More reading journal material
More from my reading journal, this is a longish essay-type entry that continues and expands my thoughts on vampirism (see August 14th entry).
'The dynamic relations of human actions in the world mediation of others are characterised in the Fantastic through the themes of discourse and desire, the latter in excessive forms as in its various transformations (perversions) and themes of cruelty, violence, death, corpses and vampires.' (Nash - Vampyr and the Fantastic p65 - quote taken from Rosemary Jackson's Fantasy. The Literature of Subversion.
Vampires are therefore a source of external terror - the terrors of transformation, intrusion and fusion - the external threat (Not-I) enters the subject (I), transforms it and gives it the power of transformation over other subjects. This is in common with the werewolf and certainly, in Eastern European cultures, the vampire and the werewolf are inextricably linked through this ability. Some cultures do not really distinguish between the two, and the legend of the vampire is said by some to have arisen from that of the werewolf. I believe the word vrokolak (?spelling?) covers both creatures.
Vampires respresent transgressive sexuality and can be seen as a metaphor for rape. Penetration by the vampire's teeth = violation of the virgin, and by the violent creation of more vampires, the penetration/defloration continues endlessly. Desire never dies in these creatures, not is it ever satisfied; instead it is perpetrated, potentially ad infinitum.
In older texts (Dracula; Carmilla) female vampires are presented as sexually confident creatures (sexual predators in fact). These become a threat to the patriarchal system. Conversely, in an attempt to counteract this, symbols of patriarchy and male domination are common. The wielding of the Crucifix represents the Church (and therefore the patriarchal establishment).The stake (phallus) through the female vampire's heart, and the profuse bleeding caused by this mimics the forcible loss of virginity. The subsequent death of the female creature shows the defeat (murder) of femininity and female sexuality.The patriarchal status quo is therefore restored. If the vampire is male, however, it remains a threat to the Western values of the Church and authority since it lives outside established values.
The sucking of blood can be seen as a return to an infant suckling at its mother's breast. It is an infantile act (Freud et al. Vampirism is an act that sustains life, even as it is drawn from the victim/mother. It is symbolic of the Oedipus/Electra complexes - the murder of the parent so that the child may have its independent existence. This obviously has incestuous overtones in the vampire myth since often parent/child vampires use each other as the 'suck' object. This gives rise to even more transgressions, especially in same sex relationships where the act is not only homosexual, it is incestuous.
Blood is linked to semen and is always spilled in the act of vampirism. It gives life - 'The blood is the life.' Dracula - and this point is especially relevant when the vampire is male and the victim is female.
Vampires, conversely,also represent the spread of plague and disease. Their sickness (vampirism) is passed on through unclean (undead) blood. In these days of AIDS, vampirism as a metaphor is even more relevant.
The vampire is unstable - it is neither dead nor alive, but exists in a vacuum between these two states. If the vampire is a shape-shifter, it becomes even more unstable, and again this pertains to the condition of lycanthropy. Consequent to this instability, time is suspended and transcended. The vampire becomes linked to immortality and stunted growth, where time is no issue. Therefore all times/era become become blurred into one long existence. As vampires are ageless and timeless, they can represent the apathy of any given age.
Finally, the vampire is a subversion and a threat to the Christian ideal and ideologies The drinking of blood is a subversion of the communion ('This is my body, this is my blood'). Only Christ or those touched by him (e.g. Lazarus), according to Christian teaching, is supposed to arise from the grave - the rising of the vampire desecrates that ethos. Only God is supposed to grant immortality, and then only in a spiritual sense. The vampire gains/gives immortality on the earthly, physical plane and becomes an agent of Satan.
Reading: The Lady in the House of Love - Angela Carter; Burning Your Boats
Synopsis and interpretation
This short story is a revisioning of the fairy story 'The Sleeping Beauty', and is one of my favourite Carter pieces. The princess of the original tale becomes the Countess Nosferatu (Transylvanian for vampire?). Instead of the fairy tale's hundred years sleep, time in Carter's piece is represented by the ageless Countess herself; time is suspended in her undying, beautiful body. Effectively, she sleeps in time, and the thorns in the fairy tale are replaced by her vampirism, which hold her locked in fragile youth and beauty, and in the unending horror of her condition. The prince of the tale is replaced by a young soldier on leave from war. He does not hack through said ring of thorns, but is invited into the Countess's castle. He somehow becomes the Countess's unwitting liberator, but her liberation is death, not awakening.
The Countess represents the unending cycle of time, existing in a timeless state in the vacuum of the ages. Yet she is weary of the time and her existence, since it means nothing to her and she cannot use it to change herself. Her castle becomes representative of the temporal network-web that she is trapped in. Her curse is continual and ancestral; it is passed on down the ages and can be passed onto/into future ages.
