As English family law underwent this historical revolution, the last thirty years of English literature saw the revival of Gothic fiction with the family as a recurrent topic of representation in novels by writers such as Patrick McGrath, Angela Carter, Pat Barker, Lesley Glaister, Julie Myerson, Susan Hill, Ian McEwan, and Ruth Rendell. Critics such as Gilbert and Gubar (1979), Fleenor (1983), Ellis (1989), Milbank (1993), Kilgour (1995), Miles (1995), and Becker (1999) have all argued that the patriarchal family is a Gothic archetype or a "myth" (Williams 1995) that emerged in 18th century novels such as The Castle of Otranto and that recurs throughout the Gothic tradition. Furthermore, law constitutes another major topic in Gothic studies. Punter (1998) has demonstrated that the Gothic tradition is characterized by legal motifs such as the attorney, the prison, and the trial. Law also acts as a means of establishing boundaries which Gothic narratives proceed to blur while revealing the search for power at the heart of the legal system (Chaplin 2003). Moran argues that criminal law tends to associate the body and male homosexuality with the grotesque and the monstrous which can be identified as Gothic themes (2001).