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Gothic was not taken seriously because it was “perceived to be read by women” and therefore considered to be “inferior literary mode” in comparison to the “higher intellectual aspirations of the Romantic movement”
Believes people grew tired of Radcliffean terror
The epistolary genre allows for a “multiplicity of voices”
‘Dracula’ reflects the “real-life sociopolitical horrors” the Victorians were facing
Romanticism and John Polidori inveted the suave, aristocratic vampire - such as in ‘The Vampyre: A Tale’ (1819)
Castles reflect the “hypocrisy of the religious community” in ‘The Monk’ (1796)
In ‘Dracula’ the safety of the castle is an allusion, it’s description provides an “eerie foreshadowing” of what’s to come.
In ‘The Bloody Chamber’ and ‘Dracula’ the Damsel in Distress trope is reversed.
If locked doors reflect female sexual vulnerability then this applies to Jonathan Harker too.
In ‘The Bloody Chamber’ the castle is an example of “irresistible masculine power”
The emphasis placed on “pursuing new sensations” gave rise to the New Woman.
The New Woman was “a cultural phenomenon” - in literature she would address concerns such as feminism, women’s suffrage, pre-marital sex and pregnancy.
New Women were presented as a “sexual predator or as an over-sensitive intellectual”
Lucy is a New Woman, she is a “voluptuous, unnatural parody” and a “sexual decadent”
Mina is far more traditional, perhaps Stoker’s preference for women during this period.
Max Nordau’s ‘Degeneration’ gave rise to the fear of de-evolution.
Dracula is presented as “the Anti-Christ”, the opposite of English protestant values, who’s redemption is a “perverted, predatory form of the afterlife”.
Dracula represents the past, and is ultimately defeated by modernity.
Stoker’s epistolary format goes “against the oral culture of the vampire”.
There also appears to be anti-individualism, the characters only defeat Dracula by working together.
The threat of returning to an earlier age is never fully eradicated.
Sexual desire is a form of transgression in ‘Dracula’
Female sexuality may have been more terrifying to a 19th century audience than vampires - Dracula’s brides are sexually liberated.
Dracula creates a sense of sexual desire in others.
Castles are a place of transgression and otherness.
Jonathan’s journal acts as a confession, and Mina acts as a Priest by reading it.
‘The Bloody Chamber’ is in reference to the mother’s womb and the maternal bond between mother and child.
Transgression leads to a metamorphosis through sexual awakening, from girlhood to womanhood.
Female curiosity in often punished.
Carter wants to change fairy stories in order to empower young women and girls.
The Countess is a sympathetic character whose condition has been forced upon her by her ancestors.
The Countess wishes to form connections with others but her animalistic, vampiric instincts prevent her from doing so.
The Countess and the caged lark reflect one another, she is entrapped in the castle and by her condition.
The expectation that men are sexually interested in her feeds her desire to live an “imitation of life”.
The soldier views her with tenderness and pity, wanting to protect her rather than take advantage of her.
The young man shows maternal instincts towards her.
The Countess in death is free from the life she loathed and fully human.
It reinforces the limited options women have in Gothic literature.
The horror of the story is the knowledge that the soldier will be sent off the the front lines of the war and may not survive.
There was a “geographical relocation” to the Gothic, from the isolated, foreign castles in Walpole, Radcliffe and Lewis to the English countryside of the Brontë’s in the early 19th century.
Similarly, the “urban-dwelling nineteenth century British readership” gave rise to Dickens and Reynold.
London as the largest and oldest urban space gave rise to plenty of obscurity.
Poor living conditions, due to pollution and lack of sanitation, led to disease and homelessness.
Crimes thrived out of necessity, such as theft, opium trafficking and fraud.
20,000 thieves and 80,000 prostitutes.
Even “civilised” societies had an “uncivilised” side.
Angela Carter was “the baby of her family” and therfore treated like “a doll” by her mother.
She married Paul Carter, she wanted to salvage this marriage but only built “a better and stronger cage for myself”.
The Magic Toyshop was written whilst she was married, Phillip supposedly represents an elevated version of Paul.
She worked as a hostess in Japan, viewing it as a place of “anarchy and desire” in the 1970s.
‘The Sadeian Woman’ is nonfiction focused on De Sade about female sexuality and agency.
‘The Bloody Chamber Collection’ is written in the voice of her grandmother
‘A Night at the Circus’
