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Gothic Themes - Coggle Diagram

- - - - TBC AO5
        
        Bluebeard is the story of a young girl’s sexual initiation in courtship and marriage. It involves her sexual awakening as well as Carter’s deconstruction, by means of Gothic excess, of a marriage based on dominance and submission. -– Rosemary Moore
        
        The Male Gaze - Laura Mulvey: ‘the act of depicting the world from a masculine, heterosexual point of view, presenting women as objects of male pleasure’ The Marquis employs the male gaze on many occasions in the Bloody Chamber, and in this way he acts like a monster, as it is inhumane to simply stare at a woman at length, as well as oppressive.
      - Carter intergrates her feminist ideas into her literature whereby in TBC the male protagonist often employs some animalistic characteristics. For example, in 'The Tiger's Bride', the male protagonist, who appears to be oppressing the female character throughout the story, eventually reveals himself as a lion. In this way, Carter is communicating her perception of men in the 1970s and their treatment of women in that it is disrespectful, oppressive and possessive. This is depicted whereby Carter selects a particularly dangerous animal (a lion) to portray the male protagonist in. Ultimately, Carter uses her dissatisfaction of men objectifying women with the male gaze and equates it to men behaving as dangerous animals.
        
        (see Carter Contextual Points document in Word)
    - - You sink your teeth into my throat and make me scream (The Erl King)
        
        She has no mouth with which to kiss, no hands with which to caress, only the fangs and talons of a beast of prey. (Lothl)
        
        In this moment there is no love it is simply her way of eating. She is designed to kill not to fall in love. No physical capacity to love and care for him. No chance in her life to not be a monster. Not able to experience love.
        
        Domination, man over the woman, Violent description. Active participant. Scream- uncertainty. Predator prey - vampire like. Described as monster
      - Corruption of innocence/ No genuine joy as she can't even tell whether he smiled/ animalistic
  - - - I must pursue and destroy the being to whom I gave existence' (Victor)
        
        "I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery"
        
        The monster feels remorse, he understands that he has killed innocent people and feels bad (he is experiencing human-like emotions). He is acting how Victor has treated him. He is now displaying shame and guilt for his creator, Victor: 'I have devoted my creator (...) to misery'
        
        Guilt/shame, Victor is blaming himself for creating the monster and he now feels a duty to kill the monster
      - Isolation, and the disconnection he feels from humanity and its society after he was rejected by it, he no longer wants to be a part of it. His rejection from this incited his hatred and desire to kill the humans that he killed.
  - - - George Levine notes ‘Frankenstein is a claustrophobic novel. It presents us not with the landscape of the world, but of a single mind, and its extraordinary power… resides in the exploration of that mind, and of the consequences of its choices and the mysteries of its impulses.’
        
        Moers implies that Shelley's loss of her child inspired her to write a book as sinister as Frankenstein. She argues that Shelley's guilt for her mother's death as well as her failure in being a mother is mirrored in Victor's guilt, in Frankenstein
- - - - This again employs the downfall of Victor from the start of Frankenstein to the finish (Victor implies that he has gone from a state of 'love and sympathy' to 'vice and hatred'). Indeed, violence has caused this downfall, in that the creature has murdered Victor's closest friends and family and he feels accountable, because he gave life to the creature.
    - - Victor feels such a strong feeling of hatred towards the monster that he had created, and has to be physically restrained in order not to attempt to murder him. Ultimately, this truly depicts how the monster has affected poor Victor's life, in that he expected to create a beautiful human being but in reality he has formed a murderous brute whom Victor now wants to put an end to; the monster has turned an intelligent man to a man who wants to kill.
- - - - Uncomfortable setting at the beginning and create an underlying dark/ grim tone
      - 'At first, such disappointment, to discover the roofs of all the cottages caved in and tall weeds thrusting through the piles of fallen tiles, shutters hanging disconsolately from their hinges, an entirely uninhabited place. (The Lady of The House of Love)
        
        She lives in the dark, which represents ambiguity and mystery.that light kills vampires because it exposes them as impossibilities. It is not only light but also enlightenment that they cannot withstand. The Countess's irrational existence gives her great power, but it condemns her to misery. She is trapped in an unasked-for and seemingly irrevocable destiny, just as her lark is trapped in its cage. She takes pleasure in caging the lark because she herself is caged.
        
        'I remember how, that night, I lay awake in the wagon-lit in a tender, delicious ecstasy of excitement, my burning cheek pressed against the impeccable linen of the pillow and the pounding of my heart mimicking that of the great pistons thrusting the train that bore me through the night.' (The bloody chamber)
        
        First paragraph of the whole book so it sets the tone. Slightly detached narrative perspective. Implication that its in the past- she survives- transitioned. Journey to the unknown.
    - - TBC A05
      - These texts were all written within the context of the French Revolution (1789-1799) which helped gothic novelists influence their writing as it was a way to come to terms with what they considered wonderful and astounding events through creating romantic and supernatural elements in their stories. These fantasies enabled expression to their anxieties and expresses their disbelief of the events that took place in France, with the consequences of their own society.
  - - - Victor self- isolates in Frankenstein through sequestering himself in his attic laboratory. At night, most of society is asleep, so this ostracises Victor from his fellow human.
    - - Frankenstein A05