Women
characters throughout the texts studied in this course have either been exposed
to those in control due their frailty, or characterized as vixens if they hold some
sort of control over other characters. The gothic precept of suspense as a
result of loss of control or unknown fate is seen through the portrayal of
women characters, and their position as sympathetic characters or villains.
There is some fear felt by the reader for the poor innocent girl fleeing to
protect her chastity as well as for the character caught in the snares of an
enchantress. This fear and suspense is due to loss or control of power. Females
are described as either being disadvantaged by their gender and under the rule
of man or taking advantage of their gender and being outside the realm of his
control as something to be feared. The way in which the authors of the texts
studied in this course describe women characterizes them as either the sympathetic
female or the seductress and both can be used as mechanisms for terror or
suspense.
Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto describes its
female characters in terms of chaste maidens and arranges for them to be
objects of obsession from the males in control. The story is of course guided
or essentially started because of Manfred’s obsession with Isabella after his
son’s death. Manfred demands Isabella marry him and uses his position of power
to assert his dominance. Isabella is characterized by her purity for her
rejection of Manfred, “see heaven itself declares against your impious
intentions!”(24). It is established that Isabella is at a loss and under the
rule of not only tyrannical Manfred, but God as well. The concept of control as a tool for suspense
is introduced with Conrad’s death. As Guernica proposes divinity intercedes within the
novel and there is a theme of fatalism because man can’t overcome God. As an
offshoot of this theme the women can’t overcome the male characters and must
suffer along with them as possessions, which is seen through the scene with
Manfred and Isabella. Man as a whole is not the director of his own fate, but
women find their place not only under Divinity’s rule but their male
counterparts. Isabella calls to God, which is the only higher power than
Manfred. Her inability to control her fate causes the motion of the story as
well as the suspense of the novel. Matilda, Isabella, and Hippolita acknowledge
and accept their status below God and man. Matilda speaks of her “dreadful
obedience” to her father. She will obey her father regardless of whether his
actions deserve respect because it is her position as his daughter to do so. In
the same way Hippolita will accept her fate as his wife.
The inability for women to control
their own fate has cultural and societal connections to the time at which the
writings studied in this course were produced. As shown through the Presentation of Women and the Law, women were in reality not on equal terms with man and seen as the
weaker sex. This goes a long way to interpret why women were either portrayed
as frail in the texts or as in control and therefore dangerous. It would not
have been typical for women to govern their own fate, and therefore women would
be stepping outside the guidelines of society to out smart a man. The women who
are portrayed as powerful within the studied texts are generally using their
femininity and attractive qualities to distract the male characters. While they
may be outsmarting their male counterparts they are usually doing it not because
of their own ingenuity but because of their gender.
In direct contrast to the
representation of women by Walpole is Sir Walter Scott’s Glenfinlas. The way in which women have the ability to be successful
seductresses is through their presumed innocence due to their gender. There is
a sort of bait and switch aspect; women were seen as chaste and innocent so in
poems such as this there is a shock that comes with the realization that the
women are in fact using the position their gender affords them to their
advantage. This is in direct contrast to Hippolita as Rose Thassally points out. Hippolita is
taken advantage of because of her sex. She gives up everything she has for the
benefit of her husband, Manfred. In Glenfinlas The Lady of the Wood uses her
femininity to her advantage and controls whom she loves or more accurately whom
she destroys. She doesn’t fall in love because by taking advantage of her
gender she is setting herself apart from the frail women who chase after love.
In Keats’ Lamia, the female character is sympathetic because she is under the
control of a male figure, Apollonius, and love itself. Lamia employs her
advantage as a woman to chase after love. She owes her release from captivity
from the form of a serpent to Hermes who is enamored by a woman, which highlights
the theme of passionate love. This love consumes Lamia and it is because of
this that she is seen in a sympathetic light. She doesn’t control her own fate
because she is subjected to the control of Apollonius, her serpent form, and
the love she desires with Lycius. The opening of the poem establishes that
Lamia is fated for unhappiness, which lends to her being a sympathetic
character. Keats describes the setting with “rushes green, and brakes, and
cowslip’d lawns” (6-7). “The cowslips represent the deities’ rejection from
Fairyland and anticipate the loss of happiness and life that Lamia will
eventually face because of Apollonius’s interference” (Parry 179). She is at
first described as Hermes’ prey: “Her throat was serpent, but the words she
spake Came, as through bubbling honey, for Love’s sake, And thus; while Hermes
on his pinions lay, Like a stood’d falcon ere he takes his prey.” Lamia is
beautiful, and this beauty makes her easy to spot. She is at once identified as
prey to a male and the idea is established that she is a sympathetic character
unable to control her fate. As Alanna points out, Lamia is a dangerous beauty
that temps through her form. Sympathy, however, can be felt for her as she
isn’t in control of her own future and has to await with anxiety the appearance
of Apollonius to return her to misery in her serpent form. John Waterhouse’s
painting of Lamia depicts her in a
sympathetic light:
She looks as
though she is at the disposal of the male figure and almost as if she is
pleading. This coincides with the sympathetic read of her character and the
idea that she is not in control of her own fate.
