Illness in literature can be approached by writers and readers alike with a certain cautiousness. Accounts of illnesses are considered as stories of a deeply personal journey for the writer, filled with pain and remorse that the readers then have the privilege of viewing.
Intro: Deanna Koretsky (Spelman College) and Joel Pace (University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire)
The Gothic is deeply concerned with the relationships between the present and the past and with family histories. Robert Mighall has argued that the Gothic inhabits ‘the historical past’ or else ‘identifies ‘pastness’ in the present, honing in on struggles ‘to exorcise the ghosts of the past’; struggles often complicated or stymied by problematic inheritances capable of destroying otherwise ‘respectable families.’1
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