15 The Gothic Mirror CLAIRE KAHANE Within an imprisoning structure, a protagonist, typically a young woman whose mother has died, is compelled to seek out the center of a mystery, while vague and usually sexual threats to her person from some powerful male figure hover on the periphery of her conscious- ness. Following clues that pull her onward and inward—bloodstains, mysterious sounds—she penetrates the obscure recesses of a vast la- byrinthean space and discovers a secret room sealed off by its asso- ciation with death. In this dark, secret center of the Gothic structure, the boundaries of life and death themselves seem confused. Who died? Has there been a murder? Or merely a disappearance? This is the conventional plot of the Gothic novel, first popularized by Ann Rad- cliffe in the late eighteenth century and still being dispensed over the counter in drugstores across the country. Its confusions—its mislead- ing clues, postponements of discovery, excessive digressions—are in- scribed in the narrative structure itself. Looking more closely, however, one finds a curious thread running through this labyrinth. In The Mysteries of Udolpho, for example, although a corpse discovered in a hidden room turns out to be an This essay is a revised version of "Gothic Mirrors and Feminine Identity,' which first appeared in Centennial Review, 24, no. i (Winter 1980), 43-64. Reprinted by permission of Centennial Review. 334