Grad School Gothic: The Mysteries of Udolpho and the Academic #MeToo Movement

In the age of #MeToo, the Female Gothic rises from the critical crypt once again. Examining the educational narrative of Emily St. Aubert in Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, I argue that the Female Gothic has always vividly portrayed emotional invalidation – a term borrowed from cognitive psychologist Marsha Linehan – as a tool to silence righteous, yet naïve, voices and perpetuate imbalances of social power. As the recent #MeToo movement in academic culture demonstrates, the fourth-wave feminist critique of workplace discrimination targets not only sexual misconduct, but also intellectual misconduct. I propose that, often, discrimination in academic spaces uses the very same tool portrayed in the Female Gothic. In this paper, I look to the Female Gothic as well as to feminist pedagogical theory to offer solutions to the problem of emotional invalidation in the Grad School Gothic.