Honeymoon gothic

TL;DRAbstract

Although I have talked about literary honeymoons in the context of larger cultural imperatives toward transformation and conjugality, I have not yet looked closely at literary representations of the wedding journey on their own generic terms. Despite the prevalence of the Victorian marriage-plot novel and its traditional ending at or soon before the wedding, Victorian novels depict honeymoons with surprising frequency and intensity. I discovered, as I sifted through the (usually grim) honeymoons of the literary canon as well as through the mass of less canonical texts, that most of these depictions have in common three important elements: narrative reliance on honeymoons as extended opportunities for the revelation of character; the imbrication of that revelation in narratives of secrecy, deceit, and violence; and the location of that secrecy, deceit, and violence in the language and landscape of the gothic. Many novels and shorter pieces, in other words, use the honeymoon as a time an

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