Women
| Dracula |
Carter |
| ‘The Victorian fin de siècle was an age of tremendous change and it came with the New Woman. Mina a prime example of the New Woman.’ |
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| Quotes: |
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| *”a man’s brain and a woman’s heart”, |
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| ”want to keep up with Jonathan’s studies”* |
Carter - trip to Japan — backwards society entrenched patriarchy |
| Etiquette handbooks that “guide” women on how to behave and act |
Third wave Feminism (Carter) |
| Simone de Beauvoir - “You’re not a woman, you become one” |
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| William Acton (1871) - “The majority of women are not very much troubled with sexual feelings of any kind” |
Pornography in the service of women — Carter: unorthodox feminist |
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| Marquis de Sade - erotic writer that still is extremely controversial because of his shocking writings on sex |
Influence of Marquis de Sade - erotic writer, |
| Wrote books e.g. ‘The Sadeian Woman’ subject of de Sade |
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| — Justine - not rewarded for her virtuousness |
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| Bram Stoker - anti-sexual desire: |
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| *“The only emotion which in the long run harm are those arising from sexual impulses” |
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| (the Censorship of Fiction -In the appendix of later versions of the novel) |
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—* Lucy perhaps is an embodiment of this - overtly sexual nature (”voluptuous”, “Lucy’s eyes unclean and full of fire”)
[Emphasised in Coppola’s 1992 film adaptation].
Stoker makes even her death sexual with the phallic imagery of the stake | Carter’s anti-divorce, straight laced mother
- turned off the TV if a divorced actor came on the screen.
Was not allowed to dress herself or go to the bathroom alone.
Carter rebelled, wearing short skirts, fishnet stockings, saying offensive things to her mother.
Version of feminism - women’s lives shouldn’t be policed.
[*Edmund Gordon’s biography of Carter]
- MC in BC - sexual awakening
- MC in Tiger’s Bride - licking skin off* |
| Married Woman’s Property Act (1882) | Carter used marriage to escape her parents - dropped the idea of applying to Oxford which she pronounced an excellent idea to her teachers.
Carter: “I finally bumped into somebody who would... have sexual intercourse with me” - but Paul insisted that they get engaged first. |
| ‘Rigid social expectations had that women behaved as either virgins, wives or whores. Whilst Mina represents the first two, the apex of the Victorian woman, Lucy appears to be the latter. They become vivid dichotomies of each other.’
| Goes to Japan after her mother dies in 1969 - to finally escape both her parents |
Death
| Dracula |
The Bloody Chamber |
| Frankenstein - bringing back the dead |
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| Galvanism (the creator of the battery - electricity to reanimate) |
Love/sex and death (BC & LitHoL) - de Sade |
| Castle of Otranto - death by helmet |
Basis of BC is Perrault’s version of fairy tales (e.g. Bluebeard): |
| https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault03.html |
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- Role of fairy tales in society? Carter’s view that using fairytales for an a child’s upbringing might influence their behaviour in the future-coding. |
| Body snatching (for science/medical students) | le petite mort - originating from: Tess of the d'Urbervilles
”She felt the petite mort at this unexpectedly gruesome information, and left the solitary man behind her.” |
| Perceptions of the afterlife — superstition/religion vs science | Carter arguably sees death as an opportunity for freedom - personal liberation as a result of her mother’s death |
| Jack the Ripper | |
| Death and Mourning rituals in Victorian era | |
| Unearthing corpses whilst building sewers | |
Setting
| Dracula |
The Bloody Chamber |
| British imperialism - fear of the foreign |
Magical realism - (fairy tales in realistic settings) |
| Traditional gothic imagery - (mountains = sublime) |
Dickens’ Bleak House description |
| Traditional gothic tropes: large castle, abandoned church, desolate landscape |
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| Awe inspiring, but unnerving |
Dorian Gray - (Basil’s house, uses a lot of sensory imagery e.g. smell of the roses) & LitHoL |
| Spring-Heeled Jack - horror in London (not foreign/abroad) |
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Masculinity
| Dracula |
The Bloody Chamber |
| ’Physical rigour was needed for men to be fit enough to fight and defend the British Empire’, |
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Late Victorian ideals of manhood as war-ready are evident in the literature of the time - For example, Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If…’ (1895) | |
| Muscular Christianity - Men physically superior, women as burdened with Original Sin. | The male gaze — Jean-Ives is blind! |
| Clasping arms in Dracula (Between Arthur, Dr. Seaward, Quincey and Jonathan) - ‘"For dear Lucy's sake," I said as we clasped hands.’ | Pornography’s role of contributing to female objectification by men |
| Reaction to the New Woman (proto-feminist movement) | Original sin - Eve’s curiosity/heroine’s curiosity (BC & Erl King) |
| Stereotypes of Victorian Gentleman, represented by the everyman character of Jonathan Harker | Toxic masculinity and hypermasculinity further developed in The Bloody Chamber collection |
| Taboo of homosexuality | |
| Syphilis outbreak in London Brothels | |
| Act of emasculation: Dracula feeding of Jonathan & Arthur’s wives | |
Good & Evil
| Dracula |
The Bloody Chamber |
| Phrenology - shape of face determining criminality |
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| Lombroso - revival of phrenology in early 20th century. |
Political turmoil - Cold War, Vietnam |
| Morality determined by religion vs science |
British strikes in the 70s-Winter of Discontent |
| Foreign vs motherland |
Fears of the cold war - CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) — Founded 1957 |
| Crew of Light - Biblical comparing them |
‘When the Wind Blows’ - 1982 (fear of the end of the world): political & global turmoil |
Terror vs horror
- Definition:
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“Terror and Horror are so far opposite that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes and nearly annihilates them …And where lies the difference between horror and terror, but in the uncertainty and obscurity that accompany the first, respecting the dreading evil?” (Ann Radcliffe)
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According to Devendra Varma in The Gothic Flame (1966):
The difference between Terror and Horror is the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse.
