“Corridors of Repression:” Gothic Monsters and their Unearthing of Societal Anxieties
“Corridors of Repression:” Gothic Monsters
and their Unearthing of Societal Anxieties
While Charles E. Prescott and Grace A.
Giorgio’s essay “Vampiric Affinities: Mina Harker and the Paradox of Femininity
in Bram Stoker’s Dracula” mainly discusses the female identity in Bram
Stoker’s Dracula it also addresses the ways in which the vampire
functions as a gothic character, one whose cultural meaning has shifted over decades.
Prescott and Giorgio analyze scenes from the novel and argue that Mina’s perverse
interest in Dracula coincides with the changing ideas about female independence
in the 19th century. As the “long-standing conception of proper femininity
comes under suspicious attack” not only by the vampiric Dracula but by the new independent
woman, those who believed in old traditions feared this degree of female agency
and viewed it as monstrous (487). While the Gothic novel may seem to be about
the supernatural, it is not necessarily “divorced from the political” (498). As
Teresa Mangum argues the “anxieties that animate [Gothic novels] are
inextricably bound up with [are] the most deeply rooted dilemmas facing late
Victorian culture” (qtd. in Prescott and Giorgio 487). For example, in the case
of Dracula, Count Dracula personifies the social anxieties of the time and
“terrorize[s]” the Victorian ideals about womanhood.
Gothic works often attempt to address hidden or secretive desires of a group or person and turn those “non-normative” desires into something haunting. The “gothic takes us on a tour through the labyrinthine corridors of repression, giv[ing] us glimpses of the skeletons of dead desires and mak[ing] them move again” (qtd. in Prescott and Giorgio 506). According to David Punter, Gothic “writers work‒‒consciously or unconsciously‒‒on the fringe of the acceptable, for it is on this borderland that fear resides” (qtd. in Prescott and Giorgio 506). Gothic writers perhaps use creatures such as vampires and ghosts to symbolize abstract fears such as homosexuality or women’s rights, because these too once seemed like unimaginable things. Also, these creatures tend to hunt or prey on their victims in a way that mimics the unrelenting force of societal change. On the other hand, the creatures’ magnetic qualities could show how that same change could be deeply appealing. Monsters “are…infinitely attractive” (506). They can be physically attractive or their place in the work could consume another character’s existence making them become obsessed with this being.
The Gothic’s transgressive qualities can
be debated. As Prescott and Giorgio argue, “literalizing the threat that the
human who transgresses will indeed be treated as a monster as well” can
actually encourage normativity (507). The Gothic narrative “encourage[s] both consciously
and subconsciously to enact the privileged scripts of normative identity as the
only thinkable mode of being, the subject must always exist precariously close
to falling into the realm of the abject, or, in more Gothic terms, the monstrous”
(507). For example, in vampire fiction, the victim quite literally becomes a monster
and is forever bonded with monstrous blood. Prescott and Giorgio argue that the
Gothic narrative “demands closure,” but its closure “fail[s] to contain the transgressions
the story has put into play” (507). But while one can view the “closure” that comes
at the end of the work as a curbing of progressive ideals, others might cling
to the Gothic’s transgressive qualities, seeing the medium as subversive.
Works Cited
Prescott, Charles E., and Grace A.
Giorgio. “Vampiric Affinities: Mina Harker and the Paradox of Femininity in
Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 33, no. 2, Sept.
2005, pp. 487–515.
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