This essay centers on the Gothic novel's status as an impassioned, and hence suspect, subliterary form. The traditional division of the Gothic by gender into two supposedly equal generic strands is somewhat misleading, since the majority of Gothic novels were written (as well as read) by women and since Gothic novels were feminized—disparaged in gender-specific ways—by a critical establishment outraged by both the passion and the popularity of the form. Because the debate over the Gothic also concerned the boundaries between high and low literature, the polemicists' use of gender clarifies how literary argumentation participated fully in larger cultural issues. Both the controversy surrounding the Gothic novel in the 1790s and the furor over prostitution in the 1840s focused on a potentially disruptive female passion, and understanding the connections between these debates sheds light on the evolution of Britain's literary and cultural identity and on the current dialogue over literary history.

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