“How could it feel so good when it should be disgusting and painful?” (Butler 75) These words spoken by Theodora, an elderly white woman, about her symbiotic and sometimes sexual relationship with Shori, a black “elfin little girl” (Butler 75), express the societal fear that Octavia Butler exposes in her characterization of Shori as a monster. Shori is a monster because her very existence is a testament to the blurring of historically concrete lines. She is androgynous, vampire and human, black and white, a child with adult strength and urges. Shori’s relationship with her human symbionts and other Ina usually defies normal standards of behavior and acceptance by using pleasure instead of pain as a mechanism of control and abandoning traditional ideas about gender, sexuality, and crossbreeding.
One fear that Octavia Butler illustrates in the relationship, between Shori and her human symbionts, is the overwhelming influence that pleasure has over human beings. The euphoric feeling inspired by the venom of the Ina combined with several health benefits cause humans to leave their normal ways of life and adapt to a foreign culture. Brook, a symbiont that Shori inherited from her father articulates this point when she says, “They take over our lives. And we let them because they give us so much satisfaction and…just pure pleasure.” (Butler 127) Another example of the use of pleasure as a means of domination is visible in the way that humans become highly sensitive to the suggestions of Ina once they have bitten them. It is only after Shori bites her proposed assassin that she is able to question him. After exposure to her venom, the man has no choice but to answer her questions. This embodies the fear that people act against their...
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...cause she is, a crossbreed Shori is stronger than humans, more sensitive to smell and sound than humans are and less susceptible to the elements. She possesses qualities that make her superior to regular Ina, She can stay awake during the day, sleeps lighter, and her dark skin is not as vulnerable to sunburn. It is Shori’s enhanced human and Ina capabilities that allow her to keep the Gordon family safe against attackers. The fact that most Ina see Shori’s crossbreeding as a help and not a hinderence questions the American society’s fear of miscegenation and genetic engineering.
The Ina and their symbionts represent an alternate society of “other” people because they allow the lines between monster and friend, male and female, black and white, as well as vampire and human to become obscure.
Work Cited
Butler, Octavia E. Fledgling. New York: Seven Stories, 2005.
...sitive depiction of their sexual relationship. For Mina, however, renunciation of Dracula's evil must include the renunciation of her own physical needs and desires. The roles played by social mores and conceptions of gender and sexuality are, in the end, more than incidental. Indeed, the difference between Victorian England and 1990s America causes the subtle -- but significant -- valuation of the connections between good and evil and women and sexuality in two in many ways similar texts.
J. Gordon Melton, in the excerpt “Sexuality and the Vampire” published in his The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead (1998), explains that vampires have a sexual appearance that started from their origin in Dracula. Melton supports his statement by analyzing the monsters' transition to sexual beings through the stories of Dracula’s desires, multiple countries’ erotic tales revolving around vampire-like beings, the manifestation of sensual themes in literary, stage, and screen works, and their current evolution of the once terrified immortals to loved heroes. The purpose of this essay was to outline the seductiveness of the written immortal creatures in order to explain the fanged-mammals’ appeal beyond their terrifying monster abilities.
Elizabeth Bathory is known by many different names; ‘The Bloody Lady of Čachtice’, ‘The Blood Countess’, ‘Countess Dracula’, and not without reason. In the 16th century this murderess became obsessed with achieving mastery over nature; the countess had forsaken her humanity by drinking the blood of virgins for vitality and bleeding them dry to bathe in it for her skin to be clear of imperfections and signs of aging. Often the vain become delusioned that beauty and youth preserves the body forever, when in fact, life can just as easily be ripped away young than it is when old. With torture and a side of cannibalism, Countess Bathory was not the poster-woman for mental health, but her fear of death was what drove her to go to such extremes. Humans will go to endless lengths to maintain the illusion of mastery over nature and control over life and death. Throughout Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood explores human nature and puts forth that humans are driven by knowledge and fear of their own mortality. She argues that humans seek to play a divine role to control their own fate and in the process, sacrificing morals and ethics to quell that fear.
Octavia Butler’s trilogy Lilith’s Brood contains a myriad of characters who would be marked as “different” in contemporary American society, whether it is because of their race, gender, sex, or species. Their differences are often the catalyst for conflict between others who see themselves as more normal and, therefore, better and higher ranked in the human hierarchy. Butler’s disdain for human hierarchical tendencies is clear in Lilith’s Brood as she often calls human intelligence and hierarchy “the human contradiction”. Using the protagonists Lilith, Akin, and Jodahs, Butler criticizes the misconceptions formulated about race, sex, and gender and, through their interactions with others, underlines the illogical harassment that often derives from the fear of what we do not yet understand.
What defines an individual’s racial characteristics? Does an individual have the right to discriminate against those that are “different” in a specific way? In Octavia Butler’s works, which are mostly based on themes that correlate to one another, she influences the genre and fiction in ways that bring light to the problems of societies history. Through Kindred and the Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler examines themes of community, racial identification, and racial oppression through the perspective of a black feminist. In each novel, values and historical perspective show the hardships that individuals unique to an alien world have to face. Through the use of fictional works, Butler is able to delve into historical themes and human conditions, and with majority of works under the category of science fiction, Butler is able to explore these themes through a variety of settings. This essay will discuss two of Butler’s popular works, Kindred and the Parable of Sower, and will interpret the themes of women, race, independence, and power throughout the two novels.
