Noemi’s character as a socialite. In an

interview following the book’s release, she explains that she wanted Noemi to

come from a wealthy family that prides itself on being high class and western-

educated because she wanted a Mexican heroine who would occupy a position

other than that of a nanny or servant (Moreno-Garcia in Quintana, 2021). In

addition, changing the trope that a gothic heroine needs to be below the gothic

hero in the hierarchy not only challenges the stereotype by which Mexican

women are presented, but also enables Noemi’s character to be skeptic of the

superiority narrative the British family relies on to encourage the submission of

members in the working class, which Moreno-Garcia argues would not be

possible if Noemi were written as a member of the working class herself.

Therefore, what separates Noemi is that her version of sophistication is

based on a different set of values than those of the Doyle family. This is

important because the critique made on how Mexican characters are

dehumanized in gothic novels is more comprehensive than simply coding the rich

as bad and the poor as good. Noemi’s family displays wealth through modern

and flamboyant trappings as well as time spent building connections with family

and community. Aside from the time where Noemi explicitly says that she is

“expected to devote her time to the twin pursuits of leisure and husband hunting”

(p. 6), otherwise interpreted as being an active member of the community who is

focused on expanding her family unit, the way in which Noemi describes her

status is by listing where she shops, expensive items she has access to, and the

private school where she was taught to speak English. Her values in this area

are not necessarily opposite or innately noble by comparison to those of elitism,

tradition, and discretion shown by the Doyles, but they do put her in a position

where she can understand and reject their idealized way of life because she is an

equal.

In addition, Moreno-Garcia does make a commentary through Noemi

about what she thinks of people in the service industry, even as she decides to

not make her protagonist as one among them. While British etiquette for the staff

instructs to be all but invisible, Noemi is written to acknowledge their humanity

from page 1. She describes how the chauffeurs of the party patrons systematize

a routine to balance their needs with their commitments, such as sleeping,

socializing with other chauffeurs, or sneaking away to visit a love interest or

pursue dinner. Although the conditions described are not ideal circumstances of

living by any means, there is still an acknowledgement that these people are not

employees, but that they are merely people who are employed. The description

focuses on the agreement of two collaborators, the patron and the chauffeur, to

work on an agreed task and then split the agreed profit. It is notable that in this

scene, Noemi and her date break the unspoken agreement by leaving early, so

the chauffeur is nowhere to be found and the two are forced to look for a taxi to

return them home. I argue that this is a subtle reminder of the free will of

members in the working class, a trait that the staff at High Place lacks

completely.

To clarify, the author does not paint the life of members of the working

class that do not come in contact with High Place as better than those in the

Doyle family because their situations are perfect, but because they challenge the

romanticized myth of the noble aristocrats and their devoted servants whose

lives revolve around their masters. Aside from the initial example in the first page,

Noemi elaborates on her attitudes towards working class people when she meets

the staff at High Place for the first time. She notes how, true to the myth, the staff

is almost as invisible as the servants in the fairytale of Beauty and the Beast–

before ridiculing the idea of a home being maintained by faceless and nameless

entities (p. 59). As simple as it sounds, Noemi is effectively set apart and closer

to the Other because she describes being used to knowing all the people who

worked at her house and in High Place by name as the norm.

Vertical and Horizontal Thinking

Next, there is the emphasis on family and community that is shown by the

Taboadas throughout the book. For starters, there are the moments when the

reader learns of the Taboada family’s history through Noemi. After the death of

Catalina’s parents, Mr. Taboada adopts her and raises her as his own (p. 13),

finances her wedding to Virgil as a gesture of good faith (p. 9), and then makes

arrangements to intervene when she expresses via correspondence that she

does not feel safe with her husband and his family (p. 12). Moreover, the plot

itself is about a damsel in distress who counts on the woman she is closest with

to rescue her.

During the story, Noemi mocks the importance some families place on a

person’s position in the family tree when Francis explains that he is Virgil’s

cousin once removed. “I always figure that if they come to my birthday party we

are related and that’s it, no need to pull out the genealogy chart” (p. 19). When

put in context with the Doyle family’s devotion to their self-perception as “the

finest type of manhood and womanhood possible” that is revealed later in the plot

(p. 78), Noemi’s statement separates the two definitions of family in the book:

hers being a community that aims for the greater good versus something that is

more akin to an exclusionary guild. On top of the definition, there is the difference

in what counts as quality time in relation to family from each side, Noemi

describes being used to casual norms, like evenings having coffee with milk and

pastries during lively conversations (p. 28) seeing Catalina look after the younger

members of the family as her father offers prizes to the child who solves his

riddles (p. 31). Unlike the dynamics of the Doyle family that I will outline in the

next section, Noemi has been raised to view traditions, like partaking of meals

with family, as a way to fulfill collectivistic purposes that strengthen the bond to

the community.

Mexican Gothic manages to challenge the colonizer-colonized hierarchy

that Mexican people are oppressed under without inverting it. By the end of the

novel, the characters of Noemi, Catalina, and Francis are simply a group of

people that present a symbolic alternative to imperialism and its values. For

example, Noemi is depicted as being able to speak English as a demonstration

of her capabilities similar to Francis who chose to embrace his environment by

learning Spanish (p. 18), demonstrating once again how Mexican Gothic

symbolically rejects the disdainful part of European culture instead of the culture

itself. She embeds Mexican culture markers, ways of thinking, and complex

characters in the gothic formula created by white European authors for white

European audiences, and she does so by presenting the virtues and validity of

an alternate culture–not its superiority as that would simply imply a transition

from one hierarchy to another.

Depicting the Atrocities of the Colonizers

In Mexican Gothic, imperialist Britishness is depicted as obsolete,

predatory, and arrogant through the members of the Doyle family. For example,

using her own culture as a point of reference, Noemi deems the British markers

of wealth she finds upon her first meeting as “dated, dirty, and [in need] of a paint

job” (p. 16). The dissatisfaction narrated by Noemi serves as a critique of the

unfounded pride that markers–like the outdated car Howard sends Francis in to

pick up Noemi (p. 16) or the tarnished silver engraved plates and cups in the

china cabinets (p. 27)–stand for because of the way they are used to indicate a

standard of excellence that Howard defines his bloodline by (p. 78). While the

gothic genre itself is founded in the romanticization of medieval buildings and

families that cling to tradition in a world of change, Noemi is written to question

this by expressing feelings of discomfort with the contrast between the somber

Victorian High Place and the modern homes, apartment buildings, and bright

colonial houses she is used to (p. 20). Although having resided in Mexico for

decades, the house was built by English workers, made to match English

architecture, and even stands on exported European dirt (p. 18). Incidentally, the

family is shown as stuck in tradition to the point of forgoing electricity in most of

the house because the last renovation was done in 1909 (p. 23), hinting at how

the Mexican Revolution a year later symbolically cut off the ties between the

family and the modern world.

Impersonal Family Dynamics

The environment that is reminiscent of a time-capsule presents the

shallow performativity of British etiquette as something used to present a front of

civility and sophistication even as the family and their property is in a literal state

of decay because of its abusive relationship with their environment. While the

reader is reminded through Noemi’s observations that in Mexican households

social events like dinners or weddings are meant to celebrate relationships,

community, and connection, the forced wedding of Noemi and Francis then is

depicted in contrast as a shallow opportunity for the Doyle family to perform their

status and further their agenda (p. 28, 71, 257).

During the event of the wedding, the interactions are shown not only as

bureaucratic but also exploitive. After the “ceremony”, for example, Florence

starts off intending to lecture Noemi on the mechanics of marital relations, and

when Noemi questions the need to explain sexual reproduction to an adult

woman during her wedding night, Florence talks about modesty and chastity of

Doyle girls (p. 258), glossing over the fact that these girls were expected to

participate in relations with older male relatives. As Noemi is shown reflecting

skeptically on the likelihood that women in the Doyle household could remain

“innocent” with men like Howard living under the same roof, the point is

punctuated by Virgil’s near assault (p. 260) after Noemi refuses Florence’s

assistance and is left alone. Here, Mexican Gothic incorporates decolonial

feminist theory with the use of language associated with Marianism to then

criticize the religious European aspects that indoctrinate women to be both

ignorant and defenseless in the domestic sphere, vilifying female sexuality in the

process of exploiting it.

