When he finally he completes his monster, we see again another description of his lab. “It was on a dreary night of November that I finally completed my toils. It was nearly one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the pane, and my candle was nearly burnt out.” Then he goes on to describe his first glance at his monster, what he first perceives of him as the creature opens his eyes. “I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form?” Already we get a picture of the monster. We can tell from what Frankenstein is saying that the creature is not what he expected it to be. “His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great god! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, the seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion and straight black lips”. This gives us a quite emotional description of the monster and what his features look like. Frankenstein obviously does not like what he has created because of its hideous features.
This was the beginning of every monster to ever appear in a horror film, ugly. Even today, advertisers, film makers, even story writers still sometimes have some reference to this book, to this monster, and that paragraph is where it all stems from.
Also the settings where Shelley takes us are also very gothic. “The abrupt sides of vast mountains were before me: the icy wall of the glacier overhung me: a few shattered pines were scattered around: and the solemn silence of this glorious presence-chamber of imperial nature was broken only by the brawling waves or the fall of some vast fragment, the thunder sound of the avalanche or the cracking, reverberated along the mountains, of the accumulated ice, which, though the silent working of immutable jaws was ever and anon rent and torn, as if it had been a play thing in their hands.” We get a mixed description of chaos and destruction here but also some of harmony and grace that the mountains seem on have on Frankenstein. He says “solemn silence”, this give us a feel of complete and utter isolation and loneliness. He also says “the silent working of immutable jaws”. This gives a sense that the mountains are alive and he can feel the presence of them as he walks through the valley.
We also get another description of this bleak setting when Frankenstein confronts his monster in the mountains. “For some time I sat upon a rock that overlooks the sea of ice. A mist covered both that and the surrounding mountains. The surface is very uneven, rising like the waves of a troubled sea, descending low, and interspersed by riffs that sink deep.” This also gives us another idea of what the setting looks like but I don’t think this is the only meaning behind this description.
I think the sea of ice represents his mind, and the mist is what is stopping him from thinking logically and reasonably. The surface of his mind is also very uneven and the troubled waves represent what we are about to witness and the anger that is building up inside of him.
Shortly after Mary Shelley released Frankenstein Bram Stoker published Dracula. Aside from Frankenstein, Dracula has got to be the most renowned horror story to have been told. One of the scariest books in history, Dracula is nevertheless misunderstood. Our civilization has obviously moved on from the victorian era. We think of it as somehow old fashioned, out of the time, and ourselves as modern. But when Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897, the Victorian era was modern
Stoker meant to make the book more frightening than most books by bringing a horror that was long forgotten into a modern, superstitious world. Again aside with Frankenstein this has got to be THE most gothic piece of text ever written. It contains blood, horror, evil seductresses, suspense and of course the count himself. This book has spawned many remakes, probably the most famous being film in . This film was hugely successful all due to the gothic horror witch started in Henry Walpole’s Castle of Otranto.
The piece of text we have been given is a section where Jonathon Harker has been locked in his chamber by the count. He decides to have a sleep for a couple of hours but things don’t go as he planned. The basic outline is that he has a dream (which may not have been just a dream) of three beautiful women who enter the room and talk of who will "kiss" him first. Jonathon is simultaneously full of fear and lust, and does not move but continues to watch the women through half-closed eyes. One of the women leans in and begins to bite at his neck, when the Count appears suddenly and forces the women back. Outraged, the Count tells the women that Harker belongs to him. He promises them that once he is through with Jonathon, the women can have him, and then he gives them a small bag that moves as if a child is inside of it. Horrified, Jonathon loses consciousness.
The scene with the three women is one of the novel's most famous moments. By making there be three women instead of just one, Stoker creates a similarity with established myths and old wives tales. The image of the three evil women reflects on the three witches in Macbeth, as well as to the three witch sisters in the Greek myth of Perseus. Harker, a modern English businessman, is encountering an evil that is ancient and in pure. We are mixed up in a world of stories and fiction.
The scene also shows the vampire's power as one that is extremely sensual and sexual. “There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth.” This shows us that she is clearly desirable but he is wary of her sense of, almost mischief . He also uses animals to describe her, and of only animal eat and drink blood.