...rmities, society is reminded of its own abnormalities. In doing so, greater care is taken to prevent the consequences of monstrosity. Exploring monsters in literature and film, therefore, becomes necessary in reinforcing ideals of normalcy (160). The attempt to subvert this monstrosity the social anxieties of aging, beauty and the fear of death remains constant. The immortal and eternally beautiful monster defies human boundaries, limitations, and weaknesses of the physical body. In Le Fanu’s Carmilla, the vampire is constructed as the ideal feminine body, invulnerability and immune to decay. The monstrous vampire body, capable of destabilizing normalcy within society, is both deformed and eternally beautiful. The monster presents the ideal subject to compare and contrast with humankind, providing a safe space to confront and explore society’s insecurities and fears.
Bram Stoker and Sheridan Le Fanu’s texts, Dracula (1898) and “Carmilla” (1872), use gothic tropes in similar ways to captivate readers with horror and terror. This essay will illustrate how, in comparison, both texts include gothic tropes: the New Woman, sexuality and setting, in order to provoke emotions and reactions from the readers. To achieve this, this essay will focus on the women that challenge traditional gender roles and stereotypes, and deconstruct each text in regards to the very strong undertones of homosexuality; specifically between Carmilla and Laura, and Dracula and Harker. By discussing the harshness and darkness of the environments described, including ruined castles and isolated landscapes; this essay will also explore the
While Bram Stoker’s Dracula has been described as the “quintessence of evil creatures we meet in our everyday lives” and “the Darkness” in the hearts of men (Herbert, 2004, pp. 62), Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight
Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, is a highly controversial work of fiction that is still being read for the first time today. Dracula touches many different categories including; sci-fi horror to 1800’s English romance literature. This is the main reason why the novel Dracula can be analyzed in many different ways using many different literary theories. The theory which stuck out most to me while reading this novel was the Feminist Theory. The Feminist Theory cannot be used to analyze Dracula as a whole novel, but it can be used in order to analyze the different female characters throughout the book. Therefore, Bram Stoker’s Dracula can be analyzed through the feminist theory by focusing on the characters Mina Harker, Lucy Westenra, and the three brides of Dracula.
Over the course of cinematic history, many filmmakers have attempted to recreate the chilling, unprecedented world of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Arguably very few have succeeded, for the majority of directors tend to avoid the pervasive sexuality inherent in the novel. It is a difficult task to achieve, considering the blatant imagery surrounding sex and vampirism, such as the reproduction following a vampiric encounter and the phallocentric nature of the violence committed both by and against these creatures: penetration is involved in their hunting, and one must impale them with a stake in order to destroy them. Readers are thereby forced to admit that Dracula is, in fact, a highly eroticized piece of literature, though whether or not Stoker himself was aware of this suggestiveness, we cannot be sure. The most successful effort at capturing that sexual energy on film has been Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 movie, Bram Stoker's Dracula. In fact, it has often been proposed that Coppola’s version is too carnally focused in comparison to the original work, which leads a viewer to wonder about the purpose in this overt sexualization. It can be concluded that adding copious amounts of eroticism to the film is directly related to Coppola’s strive to depict Count Dracula as more human rather than monster, and sexuality in his film serves as a balance so that the lines between good and evil are blurred. Evidence for this deduction is found in three scenes in particular: Jonathan’s seduction by Dracula’s vampiric wives, Lucy’s demonic transformation, and Mina and Van Helsing’s relationship during the climax of the story.
The Ina and their symbionts represent an alternate society of “other” people because they allow the lines between monster and friend, male and female, black and white, as well as vampire and human to become obscure. Octavia Butler’s presentation of Shori and the Ina provokes readers to question lines between species, genders, and races. Through Butler's creation of a new prototype of monster readers and society have the ability to explore the challenges and fears of the evolving contemporary society.
Dr. Manganelli depicts a mixed-race woman, which was a figure of intense interest to Victorian writer Charles Kingsley, who wrote in the voice of the mixed-race female and imagines her as “an embodiment of undisciplined desire, at once dangerous and deeply alluring to men” (Manganelli 501). Marie is already pushed into a performative role, when her sexuality is connected to her African blood, which makes her into a spectacle for white suitors. While the white females were safely shielded away from the white men looking for a sexual adventure, women of African descent were first displayed at the auction block and therefore already performing, however involuntarily.
Bloodchild by Octavia Butler is seen as a story about the relationship between alien oppressors and a group oppressed humans. It has also been described as a love story between the human narrator and the chief alien. In her afterword, she describes “Bloodchild” as “a love story between two very different beings,” “a coming of age story” and a “pregnant man story.”(Hardy) However, when one comparing Butler’s “Bloodchild” to Simone De Beauvoir’s essay “The second sex”, similarities surrounding the social issues of gender inequality arise. The circumstances of the narrator mirror social issues affecting modern women. Bloodchild by Octavia Butler examines the dynamics of power between the sexes; by switching the gender roles in the story, she show how women are marginalized in society.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula illustrated fears about sexual women in contrast to the woman who respected and abided by society’s sexual norms. Joseph Sheridan LeFanu’s “Carmilla” represented not only the fear of feminine sexuality, but also the fear of sexuality between women. John William Polidori’s “The Vampyre” showed society’s fear of sexuality in terms of the seductive man who could “ruin” a young girl.These texts are representative of vampire stories in the Victorian Era, and will be the focus here.
Conclusively, while Bram Stokers novel Dracula is seen as a gothic and horror story, I argue that it is a novel that seeks to address female sexuality directly. Seen through numerous passages, Stoker confronts and battles the views between sexuality during the Victorian era though his genius of characterization of characters present within the novel. As it seems highly intentional to me, I respect the way in which he criticizes and critiques upon female sexuality by bringing into light new ideas regarding female desires. When contrasting his text upon today’s culture, the differences to how one perceived the vampire has changed significantly.