Examining The Deploration Of Vampirism English Literature Essay
“ If adult females allow themselves to be consoled for their culturally determined deficiency of entree to the manners of rational argument by the supplication of conjectural great goddesses, they are merely blandishing themselves in entry ( a technique frequently used on them by work forces ) ” ( Angela Carter )
The lamia, with his equivocal nature both extremely sexual and terrorization, is frequently a metaphor which permits the writer to turn to issues such as gender and power. Therefore, this complex figure is frequently used by the writers to reflect an facet of modern-day civilization.
In her aggregation of narratives The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter uses the traditional force, darkness and erotism of lamias ‘ narratives, in order to show her feminine political thoughts. With her narratives, she condemns the traditional gender functions in our societies, which implies a domination of work forces over adult females.
On the other manus, with Interview with the lamia, Anne Rice interrogates thoughts of maleness, when she uses cheery lamias as metaphor for excluded or dysfunctional members of society.
Decision:
Carter ironically developed through her narratives a complex and broad representation of female gender than the one developed by a phallocentric society, visualizing a new universe of sexual freedom. She attributes unusual and pervert gender to the female to propose a possible female waking up.
Finally, Carter uses vampirism as a metaphor for political subjugation.
With the heroine of The Bloody Chamber, the writer tries to make a Utopian universe, where work forces and adult females have a relationship of complete power equality.
The narratives of The Bloody Chamber, frequently insurgent, contains tonss of images incorporating force or sex that can floor the readers, but the narrations are re-tellings of celebrated faery narratives which implicitly ruin the female genre. In ‘The Lady of the House of love ‘ for illustration, Carter uses a female lamia, and inverts the gender functions of the original narrative: the attacker is a adult female, representation of female ‘s desire, and the victim is a immature adult male. This device permits the writer to interrupt tabu, in a really feminist manner.
Besides, ‘The Bloody Chamber ‘ , a revising of the tale Bluebeard, Angela Carter makes a review of the dealingss between the sexes in our society. Often in her books, Angela Carter permits her female characters to last, and it is the instance with ‘The Bloody Chamber ‘ . This narrative, associating the narrative of a freshly married twosome show the inability of adult females to incorporate their desires, when the immature adult female trespasses a out room of the palace, merely like the hubby ‘s dead former married womans piled in that room, who all were unable to defy the enticement. In her revising of old narratives, Angela Carter changes the traditional manner of penalizing adult females who can non retain their sexual wonder, satisfying them on the contrary as demonstrates the terminal of the narrative. Angela Carter put female and male ‘s gender at the same degree, and she lets adult females to hold an active libido. From the beginning of the narrative, the heroine does non portray herself as wise and shy. At the beginning, we rapidly recognize that she is non an angel when her female parent asks her if she is certain of loving him and she replies ‘I am certain I want to get married him ‘ ( p.2 ) , unwraping the economic intent of their matrimony. Above all, sex is non something unknown to her, and she does non conceal her desire for sexual dealingss and her involvement in a sort of sadomasochism.
The Marquis is described as a sort of lamia: he is instead old, with a really white face and ruddy lips, populating in a distant and awful palace. He has besides a deviant head, possessing an impressive aggregation of adult books. The adult female adds besides that he ‘shrieks and blasphemes at the climax ‘ ( p.14 ) aˆ¦He is non described as a immature and fine-looking hubby but instead as a violent and sexual deviant monster that enjoys objectify adult females, as demonstrates his Bloody Chamber where his dead ex-wives have been turned from topics to objects. However, the behaviour of the adult female implies a strong attractive force and captivation for this adult male and his atrocious universe of contrariness.
