Hangsaman subverts the traditional campus novel, transforming the setting of higher education from a place of intellectual and social growth into a landscape of psychological horror. In doing so, the novel draws heavily on the traditions of the Female Gothic and is a foundational text for the modern subgenre of dark academia. 

The term “Female Gothic” was coined in 1977 by Ellen Moers in her critical work Literary Women, where she discussed the impact of authors such as Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, and Charlotte Brontë in leveraging the emerging Gothic tradition to comment on the social and physiological anxieties of women, who were the typical readers of novels in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Moers cites Radcliffe’s novel The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) as one of the preeminent Gothic novels, tracing its influence on Jane Austen’s more satirical take on Gothic literature, Northanger Abbey, completed in 1799 and published shortly after Austen’s death in 1817. Both stories prominently feature female protagonists who grapple with atmospheres of terror and dread in isolated settings that reflect their internal states. Moers also interprets Shelley’s Frankenstein as a woman’s myth on the trauma that follows childbirth, resonating with Shelley’s perspective and experiences with pregnancy. Though Frankenstein’s central characters are male, the allegory of the novel’s horror is designed to be recognizable to female readers who understand Shelley’s anxieties. In this way, the Female Gothic can be broadened beyond the narrative pattern that Radcliffe’s novel establishes, embedding the focus of the Female Gothic subgenre into the roots of the larger tradition to which it belongs. Jackson’s novel replaces the Gothic castle with an exclusive liberal arts college, but the core elements remain: Natalie Waite is a vulnerable heroine trapped by social and familial pressures, and her psychological distress manifests in a blurred reality that includes an ambiguously imaginary companion, Tony. This focus on internalized terror and the ambiguity between psychological crisis and the supernatural is a hallmark of the genre. 

Decades later, Hangsaman’s blend of an elite academic setting with Gothic dread would become central to Dark Academia. This subgenre, popularized by works like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (1992), explores themes of intellectual obsession, classism, and moral ambiguity within cloistered university environments. By depicting Natalie’s college as a place of cruel social hierarchies and existential dread rather than enlightenment, Jackson anticipates Dark Academia’s critique of the institutional pursuit of knowledge, positioning the campus itself as a source of psychological danger.