Despotic women in early Gothic fiction - female tyrants of Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Dacre, Charlotte Brontë and Joseph Sheridan le Fanu - female villains in domestic Gothic - Fay Weldon's The Life and Loves of a She-Devil - Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride - evil and desire in the novels of Beryl Bainbridge and Zoë Heller.
Tomasz Fisiak is Assistant Professor in the Department of Canadian, Intermedial and Postcolonial Studies, Institute of English Studies, University of Lodz. The main subject of his research is Gothicism as a widely understood cultural phenomenon. He is a Language Editor of Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture.