Notes on FRANKENSTEIN
It was proposed that Victor is
the scientist while Walton is romantic. However, it depends of how you
understand Romanticism. If you think of the sublime. Victor Frankenstein is the
one who goes for the sublime (his quest is Napoleonic), while Walton can be
seen as a “classical” figure. In this sense Victor is romantic. // Walton x
Frankenstein (double)
GOTHIC X BAROQUE:
English renascence is a bit baroque,
Shakespeare was alive during the baroque, he does not obey the classical rules,
he is excessive, packs in too many discourses. French classicism (Carvel,
Racine) do not like Shakespeare excesses. // Cloning as a bad word (Mobile
cloning, credit card cloning, etc)
DRACULA:
John
Polidori wrote The Vampire the first story of that sort. Sheridan Le Fann writes
Carmilla references to homosexuality, fear of giving yourself up to strong
feelings; she seduces a girl but, eventually, gets caught in the end.
Bram
Stoker’s Dracula deals with unbelievable things, structurally complex it is a
genre which needs validation. This validation is shown in the narrative in
things as short-hand writing (indicative of business – like language) and it is
still linked to the women work-force in the job market. Type writers,
telegraphs, etc are also indicatives of this making of the “thrush”,
validation. This come in the sense of making records, people work: contracts,
solicitors, and business. The novel is put together in a way that nobody (no
narrator) takes responsibility for it. The novel ends up with Mina’s account,
which could mean that all the documents weren’t true.
MODERN X MEDIEVAL (Associated with foreign lands)
First
time a novel measures up England to the continental countries (unlike the
Gothic novelists). It takes a catholic man to take care of a catholic threat (primitiveness).
There
is a super imposed sexuality in the females, at the time, critics did not
acknowledge the sexuality in the novel or either did not want to talk about it.
Whether one or the other, as fares Victorian Society goes, it was a way of having
your kicks and not having to mention it, which might explain the success of
this book.
The
Catholic witch-doctor is necessary to cure the savage/primitive in the realm of
the city. Stage accents are used to depict different nationalities.
Characters
in Dracula are always around a dinner table. Oral pleasure associated
with the society, characters stuck in oral phase? Dracula does both the orally
the phallic. Lucy gets symbolic raped (stake) and the body is mutilated.
Dracula invades England, buys property there.
He gets there on a Russian vessel and he is described as having an aquiline
nose, there are heaps of gold in his room, he is associated with the Jew.
History rectifies the novel, play (thrill by). Jew echoes the question of the
blood/Christ/chuch.
Jonathan
introduces Dracula to paper money, the new economics. Dracula bleeds money 2
scenes: going down the wall with black cape flowing behind him (?) and a scene
where he is among old type gold coins from all over the world. (L’Argent – E.
Zola). But Dracula is not the old Jew banker he’s a transitional type of
financer, (but also the foreigner and aristocrat), who must be stopped before
he learns, everything. (Prejudice xenophobia. Fiction slightly out of control.
Violence in the books, Dracula guards the frontiers of the orient (greater
evil) against the contamination (fear of contamination).
H.Ibsen → Ghost
Characteristics of English Modernity:
Frames:
England → other countries
Protestantism → Catholicism
Science → Superstition
Invasion
of non-modernity into Modern England the solution is to attack this “antiquity”
with its own weapon (Van Helsing). Dracula is the invader from the past. IN
Frankenstein the scientific development brings fear of the future.
(Frankenstein trying to create life, while women are supposed to). Only
entities, like the church or women, have the legal right to create (Gothic x
Religion) 19th century trying to be naturalistic/scientific but
still co-opting withhold costumes, such as going to church. Romanticism had a
direct relationship with God, did not need to go to an establishment (church).
Jan
Watt decides the novel begins in the 18th century in England.
Bakhtin mentions the Alexandrian Greek novel. And there’s the Spanish Model. Is
there such a thing as a gothic novel? Tudor in decidability.
Theodor Storm – Germany x Denmark (Shimmed
Rider) - dam, burial, imposture, all
side dishes of the Gothic. Natural elements – destructive power of nature,
Gothic landscape hostile relation, sublime which is however valued in the sense
human beings do not control nature, impulse for domination, hubris in trying to
dominate nature. Cautionary tale. Acknowledge the power of nature “appropriate”
→ co-opt, adapt, “bourgeoisie order” → not in good use.
The
Bourgeois order tame the Gothic, reasonable because most of us prefer order,
fictional control although acknowledging the power of nature.
