I'm particularly interested in how Radcliffe portrays/creates these inverted gender roles between Ellena and Vivaldi. That is, the role reversals seems rather strange--considering the trope of gothic genre (with regards to gender dynamics) typically quarantines (within the domestic sphere) the female protagonist to one of ridiculous and fleeting behaviors, often times naive or ignorant, always sentimental, fragile and chaste; whereas the male protagonist and/or antagonist embodies the public sphere, overtly patriarchal and, generally, imperialistic. In The Italian, however, Vivaldi instantaneously becomes infatuated with Ellena when he hears her voice (he doesn't even need to see her face--that's how "in love" Vivaldi appears to be, from the beginning); Ellena, though, thinks practically--disallowing herself to give over to whimsical and fleeting emotions.
Additionally, I wonder about at what point in the gothic genre did this dynamic shift into the more atypical gender roles (e.g., the ones found in Austen's Northanger Abbey or Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House). In considering Coleridge's Christabel, Byron's Manfred, and even Bram Stoker's Dracula, the men, for the most part, inhabit a very particular role: the patriarch and imperialist; but the woman tend to, in their delusions and repressed psyches, find themselves a type of liminal sphere, met with some type of ominous, impending doom--perhaps some form of punishment for trasngressive behavior(s). I'd like to research the settings/sites of these texts, as well--see how they function intertextually in regards to publication dates, spheres/sites, and author gender.
The Italian, as a gothic text, capitalizes on the preconceived notions of Italy, particularly Napoli, as a site of rough terrain, its landscape instabilities and seemingly apocryphal ruins--all of which perfectly fit tropes of the gothic setting.
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