Big question: How do the structures
of Beloved and Dracula contribute to
the sense of the Supernatural?
Tasks: To assemble a visual of the structure of both novels which
includes use of motifs, Gothic tropes, themes and context
Key vocabulary:
Polyphonic
Transgression
Uncanny
What do the following mean?
Polyphonic
Transgression
Uncanny/Heimlich
In what way are these
words relevant to
Beloved and Dracula?
• Polyphonic: multiple voices
• Transgression: crossing boundaries, uncertainty,
shifting identity
• Uncanny: has to do with a sense of strangeness,
mystery or eeriness. It concerns a sense of
unfamiliarity which appears at the very heart of
the familiar (or vice versa). It’s a disturbance of
the familiar
• Heimlich: literally means “homely” or familiar but
it can also mean concealed, hidden from sight,
secret
Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick summarises the features of
Gothic writing as follows:
• Setting: Often in a Catholic European country. Includes an
oppressive ruin or castle in a wild country
• Story features: a heroine of sensitivity; her impetuous
lover; a tyrannical older man (“with a piercing gaze”) who is
intent on imprisonment, rape and murder
• There is a great interest in: religious institutions, sleeplike
or trancelike states, subterranean spaces and live burial;
doubles; the damaging effect of guilt and the discovery of
family ties;
• Hints of incest
• The form: discontinuous and involuted
• There are likely to be unnatural echoes or silences
• Emphasis placed on the difficulties of communication
Are there any of these in Beloved? Dracula?
Remember these “tropes” can always be “subverted”
19th century belief: Art should have a
moral purpose
• Rise of “realism” in the 19th century (Ibsen, Flaubert). Moving away
from stories about nobility/gods towards those about “real” people
• In real life, good doesn’t always prosper. The kind of ending where
evil is always defeated runs counter to our sense of reality
• One way to deal with this is for a text to function on more than one
level
• Illusion of real world is offered by providing convincing details of
setting and character while suggesting, by means of fantasy, a
significant moral dimension. This could be called a “realist
aesthetic”
• The return of the Gothic in the 19th century is part of a renewed
interest in the irrational (dream, fantasy, multiplication of the self).
For instance: Frankenstein; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Portrait of
Dorian Grey
We can reduce “mythical” stories to
two sentences, for instance:
• A. Frankenstein makes a living creature out of bits of
corpses
• B. The creature turns against him and runs amok
You try it for Dracula and Beloved . . .
• A. Dracula, a monster,
sets out to create more
vampires
• B. After initial success,
his attempts are
eventually defeated and
he is exterminated
• A. The ghost of a baby
murdered by her
mother returns to haunt
her
• B. The ghost is defeated
and in the process her
sister is freed
What do Frankenstein; Dr Jekyll and
Mr Hyde; The Portrait of Dorian Grey,
Dracula and Beloved have in common?
• Monsters
• Creation
• Transgressing the boundaries
between life and death
Narrative structure
• Omniscient narrator is an authoritative, guiding
voice
• What happens when you take it away?
• Gaps, puzzles (voices not heard; newspaper
articles, ships’ logs)
• Anxieties, uncertainties, distrust
• First person narrator gives immediacy and
increases the sense of horror
• Polyphonic text/multiple narrators creates
confusion and distrust
Quilts and slavery
We need to remember before we
move on. Only by remembering
the past can there be liberation
from its burden.
Memory is by its very nature
fractured and unclear
Time to work now!!!
Beloved: Blu, Michelle, Tobe, Maya
• 1. Recreate Beloved as a linear, chronological
narrative
• 2. Create a structure “map”
Dracula: Lachlan, Megan, Ghenwa
1. Create a structure map
Beloved: Part 1 Section 1
Heading: (see following slide)
Themes
Motifs used
What happens POV
How is their
voice
conveyed?
Effect
Past
The taking of
the milk
Present
Gothic tropes
Key moments,
page numbers
and quotes
Context
Dracula: Pt 1
Themes
Motifs used
What happens Narrator/Form How is their
voice
conveyed?
Gothic tropes
Key moments,
page numbers
and quotes
Effect
Context
Headings for Beloved
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Chaos
Rememorying
Exorcising the past
Loss of Self
Unburying the past
Looking to the future
Reclamation of Self
Atonement
Understanding
Order
resroration