Sneak Peek: Isabel Cañas Podcast

Isabel Cañas: As a writer, one thing I really wanted to explore with Gothic as a genre was the idea of the big house and what it meant. Because so often I read historical fiction, I'm a big lover of romance and so I've read historical romances, you know, where people are like running around and there are these big houses and people have a ton of money throwing around in like Regency England, or Victorian England and one thing that just always gets under my skin, as I think as a reader, and it draws me out of the story, unfortunately, is where does the money come from? When you think of Jane Eyre, when you think of Wuthering Heights, when you think of Manderley in Rebecca, where does this money to build these houses come from? And the answer is exploitation and imperialism. So that is what I wanted to uncover with my stab at the Gothic. But you're right, the Gothic does absolutely create an incredibly fertile space for exploring issues of social hierarchy, but also issues of race and issues of where the money comes from.