Angela Carter ‘s usage of vampirism indicates the complex nature of female sexual desire, a mixture of repulsion, fright and titillating. Representing erotism and vampirism, the immature adult female is both fed up but besides craves the Marquis. And her behaviour shows that she can non be considered as a victim. We could be led to believe the adult female naA?ve, but she knows the sadomasochist dispositions of her hubby. The adult female confesses:
I was non afraid of him. But of myself. I seemed reborn in his unthinking eyes, reborn in familiar forms. I barely recognized myself from his descriptions of me. And yet… I blushed once more, unnoticed, to believe he hold chosen me because, in my artlessness, he sensed a rare endowment for corruptness. ( p.17 )
She is non denying what his hubby senses about her ; alternatively, she seems to acknowledge to be bad. Her usage of words showing sensualness and force shows her existent nature, and implicitly shows her desire to be implicated in a new universe of erotica and sadomasochism. We can even experience a sort of immorality in her address: ‘His nuptials gift, clasped round my pharynx. A garroter of rubies, two inches broad, like an extraordinary cherished slit pharynx. ‘ ( p.6 ) Carter shows the female capacity for corruptness and for being bad in general. Thus it is impossible to see the adult female as a inactive and wise figure, notably when she discovers the adult books, because she says ‘I knew plenty for what I saw in that book to do me pant ‘ ( p.13 ) , proposing that adult books are non unknown to her. As Merja Makinen claims:
Carter ‘s strength is exactly in detonating the stereotypes of adult females as inactive, coy zeros. That she therefore evokes the gamut of force and contrariness is surely distressing, but to deny their being is certainly to imprison adult females back within a partial, sanitized image merely somewhat less constricted than the Victorian angel in the house.[ 1 ]
Angela Carter ‘s female supporter differs from this Angel of the house and her desires are non restrained by a patriarchal civilization that restricts adult females to be at place, to raise kids and clean the house. This civilization besides associated libidinal desires merely with work forces and the female could merely be the object of that desire. In ‘The Bloody Chamber ‘ , the miss refuses to be the meat, the object of ingestion or a victim.
On the other manus, Victorian adult females who had sexual urges were frequently considered as cocottes. The heroine in the narrative freely satisfies her desires without been considered as such. Andrea Dworkin illustrates this thought when she says, ‘There are merely two definitions of adult female: there is the good adult female. She is a victim. There is the bad adult female. She must be destroyed. [ … ] Both must be nullified. ‘[ 2 ]But in Carter ‘s revising narratives, the adult female is non portrayed as either a victim or a bad adult female. Alternatively, she is a heroine.
This new adult female of the 20th century that Angela Carter integrates in old narratives, and who is able to offend her desires, permits the reader to bury the stereotypes of the submissive and weak female heroine of the original narratives, notably the 1 of the original Bluebeard by Charles Perrault. On the contrary, in ‘The Bloody Chamber ‘ , the supporter is a new sort of adult female, who affirmed herself in a male-dominated society: As Aidan Day indicates, ‘Carter ‘s stating of faery narratives was designed to assist kill giants in the mundane, patriarchal universe. ‘[ 3 ]Angela Carter transformed the old narrative of the late 17th century as a sort of retribution and challenged the manner of thought of that period, sing work forces superior to adult females.
At the terminal, the adult female is free to populate her life with the piano-tuner, who is blind. His sightlessness can be a symbol of emasculation but besides shows the piano-tuner virtuousness, being in love with the immature miss without been able to see her. He is different from the Marquis, by his inability to exteriorize and take down his spouse through his male regard. Using this disability, Carter permits her heroine to eventually be superior to a adult male. Angela Carter non merely changes the older version with modernness ( for illustration the miss uses a phone to name for aid p.21 ) but besides ironically introduces new feminine characters alternatively of males. The fact that Angela Carter replaced the brothers who save the immature miss, by a heroic female parent, who kills the Marquis and frees her is besides a really feminist alteration. In a description of her female parent at the beginning of the narrative, she declares that ‘Her female parent had outfaced a junkful of Chinese plagiarists, nursed a small town through a trial of the pestilence, shot a adult male -eating tiger with her ain manus. ‘ ( p.2 ) This overdone description reinforces the thought of displacement of power, from male to unbeatable and unafraid females. This adult female is described as ‘a wild thing ‘ ( p.40 ) , powerful, maintaining a six-gun in her bag, and acting as a epic prince who saves the hapless immature and guiltless miss, like we find in tonss of narratives. By altering the terminal in support of adult females, Carter challenges representations of maleness based on domination and power, frequently recreated in literature. The supporter ‘s control of the narration besides shows this displacement of power: it is a manner to give voice to adult females and to allow them get away from the traditional intervention given to adult females in narratives.
On the other manus, in her books from the Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice interrogates thoughts of maleness, in a really insurgent manner. Whereas Angela Carter challenges the intervention given to adult females in literature and in society, Anne Rice stands up for work forces in her lamias ‘ narratives and her lamias can be symbols of the release of sexual desires that can non be satisfied because of limitations in our societies. More exactly, the writer challenges conservative political relations, supporting the homosexual community and homoerotic desires.
Even if it is non expressed from the beginning, all male characters can be read as homosexual, and we can see with a closer reading of Interview with the lamia, the involvement the writer has for homosexual attractive forces. Lestat is an insatiate lamia, who normally feeds himself with males ‘ blood, representation of his secret and homosexual desires. Louis confesses that ‘the triumphant putting to death for Lestat was a immature adult male. ‘ ( p.41 ) and he clearly expresses his homosexualism by naming him “ homosexual lamia ” at the terminal in page 331.
