Ah yes... that damsel in distress (or is she?). The idea of the gothic heroine is one which is often curiously imprecise. If you ask people about it, you will tend to get the response that she is a classic fainting heroine, much given to shrieks and vulnerability. However, if you actually look aty gothic novels, you will often find that the heroines have a fair amount of fiestiness about them.
As you might expect from a genre aimed often at women, gothic heroines display more appealing characters than those of the constant victim. One of the earliest sub-genres of the gothic was what has become known as the Female Gothic. This often aimed to socialize and educate its female readers and was usually morally conservative, tending to discuss ideas about how women 'should' behave. Heroines were often lavishly rewarded for obedience, chastity and submission. However, the female gothic was sometimes used to criticise patriarchal society, and reinforce ideas of female independence--'classic' gothic heroines were often surprisingly capable.
The gothic often investigates gender differences and questions issues of oppression, as you will know from your set texts. Even in Paradise Lost, Sin talks about how gender (or apparent gender!) affects her treatment.
In Macbeth, Lady Macbeth foregrounds the whole issue of what a woman is actually able to do, or should be able to do, and connects it to the morality of men--is it the same, or different?
In Dracula the women, Lucy and Mina, demonstrate not only alarming (for the men) sexuality, but also considerable resolve and independence in asserting some measure of control over their own fate. I always like the comment about how a woman should be able to marry three men at once--is it referencing polygamy or male unfaithfulness, or a comment on female indecisiveness? Might it be possible to see the latent desires of Lucy becoming evident in her transformation, her 'voluptuousness', like that of the vampiresses, simply a way of talking about the disturbing ideas of female sexuality for the Victorian reader? Once you start thinking about this, then the use of the stake through the heart itself becomes something very easily processed in symbolic terms--as Carter realised when she used the 'impaled' image in 'The Bloody Chamber' itself.
In Wuthering Heights, you have the exaggeratedly female in Isabella, and the exaggeratedly male Heathcliff, with their counterparts in the feminised Edgar Linton and the 'masculine' (in terms of freedom and assertion) Cathy (remember how at six she can ride any horse in the stables?) In The Bloody Chamber of course, the ideas and stereotypes of masculinity and femininity are constantly explored. Gothic heroines often have slightly exaggerated features of femininity (eg swooning) so as to heighten this division--and to create a more dramatic effect when they finally gain courage.
A 'classically' gothic heroine will generally start off under the power of men in some respect, often with a villanous guardian who is trying to control her marriage. In symbolic terms, it is interesting how this oppressor is female in a novel such as Jane Eyre, but then becomes male (as Mrs Reed is replaced by the sinister Mr Brocklehurst). Female Gothic works usually include a female protagonist who is pursued and persecuted by a villainous patriarchal figure in unfamiliar settings and terrifying landscape, something that is very easily read in symbolic terms (remember your symbolic stories?)
Despite all the horror and excitement, the female gothic often avoids the more extreme scenes (such as the rape in The Monk, and it often introduces the idea of 'the supernatural explained', where the apparently supernatural happenings are discovered to be fairly natural--perhaps a way of discussing the irrationality of female fears? It might be interesting to link this trope, for instance, to Lady Macbeth's rationalisation of Macbeth's visions: 'this is the air-drawn dagger/ That you said led you to Duncan' (of course she compares his fears literally to a woman's 'fits and starts', through the comparision of a story 'told by a grandam'--a literal old-wives' tale.
Finally, as a reward for reading so far. Here's a gorgeous representation of Satan, sin and death in lego. How exciting is that????!!!
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