Gothic Fiction & The Female Writer at The Glee Cardiff

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Wed 10Dec
2025

Seed Talks: Gothic Fiction & The Female Writer (16+)The Glee Club Cardiff

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With Dr Sarah Gamble
Explore the dark tale of Bluebeard, its impact on Gothic fiction, and its modern reinventions. Followed by Q&A.

Advance price

  • £17.00 VIP Front Row
  • £12.00 Earlybird Show Entry
  • £12.00 Wheelchair Early Bird Show Entry
  • £15.00 Standard Show Entry
  • + £2.50 booking fee per ticket

Times

  • Doors open 6:30 PM
  • Last entry 7:00 PM

More info

  • Seating type Unallocated
  • Food available Yes
  • Minimum age 16+

Seed Talks: Gothic fiction & The Female Writer – Birmingham, 30th October 2025

When people hear the word ‘horror’, they might often think of violence, fear, and of women in peril. But the relationship between horror and women is far richer – and far more surprising – than many realise.

From the rise of the Gothic in the eighteenth century, women have been at the heart of the horror genre – not just as characters, but as creators. These chilling tales were often written by women, for women, and became a powerful space to explore their deepest fears, desires, and frustrations. Horror offered something radical: a genre that could challenge social norms, question power structures, and give voice to the unspoken.

In this fast-paced, four-century journey through literary history, we’ll uncover how women have shaped the horror genre – transforming haunted houses, ghosts, vampires, and monsters into metaphors for real-life struggles. From Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, from the forgotten women of Romantic poetry to the simmering rage in Jane Eyre, this talk examines how horror has become a vessel for feminist expression.

Dr Joan Passey is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Bristol where she specialises in the gothic, horror, and folklore in literature and culture. She has a Masters from the University of Oxford and a PhD from the University of Exeter, both focusing on the gothic and the supernatural. She is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker and regularly contributes to and presents for BBC Radio 3, and has spoken at Hay Festival and from the BBC Proms. She edits anthologies for the British Library Tales of the Weird series, with titles including Cornish Horrors: Tales from the Land’s End, Our Haunted Shores: Tales from the Coasts of the British Isles, and Phantoms of Kernow: Tales from Haunted Cornwall. Her monograph, Cornish Gothic, 1830-1913 (University of Wales Press, 2023) was the first to define a Cornish Gothic tradition in the nineteenth century, and she co-edited Shirley Jackson’s Dark Tales: Reconsidering the Short Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2024) with Robert Lloyd.

 

Seed Talks: Gothic fiction & The Female Writer – Cardiff, 10th December 2025

We all know the fairytales of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Little Red Riding Hood – but how many of us are familiar with the darker tale of Bluebeard, the notorious wife-killer?

First published in Charles Perrault’s Stories or Tales of Past Times (1697), Bluebeard has been retold and reinvented for centuries, leaving a lasting mark on literature and culture. In this talk, you’ll discover why this unsettling story has endured, and how it shaped some of the greatest works of Gothic fiction. From novels like Jane Eyre to Rebecca to the works of Angela Carter, Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Natalia Theodoridou, we’ll explore how Bluebeard continues to inspire stories that reflect anxieties about women’s lives, power, and freedom. Join us on a journey into the darker side of fairytales, and discover why Bluebeard remains one of its most unsettling and unforgettable tales.

Dr Sarah Gamble is Associate Professor in English Literature at Swansea University. She’s a specialist in contemporary Gothic fiction and women’s writing, and has a particular expertise in the life and work of Angela Carter, on whom she’s written two monographs: Angela Carter: Writing from the Front Line (Edinburgh University Press,1997), and Angela Carter: A Literary Life (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Most recently, she has co-edited (with Anna Watz of Uppsala University, Sweden) a two-volume collection of academic essays on Carter – Angela Carter’s Pasts: Allegories and Intertextualities, and Angela Carter’s Futures: Representations, Adaptations and Legacies (Bloomsbury, 2025). Her current research involves dark academia and vampires.