Doyle and the Ouroboros

Howard Doyle’s past is cryptically expressed with far-in-between

comments, but what is revealed characterizes him as the symbolic stand-in for

coloniality within Mexican Gothic. Doyle’s arrival to Mexico is depicted to have

happened around 1650, as explained by his nephew Francis, matching the

period where England develops an advantage over other empires due to its naval

power (Israel, 1998). In addition to how his timelines are written to parallel wins

and loses of the actual British empire, Francis explains how his uncle has been

transferring his mind to the bodies of his children for more or less three hundred

years, changing the essence of both himself and his vessel into a new version of

both (p. 213). The depiction of Doyle’s backstory blurs his characterization as a

person and turns him into something intangible instead, such as an infectious set

of ideologies that are passed from one generation to the next.

The way Doyle’s process of obtaining immortality is depicted is also

decolonial because it treats the themes of committing genocide against

indigenous peoples so he can steal and then pervert their resources for his own

benefit. Through Noemi’s visions, the reader learns that Doyle arrived in Mexico

as a rich man looking for a cure to a terminal disease when he found a small

group of what is implied were indigenous people that utilized the mushroom to

extend their lives and access ancestral memories. Doyle, upon having his health

restored by the mushroom, joined the congregation and earned their trust (p.

205). He killed them at the first opportunity, took over the caves where the fungi

grew, and started his experiments on a surviving female member until he found a

way to create the Gloom using Agnes’ mind centuries later. Noemi describes

receiving a vision from Agnes’ point of view where she receives a silver, jewel-

filled casket for her wedding (p. 259), adding to the terrifying element of

romanization of female sacrifice for the good of her “family”. Along with the

imagery of Agnes’ body attached to mausoleum’s fungi covered wall that is an

echoing of a Madonna painting–a decolonial element because of the strong

influence of the Virgin Mary and how she adopted many meanings for the

indigenous population in Mexico–there is an undertone of epistemic violence in

how Howard built a statue of Agnes on a pedestal, commemorating her as the

matriarch and glossing over the brutalities he is still putting her through for the

sake of his empire.

On the topic of indigenous symbolism and other topics studied in

decolonial theory, there is also the connection Doyle is shown to have with the

infinity symbol in the form of a serpent that eats its own tail. Not only is this

symbol meaningful in western religious tradition, explaining why it is introduced

as Doyle’s code of arms, but also presented as a link to the decolonial feminist

author Gloria Anzaldúa (1987). The connection is rooted in how the story

portrays two versions of the infinity symbol represented by the serpent that eats

its own tail, also known as the ouroboros in the west or as a reference to Aztec

goddess Coatlalopueh in decolonial feminist thought. In its original and healthy

form, the most common meaning of the symbol stands for the eternal circle of

death and rebirth (p. 257), but the book shows how Howard twists this through

Agnes and the Gloom into a stagnant loop of repetition without progress as he

utilizes his kin to extend his life beyond its natural length. Paired with the

genocide he inflicted on the original holders of the mushroom, there is the

pervesion of the mushroom itself.

The Mushroom Hierarchy

There is an arrogance that is expressed through the racist elements of

imperialism, here explained metaphorically through the mushrooms. Doyle

accomplishes immortality and a god-like status through colonizing el Triunfo and

molding it and its inhabitants to his advantage. The reason why the mushroom

makes for a good metaphor for racism and coloniality is because of how it

enables Howard to control and exploit other living beings (p. 286). He takes a

natural resource that a part of the population is dependent on and then uses it to

kill or enslave those who do as little as breathe the same air as him, and the

longer they are exposed, the harder it is to pose resistance. As shown with the

contrasting reactions of Noemi and Francis, or even Noemi and Catalina, the

longer a person is exposed to the spores, the more violent and crippling it will be

