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How The Bloody Chamber and Dracula presents female sexuality NEA (FULL MARKS 50/50)
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Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and Bram Stroker’s Dracula presents female sexuality. Full marks received (50/50)
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The Gothic OCR A Level English Dracula/The Bloody Chamber
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Dracula / The Bloody Chamber 59/60 A* OCR English Lit notes
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Rukhsar Yazmin final draftCompare and contrast the ways in which Angela Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’ and Bram Stroker’s
‘Dracula’ presents female sexuality.
Bram Stoker’s Gothic novel ‘Dracula’ and Angela Carter’s collection of stories ‘The Bloody Chamber’
were written almost 100 years apart, with Stroker’s ‘Dracula’ paving the way for popular gothic and
vampire literary horrors and Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’ drawing on contemporary feminist
issues in order to create a subversive collection of fairy tales transformed. Dracula details the
conflict created when a diabolical and charismatic vampire travels to England, threatening the sturdy
foundations that the society holds, whilst The Bloody Chamber focuses on numerous female
heroines with Carter presenting traditional fairy tales manipulated into a fantastical and violently
sexual series of stories exposing the true experiences of these women. Female sexuality is seen to be
a key theme within both texts, the expected norms of women within each text being both
conformed to, but also revolted against.
Stoker’s use of the Gothic genre lends itself to an exploration of female sexuality within a tale of
horror and monstrous beings. Those monstrous beings are often women. Typical to even the earliest
Gothic novel, female sexuality is repressed beneath a mandate of purity and virtue, and is used as a
tool for entrapment, as any woman who expresses her sexuality is accountable for the ensuing of
evil. This is evident in the transformation of Lucy Westenra, a young, beautiful and desired female
character, who is also a key symbol of female sexuality within the play. Lucy is initially described as
the essence of virtue, possessing a “face of unequalled sweetness and purity”. However, the
insinuation of her susceptibility to the seduction of Dracula ultimately leads to her downfall, as when
bitten and turned into a vampire, she transforms into a sensual and amoral femme fatale. The
supernatural and monstrous nature of Lucy is seen to coincide with the typical Gothic aesthetic as it
is distinguished that her hair is now ‘dark’, her “sweetness…turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty,
and purity to voluptuous wantonness”. The juxtaposition conveys the parallels of society’s
expectations, as purity and obedience is represented through light and beauty, but promiscuity and
sexual agency is represented through darkness and evil. Stroker presents that amorality and sin is
associated with feminine sexuality and eroticism, thus condemning the sexual desires of women.
This is evident in the highly disturbing imagery of Lucy, now the ‘un-dead’, throwing a child, whom
she was previously cradling within her arms, onto the ground. The image of Lucy and a child mirrors
the typical expectation of a mother- child relationship, one that is usually regarded as being
nurturing and natural but has now been horrifically destabilised by Lucy, who is presented as a
symbolic mother, harming the child she would naturally have protected. Evidently, Lucy’s atrocious
transformation is used within the Gothic plot in order to foretell the consequences faced if female
sexuality is not contained within the structure of patriarchy.
, Rukhsar Yazmin final draft
Unlike the typical Victorian Gothic literature of Dracula, which explored the rejection and
punishment of female sexuality, Carter’s The Bloody Chamber is written post the 1970’s second
wave Feminist movement. Carter instead focuses on the exploitation of female sexuality found
within Gothic literature. This fairy tale Gothic that Carter presents within The Bloody Chamber is
seen in the first story, ‘The Bloody Chamber’. The Bloody Chamber could reference the marital
bedroom, where within the story, the Marquees sadistic sexual fantasies are seen to be at its prime.
Sexuality within The Bloody Chamber is often affiliated with violence, commodification and
previously murder, perceived through the harrowing line of “There is a striking resemblance
between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer.” Carter presents the heroin’s sexual
desire to be exploited through the disturbing imagery of her watching herself in the reflection of
dozens of mirrors as her husband takes her virginity, ‘A dozen husbands impaled a dozen brides.’
The rather violent imagery of ‘impaled’ conveys a dark sense of how female sexuality can be
subjugated, as the heroine is given autonomy in her desires but is still under the control of the
patriarchal structure. The ‘mirrors’ are symbolic of this, the idea of the male gaze watching over her
just as patriarchy has an eye over female sexuality, and the ‘dozens’ could be metaphorical of this
being a systematic issue. Another characteristically Gothic touch lies in the way a risk to the heroine
is foreshadowed by something seemingly innocent and harmless, such as the jewellery worn by the
heroine, ‘His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two-inches wide, like an
extraordinarily precious slit throat’. The fact that it is a choker accentuates the symbolism of
ownership and danger as chokers are often related to dog collars and provide the imagery of
oppression and possession, representing how she is claimed by the Marquee. The dramatic irony of
the choker foreshadows her impending fate, as her death is planned to be by decapitation. These
moments of foreshadowing her execution are seen repeatedly throughout the story, where the ruby
choker is described in the simile ‘bright as arterial blood’. However, despite these foreshadowing
moments, Carter doesn’t conform to the restrictions of archetypal Gothic conclusions, and rather
than condemning her sexually expressive heroin to fate at the Marquis hands, she presents her
salvation in the hands of her mother, presenting triumph over patriarchy through the power of
matriarchy.
Within Dracula there is a conflict between traditional Victorian ideals and modernity. Stroker wrote
during the period of Fin de Siecle, where the conventional expectations of women and female
sexuality was at its pinnacle. The idea of women having sexual agency was stigmatised during this
time, a woman was expected to be a wife and mother and if she wasn’t these things than she was
labelled a whore. This came into conflict with the modern ideology of the ‘New Woman’ which arose
at the same time, who within literature highlighted not only her own desires and aspirations, but
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