The Collector by John Fowles

A dark and disturbing contemporary novel in which the protagonist, working class Pools winner, Clegg, uses his new found wealth and power to kidnap or 'collect' a beautiful upperclass girl, Miranda, and confine her within a windowless basement. The juxtaposing narratives of Clegg and Miranda explore the boundaries between men and women, between the middle and working class and between villain and victim.

Style/structure: prose, dual narrative, rich in intertextual allusions particularly to Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Themes: class conflict, entrapment, obsession, power, sex, culture

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Regarded as a tragicomedy, the story of the narrator Humbert Humbert's seduction of his teenage stepdaughter, Dolores, whom he nicknames Lolita, has become a seminal classic of English literature. Although farcical at times, Nabokov's portrayal of both Humbert and Lolita is complex and ambiguous and, as such, both characters have inspired both fierce critics and staunch defenders with some readers claiming that Humbert is the victim of a manipulative underage seductress while others just as vociferously argue that Lolita is the innocent victim of a dangerous predator.

Style/structure: unreliable narrator, literary style including word play and allusions, retrospective narrative

The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan

Set in Venice, McEwan’s novella focuses on the lives of Colin and Mary, a young married couple attempting to enjoy a romantic getaway. However after a chance encounter with the dark and sinister Robert, and his strange sexual appetite, their lives are changed forever.

Style/structure: prose, linear

Themes: lust, violence, patriarchy, gender

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann (1912)

When Aschenbach, a  famous writer in his fifties, visits Venice he spots a young boy holidaying with his family and becomes obsessed with the boy’s beauty.  When a cholera epidemic threatens the city, Aschenbach’s desire for the boy has tragic consequences. A meditation on youth and beauty, this novel is rich in classical allusions and dream imagery.

Style/structure:  text in translation,  classical allusions, third person, tragedy

Themes: obsession, passion, beauty, age

Othello by Shakespeare

The tale of the eponymous Othello, a black general who marries a white woman, and his subordinate officer Iago, perhaps the most evil villian in English literature. Othello's marriage challenges the prejudices and conventions of Renaissance society, allowing Iago to spin a complicated web of lies and deceptions that corrupts Othello and leads to tragedy.

Form/structure- Renaissance drama, tragedy

Themes- race, jealousy, obsession, patriarchy, forbidden love, unrequited love, manipulation, public/private

Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller

When married drama teacher Sheba embarks upon an affair with her fifteen year old pupil she confides in Barbara, a middle aged colleague who is driven by jealousy, loneliness and despair to commit a very public act of betrayal.

Style/structure: unreliable narrator

Themes: transgressive love, jealousy, betrayal, friendship, possessive love, obsession

Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood (1993)
Tony, Charis and Roz are three women united by their hatred of Zenia, the college friend who betrayed each of the women in turn. Using fairytale motifs, Atwood relates the tale of Zenia’s manoeuvrings through the flashbacks of each of the women, a device which highlights the extent to which character is constructed and the role that perception plays in storytelling. The title is an inverted allusion to the Grimm fairytale ‘The Robber Bridegroom’; the gender reversal of the villain reflects the modern setting and the themes of the novel, namely the relationships between women both supportive and destructive.

Style/structure: multinarrative, non-linear, flashback, allusive

Themes: jealousy, betrayal, story-telling, friendship

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (1938)

The unnamed narrator of this modernist novel is a young woman who after a very brief courtship in Venice marries the much older and wealthier suitor Max de Winter. They return to their marital home of Manderley only to find that their life together is overshadowed by the memory of his deceased first wife, the eponymous Rebecca. The novel is related retrospectively and the opening line ‘Last night I dreamt  I went to Manderley again’, one of the most famous in English literature, establishes the dream-like and foreboding atmosphere which is part Gothic Romance, part psychological thriller.

Style/structure: gothic, retrospective, pathetic fallacy

Themes: jealousy, marriage, power, the past

The Winter's Tale

The reunion of childhood friends Polixenes and Leontes is overshadowed by the latter's jealousy when he becomes convinced that his wife is unfaithful and that he is being cuckolded. Leontes' paranoia leads him to try his wife for treason and destroy his family; it is only through the second generation - through the love of Polixenes' son Florizel for Leontes' daughter Perdita - that the two men can be reconciled and husband and wife reunited.

Style/structure: 'problem play'

Themes: jealousy, obsession, cuckoldry, friendship, fate, prophecy

The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter (1967)

A coming-of-age novel which begins when the 15 year old protagonist Melanie wears her mother's wedding dress to explore the garden in moonlight. The next morning it transpires that her parents have been killed in a plane crash and she and her brother are forced to live with tyrannical uncle Philip, his victimised wife Aunt Margaret, and her brothers Francie and Finn. When Philip uses his life-sized puppet shows to control and intimdiate his niece, it is with Finn that she finds freedom and escape.

Style/structure: coming-of-age, allusive, magic realist

Themes: sexuality, incest, power, control, rape, fantasy, freedom

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (2007)

When her mother dies Mariam's father gives her in marriage to Rasheed, a man thirty years her senior. When Mariam fails to provide him with an heir, Rasheed becomes abusive and eventually takes a second wife, Laila. The narrative is divided between Mariam and Laila, depicting their experiences under the Taliban and at the hands of the increasingly cruel and despotic Rasheed.

Style/structure: dual narrative

Themes: marriage as a trap, patriarchy, friendship, loyalty, discrimination, endurance, true love

The Miller's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer

A section of The Canterbury Tales, this tale follows the Knight's Tale, a courtly romance based around a love triangle. The Miller's Tale also involves a love triangle but it takes the form of a fabliau. The Miller relates the tale of the carpenter, John, who marries the 18 year old Alison but then is so jealous of her that he keeps her 'in a cage'; however, the scholar Nicholas is able to trick John and seduce Alison but soon suffers revenge at the hands of Absalon, Alison's would-be lover in one of the most comic denouements of English literature.

Style/structure: poetry, fabliau, comedy, word play, farce

Themes: adultery, status, revenge, marriage as a trap

The Collector by John Fowles

A dark and disturbing contemporary novel in which the protagonist, working class lottery winner, Clegg, uses his new found wealth and power to kidnap or 'collect' a beautiful upperclass girl, Miranda, and confine her a windowless basement. The juxtaposing narratives of Clegg and Miranda explore the boundaries between men and women, between the middle and working class and between villain and victim.

Style/structure: prose, dual narrative, rich in intertextual allusions particularly to Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Themes: class conflict, entrapment, obsession, power, sex, culture

Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller

When married drama teacher Sheba embarks upon an affair with 15 year old pupil she confides in Barbara, a middle aged colleague who is driven by jealousy, loneliness and despair to commit a very public act of betrayal.

Style/structure: unreliable narrator

Themes: transgressive love, jealousy, betrayal, friendship, possessive love, obsession

A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams (1947)

Set in New Orleans towards the end of the 1940s Streetcar focuses on the violent and unpredictable relationship between the seemingly virtuous Blanche and her sister’s husband, the violent and domineering Stanley.

Style/structure: play, realism

Themes: mental illness, patriarchy, deception, lost love, lust, sex