1. AQA LITB3 Elements of the Gothic: Essay Plans

2. ‘There is more horror than terror in Carter’s treatment of the Gothic’ Consider this view in the light of at least two stories from ‘The Bloody Chamber’

3.  Terror  the feeling of dread that precedes the horrifying experience  suspense creates terror  characterised by obscurity and indeterminacy  a source of the sublime  Horror  the feeling of revulsion after a frightening event  more related to being shocked or scared

4. The Bloody Chamber – Terror  foreshadowing of heroine’s death  ‘the necklace that prefigures your end’  heroine‘s fear of her husband’s return  all build up suspense and increase terror  suspense when heroine is about to unlock the bloody chamber – no light down the corridor, Marquis calls it his ‘enfer’ = French for Hell  metaphors of Marquis as a beast and as God invoke terror in the reader as he is very powerful, dominant Gothic male  ‘All the better to see you’ – perverse imitation of childhood fears  terror

5. The Bloody Chamber – Horror  ‘instruments of mutilation’ are displayed grandly  funeral lilies create a parallel with bridal chamber  makes more of an impact on the reader?  ‘walls gleamed...as if they were sweating with fright’  horror found in the bloody chamber – same for all stories?  much less horror than terror, but still very gruesome, Gothic, scary

6. The Lady of The House of Love – Terror  Almost no horror  Countess’s thoughts in capitals – ‘Now you are at the place of annihilation’, ‘Fee fie fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman’ – increases terror and suspense  Tales of Countess’s hunger that ‘always overcomes her’ increase sympathy for the soldier  Story seen through the eyes of the Countess – French words dropped into narrative: ‘chinoiserie escritoire’

7. Conclusion  Carter uses horror to shock and scare her audience  However, it is her use of terror that appeals to the reader’s intellect, creating suspense and fear – typical of Gothic novels  Terror created by foreshadowing and language  Terror is more important and more prominent in Carter’s stories and this makes them fit in so well with the Gothic genre

8. What have you found striking about Carter’s presentation of character? Discuss this, using two stories from ‘The Bloody Chamber’

9. Transformations  Almost all of Carter’s characters are different people at the end of her stories  Form of a short story makes these transformations more significant  Heroine is nearly always stronger, male is nearly always weaker  Human  beasts/beasts  humans both highlight the animalistic nature of humans: ‘she showed us what we could have been’ (WA)  Show supernatural elements of story - Gothic

10. Fairy Tales  Carter aimed to extract the ‘latent content’ of fairytales  Heroines sexualised e.g. Red Riding Hood, Snow White is raped  Keeps animals as characters e.g. Puss in Boots  Monsters/villains have more than one side e.g. Lady of the House of Love, less ‘black and white’ than fairytales  Much fewer knights in shining armour – men seem to need help/be villains

11. Gender  Fairy tales and Gothic genre: women weak, men strong  Role reversal: Courtship of Mr Lyon (‘as if, curious reversal, she frightened him’)  Carter’s Gothic reinterpretations outweighed by her feminist views – females are strong – not characteristic of Gothic literature or fairytales  Heroines evoke sympathy from the readers – even ‘villains’ e.g. Lady of the House of Love

12. How is Gothic language and imagery used to develop themes and characters in ‘Dr Faustus’?

13. Language  Faustus begins to use prose in the last scene – highlights Faustus’s demise  Lots of punctuation shows his blind terror and panic at the end of the play – typically Gothic, suspense, fear  Classical references – Icarus’s ‘waxen wings’ – tell audience Faustus is going to fail, also Achilles’ fatal flaw – typically Gothic, looking back to the past  Religious – deliberately blasphemous e.g. ‘necromantic books are Heavenly’  Spells are in Latin – language of the educated, Renaissance, Gothic

14. Imagery  Blood  Faustus’s blood congeals  Old man refers to redemptive power of blood of Christ  Faustus sees Christ’s blood running across the sky on his last night  ‘Stab thine arm courageously’  ‘With my proper blood, I assure my soul to be great Lucifer’s’  Supernatural/religion  Nothing significant is accomplished through magic  God is most powerful – doesn’t save Faustus  Good and Evil angels

15. Themes and Characters  Medieval language highlights theme of ‘conflict between Medieval and Renaissance values’  Imagery of Hell as ‘under the Heavens’ and using trap door – Medieval imagery  Creates conflict as Mephistopheles says ‘this is hell, nor am I out of it’  Faustus uses eloquent, oratorical, resonant language – highlights his downfall  Lots of repeated words ‘damned’, ‘desire’, ‘Hell’ – Gothic words that highlight themes of the play