when they take action to delink themselves from the mushroom and the

connection it provides to Howard and the Gloom. Decolonial scholar Walter

Mignolo (2007) describes delinking as the detachment of the perverse logic of

coloniality (Fanon, 1961) and its ideas like the universalism of European

knowledge. In the case of Mexican Gothic, the symbolism of domination that

Howard attaches to nature and the mushrooms gets centered until it becomes

difficult for the other characters to see that the Gloom is not a source of invincible

evil, but instead a sick pattern that can and needs to be broken–or in the case of

novel–turned into ashes.

In addition, there is the detail that the compatibility of the mushroom works

hierarchically just like racism, a tool of coloniality that here is represented by the

character of Howard, does. In his research of the mushroom, Howard found that

his line could form a symbiotic relationship with it, hence the immortality, but

those side effects differed with other people. This not only does this serve to

explain why he in-bred with his kin, selectively chose other English aristocrats

like Francis’ father to join the family, but also why he justifies the genocide of the

community that he perceived was underusing it in comparison to what he could

accomplish with it. Howard found that most Mexican and British people in the

working class do not survive being exposed to the mushroom, similar to how

marginalized communities do not survive the conditions created by coloniality,

although some can endure with some consequences. The “resistant” ones are

depicted as the mindless servants Howard brought from England (p. 212), which

at the end of the story are shown to be reduced to resembling toys that have

fallen apart (p. 276).

Lastly, there are people like Howard who have some disposition, it is

unclear if it is genetic or not, to survive or even grow physically stronger because

of their interaction with the mushroom, and even in that group there are

disparities. Howard, Virgil, and Noemi each are portrayed as having an affinity

with the fungi and the Gloom, which reflects their positions as the most shielded

by privilege as far as the dynamics go in the house at the time of the story.

Florence, Francis, and Catalina are in turn shown as crippled by their own

privilege, for it just makes them targets to be exploited in some way by those that

land higher up. Catalina especially makes for an interesting case, as her

alignment with the Marianism archetype, and some elements of colorism she

brings into discussion as someone described to have lighter skin and more

European features than Noemi, puts her in a position that seems to imply that the

poor state of her mental health is due to fighting the part of her that is inclined to

assimilating the spores or the colonizer’s culture.

High Place & The Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets

In the last section, I mentioned how Mexican Gothic included scenes that

affirmed the humanity of people in the working class outside of El Triunfo, while

characters that fall into that same class that come into contact with the Doyles

are barely given a name at all. True to English etiquette, the lives between the

classes that share a space are segregated to the point that the aristocrats are

barely aware of the existence of the people that make their lifestyle possible. As

its name suggests, High Place is a home that is notably removed and above the

mining town that the Doyles control and drain of resources in order to sustain

whatever aspects they can of their lifestyle. The house is presented as an echo

to the actual British empire, whose natural resources are scarce and thus has

only managed to flourish through its abuse of military power in more abundant

countries. Moreover, how the Doyles are shown to remain and pose a severe

threat even after receiving devastating blows, like the shot Ruth fired on Howard

he never healed from, also makes a commentary on the empire for which the sun

never sets.The ending of Mexican Gothic is ambiguous in its stance of Noemi’s

conclusions or overall future after she escapes High Place. Mexican Gothic does

not validate Noemi’s opinions when they are solely based on her experiences,

they are simply included for her character exposition. The lack of endorsement

also means that Noemi is not rewarded with a fully triumphant ending and

instead left with an uncertainty about how much her efforts actually

accomplished, just like how the work of decolonial and postcolonial scholars is

still an ongoing effort.

Conclusion

Narrating Mexican Gothic through the eyes of a Mexican woman affirms

the value of letting women tell their stories and how the Doyle family symbolically

stands for the British empire. Moreno-Garcia chooses to write Noemi as a strong

female character that introduces her culture into the story as she experiences

what it is like to be on the receiving end of “England’s social mission”, depicting it

as an escalation of the terror that other British gothic heroines feel in the

domestic setting. Then, the author takes her time constructing the plot around

Doyle as a multifaceted entity that shows the products of imperialism, including

but not limited to slavery, genocide, invasion, and the perversion of the natural

world around them.

