Contextual Factorisation for the Gothic Comparative

Historical and literary contexts for TBC and Dracula

The structure/ narrative of Dracula

Fin-de-siecle Victorian text written in quasi-epistolary form - verisimilitude

Plot of The Vampyre (1719) by John Polidori

Seduction, murder and moral transgression, with the vampire originating from a high social rank, breaking with the folkloric tradition that linked vampires to the peasant class.

Dracula’s Gothic characteristics

Dracula employs stereotypically ‘Gothic’ characters and settings, including the damsel in distress, villainous men, ruined castles, imprisonment and supernatural occurrences.

Dracula and reverse=colonisation

The close of the century was a time of anxiety about the decline of Britain’s global influence amid unrest in some colonies, and concerns about the power of the Empire in light of rival nations. The Count symbolises an external threat attacking British citizens in a late nineteenth-century commentary on what could happen if the ‘civilised’ British coloniser were to be colonised by ‘primitive’ forces.

Vampire narratives pre-Stoker

Carmilla, Vlad the Impaler

Fin-de-siecle views of women

The New Woman vs Patmore Angel of the House and fear of female sexuality and degeneration

Fin de siecle period

Point of cultural and social transformation with their own anxieties.

Immigration and reverse colonisation from the East

Fear of the outsider due to the increasing immigration which brought unfamiliar races and cultures into Britain which increased prejudices against minority groups; the context of antisemitism and the blood libel.

Fin de siecle fears relating to the status of science alongside the decline of religion

The nature and vulnerabilities of the human psyche. Scientific developments in both technology and medicine.

Technological advancement

New and emerging technologies due to the advancement of Industrial Britain.

Freud and the unconscious

In 1895, Freud began publishing his theories of sexuality and the unconscious which suggested that the human mind was a dark place.

Victorian society and homosexuality

1895 - Wide was prosecuted for homosexuality. Fears/ blurring of gender roles in the text perhaps serve as a reflection of this.

Conflict

Focus of good vs evil and the good (the establishment) overcoming the evil (the other).

Narrative/ structure of TBC

20th Century postmodern story collection with recurring motifs, symbols and themes

2nd Wave feminism

Embracing ideas related to change and transformation as it is liberating for both men and women.

Female freedom

The impact patriarchal society has on the limits of female freedom linked to ideas of marriage and hereditary power - marital rape was made illegal in 1991.

Pornography

In 1979, Carter also published the Sadeian Woman - context of the Marquis de Sade, the characters of Juliette and Justine and the active/passive roles for women.

The fairy tale

Taking the narrative frameworks of the 18th and 19th Century and experimenting with their form and structure to create a modern framework to address modern issues and extract “the latent content”.

Diversity

Begins to embrace diversity as it draws upon fairytales from a wide collection of nationalities - although, this is problematised by the heteronormative nature of the couplings (Patricia Duncker).

Post-modern literary structure

Fragmented stories, recurring images and motifs. Elements of l’ectriture feminine were used to reclaim patriarchal narrative structures and assert a female voice within literature.