Putting fear and desire together is one of the central themes of this piece of text we have. “I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips”. Even as the vampire approaches his throat, Jonathon's terror is mixed with lust. “….and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one's flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer, nearer. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there”. He is aware that something is not right but he is lost in ecstasy and lust for what he expects from this girl. He doesn’t faint, but he doesn’t try to escape.
The scene reverses views of rape, which for a book of this time is very advanced. This time, it is a male who faces a female rapist. To bring the gap between the sexual acts and the vampire's bite closer, the act of draining Jonathon's blood is described by the female vampires as a "kiss." The scene relates sin with sexuality, making the vampire’s evil and lust, joined and that relates to their society then who were all “no sex before marriage” and “sex is a sin”. In way this could relate to our society still, with prostitutes being on the streets and under age sex. But the scene also shows the vampires' degraded status in a way that is erotic for us, particularly us males. Although Stoker makes it clear that the vampires' lusts are definitely in pure and evil, their erotic power has been one of the novel's selling points from its first publication to the present day.
The next piece of text is called The Tell-tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe. The story covers a period of approximately eight days with most of the important action occurring each night around midnight. The location is the home of an elderly man in which the narrator has become a caretaker. This story contains a nameless narrator, an old man and the police who enter near the end of the story after the mention, that they were called by a neighbor whose suspicions had been aroused upon hearing a scream in the night. The narrator becomes the true focus of the tale. I think Poe never really took the time to sit and concentrate on the character him or herself. He never described the character, took the time to give him a name or even a gender. He only describes him as “I” or “Me”. When reading it I assumed that the narrator is a male mainly because it is hard to imagine a woman doing such a deed but also because the author is male, using a first person perspective. However, this story can also be the same when the deranged caretaker appears as a woman. Poe might have never really cared if they were male or female but there could have been a different way of looking at it. It could it be that this was no accident or it was something that he thought everyone would guess or understand. Also it could have been that Poe was creating a story that people could interpret in two different ways. The story could be changed simply by imagining this disgusting and mad deed being committed by a woman.
Poe writes this story from the perspective of the murderer of the old man. If you create a situation where the murderer tells the story, the overall impact of the story is greater than if it was and overview. The narrator, in this particular story, adds to the overall effect of horror by continually stressing to the reader that he or she is not mad, and tries to convince us of that fact by how carefully this brutal crime was planned and executed.
Poe's story is a case of violence that occurs as the result of a madman’s fear. To the narrator that fear is represented by the old man's eye. Through the narrator, Poe describes this eye as being “pale blue with a film over it”, and “resembling that of a vulture”. This eye is not in any way (or so we see it) harmful or provocative to this narrator. It is a phobia that provokes the dark side, and eventually drives the narrator to madness.
The belief in the evil eye dates back to ancient times and even today. In Greek mythology, A giant was killed and his eye removed (I think). This eye was used to destroy thousands of men during battle because as soon as they looked at it they died on the spot. I think it was called the “eye of Bahl”. This belief exits everywhere over the world and is used with out knowing it, so it is irony that we assign the evil eye as the cause of misfortunes that we cannot explain or illnesses of any kind.
To protect himself from the power of the eye, in Greek mythology a warrior threw a spear through the dead centre of the eye, therefore rendering himself immune. This eye could still be used against everyone else except him. In this case the evil eye does not kill but merely drives him insane causing him in effect to do what the Greek warrior did and try to destroy the eye.
We are a balance between good and evil. Most of the time we manage to control this balance from tipping on to the evil, however, when there is something to “tilt the scales” the evil side comes out. This dark side is different for every person including our friend the narrator. What may push someone “over the edge” will not necessarily have the same effect on another person. In this case, it is the “evil eye” of the old man that makes the narrator's go physco. It is this fear which brings out the worst side in people, and eventually leads our narrator to murder. The narrator plans, executes and conceals the crime, however, what he/she hides in side himself he/she cannot control and of course he/she lets slip. The narrator tells us of a disease that has heightened his/her senses” “Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heavens and in the earth. I heard many things in hell.” The narrator repeatedly insists that he/she is not mad, however we soon realise that the fear of the vulture eye has made him/her mad, and has now become a victim to the evil side. Also in this quote he/she mentions “many things in hell”. This could also be associated with the gothic theme. Hell is do with evil, death and destruction. A place were Satan rules and everyone that has committed sin must go. This place is full of flames and chaos. This manic macabre can be found in lots of literature today and as I have shown (especially in Dracula) way back when gothic horror first began.