16. Explore the central features of the Gothic protagonists in Christopher Marlowe’s ‘Dr Faustus’

17. Faustus  Faustus uses eloquent, oratorical, resonant language – highlights his downfall  Classical reference of Icarus by Chorus in the prologue – audience know Faustus is going to fail (‘waxen wings did mount above his reach’)  Reference to Achilles – fatal flaw = ambition/pride  Faustus is a tragic hero – higher than ordinary people, has a flaw  High and low scenes becomes less different as the play goes on

18. Faustus  Immoral – knows the consequences of his actions (‘this night I’ll conjure, though I’ll die therefore’)  Speaks about himself in the third person in his soliloquies – vanity? Or distancing himself from his fate?  Deliberately blasphemous – uses religious words incorrectly: ‘necromantic books are heavenly’  He rejects the ancient authorities which symbolises his break with the Medieval world – Gothic, looking back to the past

19. Mephistopheles  Two sides to his character  Tries to stop Faustus selling his soul, also tells Faustus of the horrors of Hell: ‘this is hell nor am I out of it’  Doesn’t want Faustus to make the mistakes he did  However, says devils ‘fly in hope to get his glorious soul’  Lover to Faustus?  Mephistopheles gives Faustus a devil dressed as a woman for a wife  Marlowe apparently homosexual  Highly shocking to Jacobean audience

20. Explore the ways in which Stoker uses Gothic settings to contribute to the Gothic effects of ‘Dracula’

21. Transylvania  Isolation  ‘One of the wildest and least known portions of Europe’, can’t be found on ‘any map’  Rural setting – another Gothic feature of looking back to the past  Jonathan feels alienated due to different language spoken but finds his German ‘very useful’  Contrasting views  Oppressive setting of the castle contrasts with his experiences of the country – pleasant people, pleasant food

22. Transylvania  Entrapment  ‘the castle is veritable prison’  connotations of prison include isolation, entrapment etc  ‘Vast ruined castle’  typically Gothic, huge doors etc  Night time  Most of the action takes place at night, when Dracula is awake  The sense of otherness is enhanced by the pathetic fallacy of the ‘rolling clouds’  Introduces the duality of light/dark that runs through novel – Crew of Light etc.

23. London  Foreign/isolating for Dracula  Needs Transylvanian soil to rest  More familiar to Victorian audience – likely to have never been to Transylvania  Stoker had never been to Transylvania  Dracula is more powerful here  Modern technology cannot protect Londoners due to their lack of superstition  Renfield’s cell  Isolated setting – representing his mental isolation  Left in a glittering pool of blood – motif of blood repeated, iconic of Gothic literature

24. Whitby  Abbey  Introduces religious imagery into the novel  Mr Swales says the graveyard is damned  Abbey no longer in use – represents fallen religion? Lucy’s Tomb Paralleled with Jesus Christ’s empty tomb Turning Christianity on its head, same with drinking blood etc Criticising the Church? However, Bram Stoker and his family were believed to be Christians, so unlikely

25. How is the past used as a Gothic feature in ‘Dr Faustus’?

26. Classical References  Looking back to the past  Greek mythology – an alternative to the Christian God?  Icarus  Mentioned by Chorus in prologue  The audience know Faustus is going to fail, so sympathise with Faustus  ‘His waxen wings did mount above his reach’  Achilles  Heel is his weakness – highlights Faustus’ fatal flaw of ambition/pride  Faustus referred to as ‘hapless Semele’  Semele was Jupiter’s female lover who was burnt to ashes

27. Medieval Ideology  Hell  Hell as a physical place  ‘Under the heavens’ – Mephistopheles  Trap door in an Elizabethan stage would be used to show the physical presence of Hell  Omnibenevolent God  Does God reject Faustus?  Good Angel: ‘never too late if Faustus can repent’  But he does repent at the end – God does not save him  Goes against traditional views of God  Marlowe’s use of Latin

28. Form  Morality play  Play involving the seven deadly sins  Faustus commits all of them  Sins are also personified  Conflict between good and evil running throughout the play – particularly clear in the Good and Evil angels  Symbolism often featured in morality plays  Good Angel and Evil angel symbolise Faustus’s internal struggle  Old Man symbolises the devout Christian soul  Not completely a morality play – also has elements of a tragedy