Where the Countess is, death is. She is death in life - 'Now you are at the place of annihilation; now you are at the place of annihilation.' (p 195) Death and sex are irrevocably entwined; the penetration of the vampire fangs (phallus) and the shedding of (virginal) blood are acts of sexual violence/predation. Likewise, 'But now she is a woman, she must have men' represents a coming of age, the blooming of female sexuality. There is a loss of virginity with every bite the Countess inflicts, but despite this apparent adulthood there is the inability to pass beyond the oral phase of development. Through her immortality, the Countess's develoment is stunted. She represents the Curse of Eve. Loss of blood can be menstrual, virginal or fatal, so she embodies all the stages of Eve's curse. And the curse is inflicted on the male as well as the female. This situation gives rise to a subversion of marriage. The Countess imagines her feeding from the soldier as a wedding night. His blood would represent virginal (hymenal) blood and her fangs represent the groom's phallus, giving a reversal that trangresses the usual male/female sexual roles. 'The bridegroom bleeds on my inverted marriage bed.' (p 206)
The Countess is undead - a travesty of both living and dead. However, she is also capable of bestowing both states of existence. She murders to stay alive but can bestow immortality. It appears to be a forced/false existence, and is the result of an unnatural heredity. With the coming of the young virgin male, we see the heralding of the appearance of the Light. He is the light of Reason, representative of the sun that the Countess may never see, and of the light of the Church (religion) that has damned her. He is life, she is death. He is civilisation/she is animal. He is Church, she is Old Religion. He is health, she is disease. These are all binary oppositions and ultimately he represents everything that she cannot be. He is reason over superstition, innocence to her corruption. He is also the catalyst for change in her static existence. Following the Countess's (apparently voluntary) death, time begins to move on again, although the red rose he takes with him from the castle is a reminder that some things do remain unaltered. With this ending there is also a return to the patriarchal 'norm'. With the vampire dying, the 'woman subservient to man' status quo is restored, and all becomes orderly (according to Western religious traditions) once more.
As I said, I love this story. Taking it apart like this and applying the critical theory, has, I feel, opened up lots of possibilities for expanding the reasoning behind my own writing. It's good to understand the theory behind the fiction; some people think that knowing and applying theory somehow ruins the enjoyment of a story. I used to be of this opinion; now I think it's essential for somehow who's serious about writing, and certainly for creative writing students, to at least know a little of theory behind the genre they're writing in. It might not improve the writing as such, but it opens up knowledge and possibilities that might not have been there before, and this can only be a good thing.
'The dynamic relations of human actions in the world mediation of others are characterised in the Fantastic through the themes of discourse and desire, the latter in excessive forms as in its various transformations (perversions) and themes of cruelty, violence, death, corpses and vampires.' (Nash - Vampyr and the Fantastic p65 - quote taken from Rosemary Jackson's Fantasy. The Literature of Subversion.
Vampires are therefore a source of external terror - the terrors of transformation, intrusion and fusion - the external threat (Not-I) enters the subject (I), transforms it and gives it the power of transformation over other subjects. This is in common with the werewolf and certainly, in Eastern European cultures, the vampire and the werewolf are inextricably linked through this ability. Some cultures do not really distinguish between the two, and the legend of the vampire is said by some to have arisen from that of the werewolf. I believe the word vrokolak (?spelling?) covers both creatures.
Vampires respresent transgressive sexuality and can be seen as a metaphor for rape. Penetration by the vampire's teeth = violation of the virgin, and by the violent creation of more vampires, the penetration/defloration continues endlessly. Desire never dies in these creatures, not is it ever satisfied; instead it is perpetrated, potentially ad infinitum.
In older texts (Dracula; Carmilla) female vampires are presented as sexually confident creatures (sexual predators in fact). These become a threat to the patriarchal system. Conversely, in an attempt to counteract this, symbols of patriarchy and male domination are common. The wielding of the Crucifix represents the Church (and therefore the patriarchal establishment).The stake (phallus) through the female vampire's heart, and the profuse bleeding caused by this mimics the forcible loss of virginity. The subsequent death of the female creature shows the defeat (murder) of femininity and female sexuality.The patriarchal status quo is therefore restored. If the vampire is male, however, it remains a threat to the Western values of the Church and authority since it lives outside established values.
The sucking of blood can be seen as a return to an infant suckling at its mother's breast. It is an infantile act (Freud et al. Vampirism is an act that sustains life, even as it is drawn from the victim/mother. It is symbolic of the Oedipus/Electra complexes - the murder of the parent so that the child may have its independent existence. This obviously has incestuous overtones in the vampire myth since often parent/child vampires use each other as the 'suck' object. This gives rise to even more transgressions, especially in same sex relationships where the act is not only homosexual, it is incestuous.
Blood is linked to semen and is always spilled in the act of vampirism. It gives life - 'The blood is the life.' Dracula - and this point is especially relevant when the vampire is male and the victim is female.
