The relocation of the feminine gothic through the use of the sublime.

The relocation of the feminine gothic through the use of the sublime.

Burke describes the sublime as “whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger… whatever is in any sort terrible… is a source of the sublime, that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling” (Burke, 36)”. The gothic genre has often been divided into the ’female’ and ‘male’ gothic; irrespective of these classifications, all gothic novels rely on Burke’s concept of the sublime experience. Moers describes the female gothic as “the work that women writers have done in the literary mode that, since the eighteenth century, we have called “the gothic”” (Moers, 90). However, Milbank aligns the female gothic in the “heroine’s emancipation”(Milbank, 101) or “liberation”(Milbank, 140) from the house and from the patriarchal male figure. The female figure in the gothic novel is often perceived as a dramatization of female susceptibility and emotion. Yet, in gothic novels such as, The Monk, Dracula and The Bloody Chamber the women are represented as impenetrable, solid, powerful and autonomous figures. This representation of the female form in the gothic novel has relocated the sublime experience from the female characters to the readers and characters encountering fear-inducing female forms.

Though the plot in The Monk involves “women seeking to escape from castles or monasteries” (Milbank, 81), which is considered typical of the female gothic, “the interest is not centered upon them” (Milbank, 81). Matilda is the image of the debauched woman, the antithesis of the stereotypical woman in the gothic. She is placed in the life of Ambrosio to tempt him. Matilda has access to daemons and spells that can offer Ambrosio what he perceives that he desires. Burke finds the sublime in nature; however, Matilda inspires the sublime in the reader as she “excites the ideas of…danger”(Burke, 36) in the reader through her use of evil magic. Shortly after Matilda reveals to Ambrosio what she can offer him he is ready to do as she says, ““I yield!” he cried, dashing the mirror upon the ground: “Matilda, I follow you! Do with me what you will!”” (Lewis, 215). Matilda becomes more and more a source of the sublime as the book goes on. The more she is depicted performing spells, interacting with daemons and manipulating Ambrosio, the more fearful the reader might become of her, until it is revealed that it was the devil that sent her, “It was I who threw Matilda in your way” (Lewis, 350). Religious superstition was particularly prevalent when Lewis wrote The Monk and as a result the novel would have been extremely frightening for the reader. Burke describes fear as “being an apprehension of pain or death”(Burke, 53), and having any dealings with the devil would have certainly meant an eternity of pain, in the minds of the populous. Lewis’ choice to represent the devil upon the earth as female seems to suggest to the readership the concept of the female form and the devil being intrinsically linked.  Lewis’ treatment of Matilda’s character utterly refutes the female gothic stereotypy of “feminine liberation from the house” (140, Milbank), and this turns the sublime experience away from the fainting woman experiencing it, to the reader becoming scared of Matilda.

In the nineteenth century the relocation of the sublime to the female form becomes even more prevalent. With the rise of the ‘new woman’, comes a rise in public anxiety about the place of women in society, and what affect this ‘new woman’ might have upon it. Burke writes, “whatever is conversant about terrible objects…is a source of the sublime”(Burke, 36). In light of this Stoker’s representation of the majority of the female characters in Dracula creates a sense of sublime by associating the female form with the vampire in his novel, and using this as a vehicle for thinking about the ‘new woman’. In Stoker’s novel Lucy Westenra is a clear example of the extended metaphor of vampirism. Lucy represents the women that give in to the idea of the new woman, those who embrace it and enjoy it. “Come to me Arthur…Come, and we can rest together…There was something diabolically sweet in her tones”(Stoker, 234). At this point in the novel it becomes apparent that Lucy Westenra has been drinking the blood of children, and she then begins to try and tempt Arthur into her arms so that she might drink his blood too. Critics have claimed that the vampire is representative of homosexuality, and Dracula is a warning against the ‘unnatural’ state, however, I think it is more pertinent to describe the vampire as representing “the productions of sexuality itself” (Halberstam, 344). This can be seen in the exchange between Lucy and Arthur, it is not homosexuality that is condemned in this scene, it is sexuality. An increasingly open sexuality is characteristic of one of the concerns regarding the ‘new woman’. The passage is particularly sensual and the construction of the episode insinuates that this ‘new woman’ will corrupt men by using sexual advances. Stoker feeds the sublime experience in his novel with the image of Lucy, a woman that cannot be saved from vampirism. Turning the gothic focus from the “feminine emancipation” (Milbank, 101) plot to a sublime-inducing woman.