In the novel, the lamias can non hold normal sexual intercourses as human existences. That is why Anne Rice uses the act of biting and sucking blood, a extremely sexual experience, to uncover their homosexualism. Lestat is so a transgressive hero who breaks cultural tabus such as homosexualism within our society. We can inquire what Anne Rice ‘s existent purpose is when she tells us the narratives of these lamias who search to fulfill their homosexual desires. Even if certain critics suggest that Anne Rice wanted to return to the purportedly homoerotic beginning of lamias, what she truly wanted is a disapprobation of the homophobic intervention of homosexuals in 1974 when the book was written, which is still common in our current society. Therefore, lamias populating in their darkened topographic points, hidden from the remainder of society would be a sort of representation of a homosexual community that battle to be accepted despite heterosexual conventions. The fright aroused at the sight of homosexuals is so represented by the fright vampires produce around them. Louis admits to hold “ no desire to populate ” ( p.73 ) as a lamia, but possibly implicitly as a homosexual lamia. Unable to accept his lamia individuality, he asks “ Am I damned? Am I from the Satan? Is my very nature that of the Satan? ” ( p? ? ? ) but he is obliged to accept his new ego as a lamia. With that transition, Anne Rice seems to compare the devil nature of the lamias to homosexualism, both making fright in society.
Merely like the terminal of ‘The Bloody Chamber ‘ , where a adult female becomes a brave heroine, Anne Rice inverts the traditional manner to depict epic work forces in novels. At the terminal of the 20th century when the book was written ( and even today ) it was common to tie in gallantry with a brave muscular and really manfully character. Alternatively, Anne Rice plays with these stereotypes, offering us another signifier of maleness in the figure of Lestat, a castrated, inactive and curious lamia. As Georges Haggerty suggests ‘He represents the 19th hope – that maleness can last the emasculation that terminal straightness eventually represents – every bit good as its fright – that every adult male is ever already castrated by desire. ‘ Therefore, he constitutes the capacity of homophiles to last in a heterosexist civilization, but he is besides a contemplation of a feminine side within all work forces. Anne Rice suggests an indomitability of the homosexual adult male through the immortality of the lamia but besides his trouble to be in the human universe, a topographic point which is non his. In Interview with the lamia, the lamias are aliens in the western civilization, a feeling of rejection similar to the 1 experienced by tonss of homosexuals, aliens in a heterosexual society.
At the same clip, the writer presents a complex nature of human desire through the figure of the lamia. During the first dark together, Lestat invites Louis in his casket. Louis says to be ‘confused by [ his ] absence of apprehension and filled with a antipathy for being so near to him, handsome and challenging though he was ‘ ( p25 ) Like the victim of a lamia, both attracted and repulsed by these animals, the reader is attracted by the homoerotic: they want a voyeurism in something which is unusual, unusual and which arouses their desires, but besides fright and repulsive force. The lamia is symbolized as a menace, merely like the menace the homosexual represents: the homosexual adult male is pedophile, he has AIDS, he has to populate in separate areasaˆ¦ These are images provided by homophobia, during the terminal of the 20th century and sometimes presents.
In Interview with a lamia, Louis succumbs to the power and attractive force of Lestat, who makes him come in in his dark universe, and Louis hates himself for that. Against his wants, Louis increasingly feels desire and love for him. When his blood is sucked by Lestat, he admits to hold a esthesis that ‘raised the hair all over [ his ] organic structure ‘ and that was ‘not unlike the pleasance of passionaˆ¦ ‘ ( p.19 ) But through the narrative, we realize that homosexual passions, either between Louis and Lestat or between Louis and Armand, can non be freely satisfied. As George Haggerty wrote ‘Rice seems unable to make a bond between two work forces that is more than the symptom of a corrupt and corrupting civilization. ‘ The lamias have minutes of familiarity during the narrative but the writer ever insists on the out facet of their relation, the breakage of the conventions. Near the terminal of the novel, even if Louis admits to hold strong feelings for Armand in several transitions, “ You have me. I love you. But I ‘m metagrobolized. ‘ ( p.288 ) , he can non hold a relationship with him: “ What you asked was impossible! ” “ And it was all the same, all evil. And all incorrect. ” ( p.336 ) Like the lamia, the homosexual adult male suffers from his sexual evildoing and desires. Claudia says page 265: ‘I see your enigma, your hurt, the love for him you ca n’t conceal ‘ , enphasing Louis ‘ agony.
“ Your immorality is that you can non be evil. ” ( p261 ) ( Claudia & gt ; Louis )
“ I want you. I want you more than anything in the universe ” ( p282 )
“ That I did it to be free of Claudia, to be free to come to youaˆ¦yes I realize that. “ ( 287 )
