“In the Clutches of a Vampire”: Gothic Romance, Pastiche, and the Persistence of Patriarchy in Anna Biller’s Bluebeard’s Castle

Abstract

Anna Biller’s 2023 novel Bluebeard’s Castle, published by the leftist press Verso, is a politically charged postmodern pastiche that mimics both the style and the content of Gothic romance to create an effective feminist commentary on a number of aspects of patriarchal society, with a central focus on the dynamics of rape and domestic abuse. Drawing in particularly overt ways on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938), Bluebeard’s Castle makes it clear that Judith is victimized by powerful forces beyond her control and not by her own ignorance and naïveté. Those forces include family and religion, in addition to film and literature. By setting her story in the present day, Biller is able to demonstrate that these forces have contributed to the considerable resilience of patriarchal ideas during a modern period in which many other ideas and attitudes have radically changed. By delivering her feminist message via a pastiche of the Gothic romance, Biller shows the critical potential of both the Gothic romance and pastiche itself, in opposition to Fredric Jameson’s dismissal of both the Gothic and postmodern pastiche as lacking critical force.