Examines the psychology of fascism and its intrinsic relationship with the Gothic through the close study of propagandistic narratives by Spanish fascist women during the 1930s and 1940s.
With close readings of women's magazines, novels, and prison diaries, Gothic fear and monstrosity are for the first time showcased as fundamental tropes within the fascist political strategy of Francisco Franco's dictatorship. As both objects and agents of the fascist regime, the women in charge of the Spanish Women's Section collaborated with the Catholic Church on a series of magazine columns and educational campaigns, evoking a nightmare landscape rooted in the perceived evils of twentieth-century feminism and using Gothic motifs to persuade other women to join the fascist cause. By its study of these motifs, Fascist Female Gothic demonstrates the political power of the Gothic and warns against a return to the rhetoric of fear in the turbulent sociopolitical present.