29. Religion is central to the readings of Gothic texts. How far do you agree with this statement?

30. Dracula  ‘We go out as the old knights of the Cross’ - Van Helsing refers to the Crusades, spreading Christianity  Christianity is often the antidote to vampirism e.g. Holy wafer, crucifixes  The crucifix given to Jonathan by the peasant gives him ‘comfort and strength’  Mina feels God has deserted her when she is burned by the Holy wafer even though Van Helsing describes her as ‘one of God’s women’

31. Dracula  Lucy is paralleled with Jesus – her tomb is found empty, she rises again  However, she is returned to ‘God’s own dead’ in her second death  Quincey is also paralleled with Jesus as he dies for the greater good of mankind  Dracula is seen as a Satanic figure – ‘red light of triumph in his eyes’, also called ‘devil’  Compared to a ‘lizard’ – reptilian – link to Satan?

32. Dracula  Critic Christopher Craft named Van Helsing’s team the ‘Crew of Light’  Lots of light/dark imagery in the novel  Also introduces duality – theme of Gothic literature  Mina wears a white nightdress and Dracula wears black when she receives her ‘baptism of blood’ – contrasting light/dark  ‘Baptism of blood’ –

33. Dracula  Drinking blood – perverse reinterpretation of transubstantiation, drinking actual blood = eternal life but no spiritual life  ‘What manner of man is this?’ – Jonathan says this about Dracula, it is a direct quote from King James Bible about Jesus calming the storm  Does Stoker criticise Christianity? Probably not, perhaps a criticism of Catholicism as he was brought up in a Protestant family

34. Dr Faustus  Deliberate blasphemy in the play e.g. ‘necromantic books are heavenly’  The Old Man represents the devout Christian soul and the redemptive power of the blood of Christ  The Good Angel and the Evil Angel represent Faustus’s internal conflict  The Pope is portrayed as an old fool  Nothing of significance is achieved through magic – shows God is the most powerful  New idea of a God that is not omnibenevolent – does not save Faustus

35. Dr Faustus  Eternal damnation would be seen as more shocking to a Jacobean audience – much more religious than we are now  Faustus rejects religion as he wants ‘to practise more than heavenly power permits’  Faustus expresses atheistic beliefs: ‘I think hell’s a fable’  He also considers suicide which would be considered the ultimate sin to a Jacobean audience and the sin which God can never forgive

36. Dr Faustus  Message of the play upholds the Protestant belief: people damn themselves through their own actions but they can repent  ‘Never too late if Faustus can repent’ – Good Angel  Different ideas of Hell explored  Physical place – Medieval idea, trap door in an Elizabethan stage would be used to physically represent Hell  Separation from God’s love – ‘this is hell nor am I out of it’  Refers to ‘thief upon the Cross’

37. The Bloody Chamber  The Bloody Chamber  Novelette  ‘My little nun has found the prayer books’ – when heroine finds the pornography, mocking Christianity, making it sexual, shows Marquis’ lack of religion, he is mocking her virginity  ‘Subterranean privacy’, ‘enfer’ = Hell – connotations of Hell increase the terror and suspense as the heroine locates the bloody chamber, creates a parallel between Hell and the bloody chamber  ‘Like the trumpets of the angels of death’ – the funeral lilies symbolise death, connotations of angels contrast with connotations of death OR is she talking about devils?

38. The Bloody Chamber  The Bloody Chamber  ‘Lights! More lights!’ – introduces contrast between light and dark  Gothic feature of duality, Jesus as the light of the world, bloody chamber in an area of the castle with no electricity  ‘The eye of God – his eye’ – heroine thinks the Marquis is as powerful as God - typical dominant male in Gothic literature  Marquis is also likened to a lion – brave God? Criticising God? – God created everything, God created the lion

39. The Bloody Chamber  The Company of Wolves  Lengthy introduction highlights importance of supersitions to the locals  Undermining religion  ‘canticles of the wolves’  ‘hurl your Bible at him’  Werewolf’s birthday on Christmas day  ‘Call on Christ...but it won’t do you any good’  Not mocking religion?  ‘You must run as if the devil were after you’  The Erl King  Plants: ‘the Devil spits on them at Michaelmas’

