Gothic Heterotopias: Dracula's Physical Space of Illusion and The Dying Detective's Penumbra Space of Compensation

Abstract

This thesis studies embodiments of deviancy in two fin-de-siècle Gothic texts — Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Dying Detective — using Michel Foucault’s notions of heterotopias and madness. I have created the Asylum Space term to signal the Foucauldian notions utilized to study the deviant inhabitants in each text. Defining the Asylum Space forms in relation to embodied deviancy reveals how real-world spaces are critiqued in their textual reflections. In Dracula, illusions of deviancy’s cultivation in Dr. Seward’s asylum are exposed to form a Physical Space. In The Dying Detective, exposed illusions of deviancy’s management are compensated by Sherlock Holmes to form a Penumbra Space. This thesis presents two Asylum Space forms in in fin-de-siècle Gothic texts using the inhabitants as the analytic focal point; however, the Asylum Space components are not constrained by genre or time period. If a text exhibits the Asylum Space components, then my methodology can be applied to reveal obscured or unnoticed perspectives.