Vampires, conversely,also represent the spread of plague and disease. Their sickness (vampirism) is passed on through unclean (undead) blood. In these days of AIDS, vampirism as a metaphor is even more relevant.
The vampire is unstable - it is neither dead nor alive, but exists in a vacuum between these two states. If the vampire is a shape-shifter, it becomes even more unstable, and again this pertains to the condition of lycanthropy. Consequent to this instability, time is suspended and transcended. The vampire becomes linked to immortality and stunted growth, where time is no issue. Therefore all times/era become become blurred into one long existence. As vampires are ageless and timeless, they can represent the apathy of any given age.
Finally, the vampire is a subversion and a threat to the Christian ideal and ideologies The drinking of blood is a subversion of the communion ('This is my body, this is my blood'). Only Christ or those touched by him (e.g. Lazarus), according to Christian teaching, is supposed to arise from the grave - the rising of the vampire desecrates that ethos. Only God is supposed to grant immortality, and then only in a spiritual sense. The vampire gains/gives immortality on the earthly, physical plane and becomes an agent of Satan.
Reading: The Lady in the House of Love - Angela Carter; Burning Your Boats
Synopsis and interpretation
This short story is a revisioning of the fairy story 'The Sleeping Beauty', and is one of my favourite Carter pieces. The princess of the original tale becomes the Countess Nosferatu (Transylvanian for vampire?). Instead of the fairy tale's hundred years sleep, time in Carter's piece is represented by the ageless Countess herself; time is suspended in her undying, beautiful body. Effectively, she sleeps in time, and the thorns in the fairy tale are replaced by her vampirism, which hold her locked in fragile youth and beauty, and in the unending horror of her condition. The prince of the tale is replaced by a young soldier on leave from war. He does not hack through said ring of thorns, but is invited into the Countess's castle. He somehow becomes the Countess's unwitting liberator, but her liberation is death, not awakening.
The Countess represents the unending cycle of time, existing in a timeless state in the vacuum of the ages. Yet she is weary of the time and her existence, since it means nothing to her and she cannot use it to change herself. Her castle becomes representative of the temporal network-web that she is trapped in. Her curse is continual and ancestral; it is passed on down the ages and can be passed onto/into future ages.
Where the Countess is, death is. She is death in life - 'Now you are at the place of annihilation; now you are at the place of annihilation.' (p 195) Death and sex are irrevocably entwined; the penetration of the vampire fangs (phallus) and the shedding of (virginal) blood are acts of sexual violence/predation. Likewise, 'But now she is a woman, she must have men' represents a coming of age, the blooming of female sexuality. There is a loss of virginity with every bite the Countess inflicts, but despite this apparent adulthood there is the inability to pass beyond the oral phase of development. Through her immortality, the Countess's develoment is stunted. She represents the Curse of Eve. Loss of blood can be menstrual, virginal or fatal, so she embodies all the stages of Eve's curse. And the curse is inflicted on the male as well as the female. This situation gives rise to a subversion of marriage. The Countess imagines her feeding from the soldier as a wedding night. His blood would represent virginal (hymenal) blood and her fangs represent the groom's phallus, giving a reversal that trangresses the usual male/female sexual roles. 'The bridegroom bleeds on my inverted marriage bed.' (p 206)
The Countess is undead - a travesty of both living and dead. However, she is also capable of bestowing both states of existence. She murders to stay alive but can bestow immortality. It appears to be a forced/false existence, and is the result of an unnatural heredity. With the coming of the young virgin male, we see the heralding of the appearance of the Light. He is the light of Reason, representative of the sun that the Countess may never see, and of the light of the Church (religion) that has damned her. He is life, she is death. He is civilisation/she is animal. He is Church, she is Old Religion. He is health, she is disease. These are all binary oppositions and ultimately he represents everything that she cannot be. He is reason over superstition, innocence to her corruption. He is also the catalyst for change in her static existence. Following the Countess's (apparently voluntary) death, time begins to move on again, although the red rose he takes with him from the castle is a reminder that some things do remain unaltered. With this ending there is also a return to the patriarchal 'norm'. With the vampire dying, the 'woman subservient to man' status quo is restored, and all becomes orderly (according to Western religious traditions) once more.
As I said, I love this story. Taking it apart like this and applying the critical theory, has, I feel, opened up lots of possibilities for expanding the reasoning behind my own writing. It's good to understand the theory behind the fiction; some people think that knowing and applying theory somehow ruins the enjoyment of a story. I used to be of this opinion; now I think it's essential for somehow who's serious about writing, and certainly for creative writing students, to at least know a little of theory behind the genre they're writing in. It might not improve the writing as such, but it opens up knowledge and possibilities that might not have been there before, and this can only be a good thing.