CHAPTER FIVE:

CONCLUSION

Limitations

This thesis employs textual analysis methodologies and thus only

analyzes the ideological meanings that are embedded through the book. It won’t

be addressing how readers make sense of the anti-colonial feminist meanings

that come through the textual analysis and ideological reading of Mexican Gothic.

In the future, I plan to conduct a reception study to see how books written in the

female gothic genre from the formerly colonized South or Latin American gothic

genre can contribute to decolonial awareness or thinking. Also, although I aimed

to give a comprehensive view of both anticolonial theories, the scope of this

research did not allow for a full dive into the Latin American side of gothic

literature, I plan to expand on this angle of my research. Lastly, this research

works on the assumption that race is an inherent aspect of imperialism and thus

is not as complete as it could be if it had drawn from Critical Race Theory and its

scholars as opposed to just postcolonialism, decoloniality, and feminism.

Conclusion

My research illustrated the importance of having more published authors

of color to challenge the dominance of western centric ideologies in U.S.

literature. After reviewing relevant literature on postcolonial and decolonial

feminism as well as the gothic genre, I conducted an in-depth textual analysis of

Sylvia Moreno-Garcia’s novel Mexican Gothic. Through a feminist reading, I

explain how the female point of view is centered through the heroine protagonist,

how a series of patriarchal tropes are subverted, and how the heroines are made

to count on a feminist alliance as they defeat the story’s villains. In an anticolonial

analysis, I show how instead of focusing on taboo transgression or sacrifice,

Moreno-Garcia’s novel revolves on humanizing the colonized and demystifying

the colonizers. Due to the complex themes it manages to cover, Mexican Gothic

makes a case for letting women tell their own stories through a genre that has

been traditionally seen as male-dominated in terms of its writers and

protagonists. My thesis situated the place of the female gothic within the history

of the gothic genre and examined the importance of the female gothic in terms of

telling stories from a feminist anti-colonial standpoint.

Moreno-Garcia and her novel Mexican Gothic adds value to the U.S.

literary canon because her stories present a different version of gothic horror and

terror that remains loyal to the essence of the genre even as it updates it with

anticolonial feminist twists. She builds on the work of other Mexican storytellers,

such as the filmmakers Ramon Peon and Rene Cardona (Subaro, 2016), that

present coloniality as an intangible but undeniably present form of horror that

turns patriarchs like Howard Doyle in Mexican Gothic into near-invincible

monsters. I argue that in her novel, Moreno-Garcia presents the ideologies of

sexism and racism as sources of terror that women need to face as they navigate

colonized spaces. As an author of color, she provides an original story filled with

Mexican references that still taps into the familiar themes like English aristocratic

characters and supernatural elements. Her story is all the more noteworthy

because she chooses to center it on a family of British colonizers as opposed to

Spanish conquistadors. Not only is Mexico’s long history dealing with invaders

from multiple empires underrepresented in the media, but the involvement of

England specifically makes it relevant to the U.S. canon due to the influence it

has in North American culture in the present day.

My research discussed the evolution of Feminist Theory through

postcolonial and decolonial theories to then apply that understanding of

anticolonial feminism as a lens to analyze Moreno-Garcia’s gothic novel. Through

such a lens, I was able to understand how centering the point of view of the

novel’s heroine, Noemi, presents a postcolonial feminist approach because it

challenges the superiority of western knowledge. As Mexican Gothic sticks to

Noemi’s point of view, she slows the pace of the story even as the intensity

remains, forcing the reader to focus on how a bystander like Noemi comes to

terms with what is happening. In this way, the story is careful not to reproduce

what Stone-Mediatore (2016) calls structures of exclusion and domination, which

are described as the encouragement to focus too much on individual problems,

developing a lack of self-awareness, and telling stories about personal struggle

to give the female author the same authority as that of the male authors who

have silenced them in the past. My thesis also argued that the ambiguity of the

ending where we are not told whether the mushrooms were eradicated with the

fire is how Mexican Gothic presents anti-colonialism as an ongoing project.