The
suspense or fear felt in this poem is from the unknown of Lamia’s position. She
is at first a serpent, which gives the image of deception. “She seem’d, at
once, some penanced lady elf, Some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self”(56).
It is this inability to tell whether Lamia is the seductress (the demon’s
mistress) or the frail woman (some penanced lady elf) who was taken advantage
of for her frailty that drives the suspense aspect within the poem. However,
after the realization that Lamia is merely being driven by passionate love
while being held back by her inability to control her form one can see her as a
sympathetic female.
Coleridge’s Christabel presents the character of Geraldine as a damsel in
distress. She is described as a “damsel bright, Dressed in a silken robe of
white” (428). She takes advantage of her femininity as well as the sweet nature
of Christabel to stay in her home with her. Unlike Lamia, Geraldine purposefully
uses her femininity to her advantage as a mechanism to take control of her
situation for evil purposes, which characterizes her as a seductress. Lamia can
be seen as a sympathetic character because she deceives for the purposes of
love that she is unable to obtain due to her circumstances. Geraldine is the
driving force for the suspense of the poem as a symbol of unknown evil. Geraldine
taking advantage of her femininity can be shown in the lines: “And Geraldine in maiden wise Casting down
her large bright eyes, With blushing cheek and courtesy fine She turned from
her Sir Leoline” (575-578). Geraldine seduces Sir Leoline and he is unable to
see when her eyes turn to that of a serpent, he only sees “eyes so innocent and
blue” (614).
Another
aspect of terror present in the poem is the idea that Christabel is innocent
and has no control over Geraldine. This creates juxtaposition between the
portrayal of the sympathetic female character and the evil female character. “The
narrator clearly admires Christabel’s virtue and innocence, but at the same
time, he constantly fears for her safety, as though virtue cannot protect the
possessor from evil” (Berkoben 402). Geraldine describes her being found by
Christabel: “And found’st a bright lady, surpassingly fair; And didst bring her
home with thee in love and in charity” (276-277). Christabel is unaware that
she brought home a woman that in the touch of her “bosom worketh a spell”
(267). It is Christabel’s charitable nature that allowed her to trust
Geraldine, but that nature could possibly be her undoing because it can’t
protect her from the evil that Geraldine seems to embody.
The seduction of man through a woman
taking advantage of her feminity can also be seen in Keats’ La Belle Dame sans Merci. The beautiful
woman depicted in the poem entraps a man through her beauty and leads him to
her “elfin grot” where he dreams of men she has slain before him. Frank
Dicksee’s painting portrays how ardently the man is enraptured with the woman.
Her femininity is obvious with her bright colors and beautiful hair. The man
seems to be under some sort of spell, and the woman is the one in control.
The texts from this genre portray
women as either being taken advantage of or taking advantage of a man. There
isn’t an instance of equal footing for men and women; one always has more
control than the other. This portrayal of women coincides with the idea of
women during the time period that these authors were writing. Women weren’t equal
with man and thus when a woman was in power as depicted in the texts, she is
generally using her gender and her attractive qualities to take control. This
idea was also used as a mechanism of gothic literature to create suspense and
tension within the texts.
Works Cited
Parry, Susan. "Keats's Lamia." The
Explicator 59.4 (2001): 178-9. ProQuest. Web. 8 May 2013.
Berkoben, L. D. "Christabel: A
Variety of Evil Experience." Modern language quarterly (Seattle).
25.4 n. page. Web. 8 May. 2013. <http://libproxy.library.unt.edu:6224/content/25/4/400.short>.
The Broadview Anthology of British
Literature: Volume 4: The Age of Romanticism. 4th ed. London: Broadview Press, 2010. Print
Walpole, Horace.
The Castle of Otranto. New York: Penguin Books, 2001. Print.
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