Senf writes, “Stoker's villainesses… radiate sexuality. Responding to the sexual freedom and reversal of roles which were often associated with the New Woman, Stoker uses the ancient superstition of the vampire in Dracula to symbolize the evil that can result” (Senf, 39), however, Mina Harker does not fit into Stokers group of female vampires. Nonetheless, Mina can be seen as fitting into the stereotype of the heroine seeking “emancipation”(Milbank, 101) that is characteristic of the female gothic according to critics such as Milbank. However, Mina is still a source of the sublime as she is transformed, by Dracula, into a kind of semi-vampire. Mina drinks Dracula’s blood, “Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare breast” (Stoker, 313), however, she never crosses the line to drinking human blood, and any vile acts she commits are very clearly under the influence of Dracula. Stoker makes this very obvious, indeed Mina is wiped clean of all evilness in the end: “Now god be thanked … see! The snow is not more stainless than her forehead! The curse has passed away”(Stoker, 420). The sublime is created through the character of Mina by the transformation she undergoes into the disturbing tableaux with Dracula. Burke writes, “Whatever therefore is terrible with regard to sight is sublime too” (Burke, 53), with Mina at the centre of this tableau, her image serves to shift the concept of the female gothic from the fleeing woman, to an image, which is cause for the sublime. However, as Mina is eventually redeemed it can be inferred that she fits back into the stereotypical female gothic image. The audience is lead to fear for Mina, not to fear Mina’s image, here in lays the essential difference between Stoker’s two female categories in Dracula. However, Mina’s story highlights how fearsome the character of Lucy is by comparison. One may surmise from Stoker’s treatment of women that his opinion is that: should a woman find her self thinking or acting as a ‘new woman’ she may save herself from killing her husband, eating her children and becoming sexually perverse by submitting herself to a man’s authority. Senf quotes Wasserman in her essay, saying; Wasserman “explains that the “fight to destroy Dracula and to restore Mina to her purity is really a fight for control over women"” (Senf, 34). By displaying a pure, as well as a fallen female character, Stoker might ensure that his female readership understand that they will become the frightening figure of Lucy if they embrace the ideals of the ‘new woman’, thus undermining the idea that the female gothic is concerned with “women’s fears of entrapment” (Smith and Wallace, 1).

Angela Carter’s novel The Bloody Chamber does, however, fall into that idea of the female gothic as tales concerned with the “heroine’s emancipation” (Milbank, 101). However, Carter appropriates the alternative female gothic, the fear inducing female characters, and uses them to further the “plot of feminine liberation” (Milbank, 140). Angela Carter creates a frightening woman, not to frighten her female readership, but to empower them. The image of the frightening woman found so often in the gothic genre can be located in Carter’s mother figure. The mother is described in animal terms, a technique often engaged by gothic authors, as, by equating a character to an animal it removes their human aspects, separating that character from others and adding to the sense of ‘other-ness’. Burke writes, “I know of nothing sublime which is not some modification of power”(Burke, 59), Carter’s mother figure is described in animal terms and wields a riffle, which seats her in a place of ultimate power over the other characters and story line. “You never saw such a wild thing as my mother, her hat seized by the winds and blown out to sea so that her hair was her white mane, her black lisle legs exposed to the thigh”(Carter, 40). As the mother races up to the castle she is riding a horse, and she is also described as one, her hair is described as a ‘mane’ and the mother is also equated in this passage to the image of Medusa. “And my husband stood stock-still as if she had been Medusa” (Carter, 40). Burke writes that the sublime can be caused by the mind being “so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it” (Burke, 53). Carter creates this sensation of being overwhelmed within the reader, and within the figure of the husband, with her description of the mother as Medusa. Medusa is the Greek gorgon whose presence strikes fear into the heart of heroes and whose gaze turns men into statues. Here Carter appropriates the appearance of Medusa and turns her fearsome image to the use it had upon Athena’s shield, as a warning to others and as a weapon, in order to produce fear in the husband and in the reader. Lokke writes, “The Bloody Chamber ends as a feminist fairy tale should, with the rescue of the daughter by her strong and heroic mother” (Lokke, 10), which is effected by re-appropriating the image of the frightening woman and using it to defeat the husband, in turn disrupting the way in which the typical female gothic plot is received by the reader.