| Dracula |
The Bloody Chamber |
| Spring-heeled Jack as a horrifying urban legend: can explore the Victorian fascination of it |
**I’d always been fond of Poe, and Hoffman [sic] – |
| Gothic tales**, cruel tales, tales of wonder, tales of terror, |
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| fabulous narratives that deal directly with the imagery |
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| of the unconscious – mirrors; the externalized self; forsaken castles; haunted forests; forbidden sexual objects. (Angela Carter, “Afterword,” Fireworks) |
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| Always remembering that the Gothic is a form of entertainment, so terror vs horror would be utilised for audiences to keep on reading |
Carter’s research for the Marquis de Sade informing the horror element of the Snow Child (necrophilia) and the imagery in The Bloody Chamber (impaling of his previous brides). Sexual violence of de Sade’s work. |
| Terror: Radcliffe’s novels on young heroines being trapped by a realistic villain (men after their property/inheritance) |
Terror/horror can be linked to other Gothic elements and how they provide terror/horror |
| Horror: Lewis’ novels on the shock factor of sex, violence and death with The Monk (1796) |
Carter uses (promiscuous) women — female power as a form of terror to society |
Traditions
| Dracula |
The Bloody Chamber |
| Dracula as metaphor for immigrants and xenophobia. |
Carter quote: “‘I found most of my raw material in the lumber room of the Western European imagination” |
| The folk legends and traditions Van Helsing draws upon suggest that the most effective weapons in combating supernatural evil are symbols of unearthly good. |
Fairytale traditions. Peach: ‘Carter, like many feminist critics, recognizes fairytales as a reactionary form that inscribed a misogynistic ideology’ |
| Traditional Victorian patriarchal society |
Carter’s mother/The Werewolf’s grandmother representing transgenerational control- traditions stifling modernity |
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Carter & Marriage - divorcing & trip to Japan |
Villains
| Dracula |
The Bloody Chamber |
| Fears of New Woman - sexual promiscuity (3 female vamps) |
Wealth & Power as represented by the Marquis de Sade |
| Marxist view of society - capitalism sucking the lifeblood of society |
Male villains (1973) - Roe vs Wade - legality of abortion in America |
| Vampires represent all types of villainy: xenophobic attitudes, the fear of syphilis |
Carter’s mother being the villain in her life, represented with the death of the grandmother in The Werewolf |
| White Chapel Murders: Jack the Ripper |
The Bloody Chamber contains 2 villains: the predatory patriarch and the absent father. Link with Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘The Second Sex’: "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” |
| Spring Heeled Jack - Victorian outlet for subdued desires & enjoyment of scandalous horror |
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| Combination of news & fiction: |
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| An animalistic aristocrat with claws for hands & red eyes, knocking on doors of innocent Victorian women - attempting to rip their clothes off. - All blamed on Henry de la Poer Beresford - a mischievous aristocrat |
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| Dracula is unevolved & animalistic — drawing from concepts of Darwinism & human evolution |
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Supernatural
| Dracula |
The Bloody Chamber |
| Carmilla & Poldori’s the Vampyre - precursor to Dracula |
Tarot Cards - Revival of Tarot cards in 1970s |
| Decline of religion - linked to Darwinism |
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| but an increase in certain supernatural beliefs. - Speaking to the dead, the Occult |
Fairy tale elements of writing - Carter’s study of fairy tales in University of Bristol |
| Creating a sense of ‘Magic realism’ - Gothic theme of transformation & metamorphosis |
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| The modern Catholic has more in common with the nineteenth century Protestant in viewing the supernatural elements of their faith as largely symbolic |
“By posing as part of the normal, everyday world, holding a fine party and feast for the family he hopes to marry into, Bluebeard succeeds in drawing his prey into his other |
| world: one filled with untold wealth and hidden horror. A broad, more generalised, sense of this is reproduced in ‘The Bloody Chamber’, but the specific idea of another reality |
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| – one that J.R.R. Tolkien refers to as faerie or the ‘perilous realm’ – is deliberately suppressed.” |
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| In Stoker’s day, a Catholic believed in transubstantiation as supernatural reality. The Mass was built around the concept that Christ mystically, not symbolically is physically present in the consecrated wine and bread and that the reception of which provides supernatural graces for the faithful to combat the very real forces of evil which assail the world. |
Decline of religious tradition in 20th Century, leading to lack of supernatural belief. |
| Renfield worshiping Dracula = Satanism |
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| Second as the supernaturally-obsessed, later possessed character of Renfield who spends the entire book certifiably insane and confined to a padded cell. |
the stories offer a subtext, and |
| that the supernatural events are depictions of real human situations |
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| Supernatural vs science (Decline of religion linked to Darwinism - Crew of light vs medieval powers of Drac) |
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| Fears of Victorian readership over supernatural |
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