40. To what extent do the male protagonists in the texts you have studied conform to the stereotype of the Gothic male?

41. The Bloody Chamber  The Bloody Chamber - Marquis  Complete control over heroine  She compares him to a lion and to God  ‘The eye of God – his eye’  ‘Dark leonine shape of his head’, ‘dark mane’  The Bloody Chamber – Piano Tuner  Different from the typical handsome prince  He can’t see the mark on her forehead, he can’t see her mistake, she hides her shame  There are no other men in the whole of Perrault’s tale

42. The Bloody Chamber  The Courtship of Mr Lyon  Role reversal – she rescues him from the tower when he is weak and dying  ‘As if, curious reversal, she frightened him’  ‘I am sick and I must die’  Girl’s father is weak  The Erl King  ‘Erl King will do you grievous harm’  ‘Skin the rabbit! he says’  ‘Tender butcher’  Powerful, dominant, connotations of butcher

43. The Bloody Chamber  The Lady of the House of Love – soldier  ‘Pentacle of his virginity’ – reversal of pure, chaste woman  ‘Symbol of rationality’ – his bicycle  ‘Lack of imagination gives heroism to the hero’ – he does not believe in the supernatural  Carter still refers to him as a ‘hero’ – he saves the Countess  The Tiger’s Bride  Beast and father objectify the woman  Father is weak and indulgent

44. The Bloody Chamber  The Snow Child  Count  Dominant male  Neither female can live without the Count – she is a Countess, she is a figment of his imagination  Literal objectification of women  Cristina Bacchilega – ‘a masculine fantasy’  Lack of men  Feminist collection of stories  Traditional male heroes become female heroes so no need for males  The men in the story are mostly villainous

45. Dracula  Jonathan Harker  Male character whose masculine integrity is most directly challenged  Brave when he climbs down Count’s window – ‘at the worst, it can only be death’  Cruelty – going to cheat on Mina  Isolated in his experiences – direct link to the Count, only one who has met him  Mysterious – to Transylvanian peasants, doesn’t tell Mina his experiences  Wants revenge for Mina?  Strong character – cuts off Dracula’s head, scales down the walls  Tortured + victim – by his experiences in Transylvania

46. Dracula  Van Helsing  Isolated as he is a foreigner – GOTHIC  Mysterious – knows things about Lucy, doesn’t tell anyone  Strong – ‘butcher work’ of killing 3 females  Helsing is a Scandinavian word for ‘narrow waterway’ – he is on the straight and narrow path, a righteous character  Battle of wits and wills between him and Count Dracula  ‘We go out as the old knights of the Cross’  Red hair – fiery temper, arbitrary manner  Facial features indicate his dominant personality  Leader of the group

47. Dracula  Cruelty – makes Lucy a vampire, drinks blood  Dark – castle, wears black  Handsome – gets younger when he drinks blood, face is ‘hard and cruel and sensual’  Monster – ‘I am the monster that breathing men would kill’  Mysterious – beginning, dictating Jonathan’s letters, ‘what manner of man is this?’ - Bible  Obsessive – getting power in London  Possessive – ‘This man belongs to me!’ (JH)  Strong – ‘strength of twenty men’  Violent – ‘he turned and sprang at us’  Tortured – ‘I condemn you to living death. Eternal hunger for living blood’  Isolated – ‘I am the last of my kind’

48. Dracula  Dr Seward  ‘Handsome, well off and of good birth’  Possessive of Lucy even though he doesn’t marry her, gives her blood  Reclusive  talks to his phonograph, rather than interacting with people  a doctor of insane people – surrounded by them  Wants revenge for Lucy,Renfield and Mina?  Tortured  went to graveyard with VH  sees the girl he loves dead  Lucy rejects his marriage proposal

49. Dracula  Renfield  Serves Dracula – calls him ‘my lord and master’  Cruel – kills animals, but can he help it?  Dark – wants to collect lives  Possessive of Dracula – doesn’t like Dracula’s attention on Mina OR is he fond of Mina and doesn’t want her to go through the same ordeal as him  Isolated – physically in his cell, reflects his mental isolation – nobody else understands him, nobody can relate to him  Tortured victim – Dracula uses him for blood  ‘I’m a sane man fighting for his soul’

50. Dracula  Van Helsing and Dracula  VH is the moral opposite of CD  VH is ‘noble’, CD is a ‘monster’  Powerful and strong willed  Determined and resourceful  Dedicated to strange wisdom and mysterious philosophy  Both speak in forms of English that characterise them as foreigners  Both foreigners  Both from the East – Dracula further East so more evil?

51. SUPERNATURAL WOMEN?