Carter’s heroine does fit into the remit for the stereotypical female gothic.  The Bloody Chamber follows a plot that is reminiscent of a Radcliffian gothic novel, the “persecuted heroine in flight from a villainous father and in search of an absent mother” (Smith and Wallace, 2). In this way Carter’s short story fits very neatly into the female gothic genre. However, Carter’s story differs drastically in that, though the story of The Bloody Chamber bares significant resemblance to the story of Bluebeard, which is referenced in the book by Carter (p. 40), the heroine is rescued by her mother, not her brothers. This difference seems to encompass the message of Carter, that this is a tale of women triumphing. This variance allows Carter to relocate her tale in the alternative female gothic that is characterised by sublime-inducing women. Carter sets up a frightening female character in The Bloody Chamber, but though this character fuels the sublime experience, she is also the answer to it, the cause of the dénouement. The fact that the mother is the perpetrator of the heroines rescue allows Carter’s novel to be redeemed from the state of female gothic and be considered a second-wave, feminist, short story. This can also be seen in the fact that the stain, which is reminiscent of Mina Harker’s stain in Dracula, is not removed. Carter is not concerned with making her female characters worthy of rescue through purity, nor does she need to justify them.

The recurring use of decapitation serves as both the cause for the sublime experience and also as the vehicle for the resolution of the story. Decapitation itself is a source for sublime experience as it “excites the ideas of pain, and danger,” (Burke, 36) which Burke claims are the foundation of the sublime. The fear of having ones head separated from the body is disturbing in a very fundamental way; it is troubling as it is the notion of separating one’s ability to think from their body. The young bride asks her husband how she will die,  “‘My virgin of the arpeggios, prepare yourself for martyrdom.’

‘What form shall it take?’ I said.

‘Decapitation,’ he whispered, almost voluptuously”(Carter, 36). Decapitation by men is what Carter is warning against, which is far removed from Lewis’ warnings against the evil woman. Men defeating women by removing their head is a direct metaphor for the feminist view that men wanted to control women and would often eradicate individuality and autonomous thought as a way of doing so. However, in Carter’s story the mother decapitates the husband. This gives a clear metaphoric picture of how to defeat the patriarchal man, “Now, without a moment’s hesitation, she raised my father’s gun, took aim and put a single, irreproachable bullet through my husbands head” (Carter, 41). Carter describes this moment as “irreproachable”(41), as blameless and faultless, displaying clearly that this, in Carter’s story, is not evil. Carter’s mother figure creates the sublime, however, the mother also relieves the sublime experience by removing the husband’s ability to think independently, by violently separating his head from his body. Makinen describes Angels carter as an, “avant-garde literary terrorist of feminism” (Makinen, 2), and in light of Carter’s treatment of the stereotypical images of women in the gothic this seems an apt description. Carter is violent in her brutal representation of the patriarchal male figure and her answer to defeating men is equally ferocious and sublime.

Stoker, Lewis and Carter have taken the concept of the female gothic and relocated it, through the use of the sublime, in to the image of the fearsome woman.  The public anxiety of the transforming role of women in society allowed Lewis and Stoker to create frightening female characters by playing on the notion of women outside of the social norms. Carter, similarly, used the social unrest surrounding the feminist movement to inform the image of the mother, giving her much of the gothic property often allotted to the male form. Rather than representing women as hysterical, emotional beings, Carter, Stoker and Lewis have represented women as immovable, over-whelming and fearsome images. These three authors have chosen to do so to invoke that ‘enjoyable fear’ that is characteristic of the sublime, however, Carter differs from the others as,s instead of using the sublime-inducing woman to scare her readership, she uses the mother to defeat the patriarchal male figure of the husband. 

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