By drawing on literature that contextualizes gothic stories in Mexican

settings, I introduced the history of vilifying the idealized exclusionary practices of

European culture through tropes like the female vampire, a witch, or the

archetype of la Malinche that evolves into La Llorona (Subero, 2016). In

presenting these women as monsters due to their emergence or corruption by

European culture, Mexican storytellers can use them as a space to process their

cultures' relationship with the outcomes of imperialism such as colonization and

mestizaje. Using the archetype of Malinchism and of its dual counterpart

Marianism, Moreno-Garcia writes the characters of Noemi and her cousin

Catalina to present how these archetypes are designed to portray women’s

different strengths as weaknesses to be exploited by patriarchal powers.

My analysis reveals how Mexican Gothic organizes the ideologies of

imperialism and patriarchy and promotes postcolonial and decolonial feminism.

In chapter 3, I outline how Noemi Taboada is portrayed as a decisive woman

who values her autonomy and emerges triumphant in a conflict against mind-

slaving colonizers, making her a feminist role model who stands against

imperialism. In chapter 4, I describe how Moreno-Garcia presents a strong

understanding of the gothic genre with the way she writes every character in the

Doyle family to stand for a different ‘ideal’ British man or woman, problematizes

it, then introduces her own ideas in a way that western-educated readers can

understand.

During my feminist analysis, I found that Mexican Gothic combined the

motifs of both the male and female gothic to create a heroine that would stand

apart from the rest. I found that it references a combination of British and

Mexican takes on gothic tropes to discuss women's experiences in dealing with

the terror of an imperial domestic setting. I found that the plot is arranged to

center the values of solidarity and sisterhood, making it a feminist text by

showing how organized efforts are what enacts change. This allowed me to

identify and explain the different themes in the novel, such as how Noemi’s

weakness is her alignment with certain characteristics of la Malinche or how her

story is a reminder that it is possible to confront the darker parts of one’s nature

and change.

In my anticolonial reading of the book, I note through a standpoint analysis

that placing Noemi as the protagonist sets up a direct opposition to imperialism

themes that are discussed in the novel. I found that gothic novels place

characters that divert from the idealized depiction of British masculinity or

femininity as the villains and that the heroes align themselves consistently with

the mission of imperialism. Moreno-Garcia also takes note of this and uses it to

tell a subversive story where the heroes are the groups that have been colonized

and the villains are the colonizers. Lastly, drawing on postcolonial and decolonial

theories, an ideological analysis also revealed that Mexican Gothic contains a

comprehensive analogy for the British empire through the Doyle family and the

stolen mushrooms used to create the Gloom.

I clarify what the anticolonial feminist applications for storytelling are

before discussing once again the origins and distinctive characteristics of the

gothic genre. The simplest benefit from applying anticolonial feminist ideologies

to storytelling is that the readers can learn and reflect about complex themes that

they might not be able to access otherwise. An example of how Mexican Gothic

accomplished this is by briefly communicating throughout the novel that Noemi

was privy to topics like anthropology and gives the reader a glimpse of it as she

is making sense of the Doyle family’s scheme.

I began my research summarizing the research that debunked the

assumptions and misconceptions in publishing that the works of writers of color

would not sell as well. Afterwards, I introduced one of the texts that did break

through into the published canon, Mexican Gothic, which is an exceptional

example of the female gothic genre. Not only does it align with the idea that

genres need to evolve but also it contributes to women’s popular culture. It also

makes a powerful anticolonial stance by building on Mexican storytelling

traditions regarding the supernatural. Feminist storytelling strengthens the novel's

main argument rooted in the ills of colonialism through carefully placed

metaphors. My thesis demonstrated that through her novel Mexican Gothic,

Moreno-Garcia subverted the gothic genre that has been dominated by the Anglo

literary canon since its conception.

74 
 
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