Snake Lady as an Emphatic Monster: An Analysis of the Monster Figure in Vernon Lee’s Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady

This study examines Vernon Lee’s short story Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady (1896) within the aesthetic and thematic context of Gothic literature and the monster figure of British Gothic tradition. The study is structured on three main axes: (1) a feminist-psychoanalytic analysis of the theme of monstrosity and the female body as a Gothic figure of fear, (2) the function of space in Gothic aesthetics, and (3) contemporary reflections of the monster image and snake woman. In the first part, the figure of the Snake Lady is analysed through Barbara Creed’s concepts of “monstrous-feminine” and Julia Kristeva’s “abjection”. Oriana, an inversion of the femme fatale archetype, becomes a symbol not of fear but of wisdom and transformation. In the second part, spaces such as the Red Palace, Castle of the Sparkling Waters, and Alberic’s apartment are examined according to the Gothic aesthetic principle of “horror within beauty”. These spaces function as concrete extensions of the character’s inner world; stone, light, silence, and colour are means for emotional experience. The study argues that Lee distanced the Gothic from traditional dark imagery and redefined it along the axis of empathy, aesthetics, and melancholy. Thus, Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady transforms the female monster figure and the gothic space, becoming a precursor to modern feminist and Eco-gothic narratives.