Sam

** Chapter Questions 5-12 **
1. Chapter 3 gives us an insight into three mysterious women. When Harker first sees the 3 women he feels a huge sexual tension towards them and notices they all have brilliant white teeth. When Stoker describes what happens in this passage he uses soothing language that make you think of sweet and nice things but he counters it as well with Harker feeling a terrible amount of fear towards them. The 3 women have some aspects of the personality that men of the 1890’s had. Men back in those days were the ones to make sexual advantages towards the opposite sex, women were considered to be un-pure if they had slept with men other than her husband in the Victorian Age.   2. The letters between Mina and Lucy shows us the role of the common women in the late eighteen hundreds. Women were very dependent on men and believed they are only to have children and tend to the house. Lucy boasts to Mina how she received three different marriage proposals in one day to Mina, it gives me the idea that Lucy is very flirtatious and beautiful. Mina is devoted to her fiancée and is going to be as much help to Jonathan as she can. Mina is completely different to the three women in Dracula’s castle but Lucy is more flirtatious, this is the only similar trait Lucy shares with the 3 women. ** Gothic Literature **

** Nicely Explained. ** Goth is a term that was applied to various Germanic tribes instrumental to the fall of the Roman Empire in the 4th century. Because the Goths were credited with bringing about the fall of Rome and its classical culture, Renaissance and Enlightenment critics later applied the term Gothic negatively, to mean medieval or that it was considered barbaric. **(**The gothic revival was a reaction to a century of rationalism, empiricism and classicism, but this does not deride the power and wisdom of their movement. Gothic architecture, for example, did not follow the classical ideals of simplicity, unity, and symmetry instead, soaring towers, pointed vaults or arches, flying buttresses, gargoyles and other complicated or wild elements prevailed in churches, castles, and monasteries. Gothic gradually lost its negative meaning and was used to refer to an ancient past, often in a sentimental way.**) Losing your way here.** The significance of political, spiritual and intellectual use in gothic literature was a way the gothic responded to the problems in the 18th to the 20th centuries. **Meaning and grammar not clear** The significance of **__spiritual use__** in gothic literature pointed out some the Goths spiritual uncertainty. One of the things **__the Goths challenged__** was Christianity. The quote “the gothic is seen as a sudden dislocation, challenge to, or loss of faith in the theological interpretation of nature before there was a scientific one to replace it, and there is a clear suggestion that the gothic emanates from a period of spiritual transition and dramatic change in religious outlook” tells us they didn’t believe that god created the world, but that we have evolved from primates. The gothic **__believed__** in the supernatural**/** proof of this is the use of vampires, werewolf’s, ghosts and demons. Ideas about the supernatural came into direct conflict with the rational ideals of the Enlightenment. Politically the Goths reaction to the movements of politics affected what sort of art and literature was produced. The role of the gothic were not always just simply determining the art and literature**/** sometimes gothic ides and feelings were themselves significant influences. The Goths had an influence on the French Revolution as people listened to their thoughts. **A big muddled paragraph. You identify 3 aspects in the opening sentence. Better it have separate paragraphs for each. Easier for you and your readers.** The quote from Fred Botting (from Gothic: The New Critical Idiom) states “Uncertainties about the nature of power, law, society, family and sexuality dominate Gothic fiction … linked to wider threats of disintegration manifested most forcefully in political revolution”. This gives us the view that the gothics had on the French Revolution. Intellectually gothic authors had an abstract way of thinking. Rather than writing the book in the normal way gothic authors explored the supernatural and wrote about things frowned upon by the public at that time. There way of writing caused a lot of conflict between genres and the thoughts of people. Some people thought that this kind of writing was unacceptable and should be band, but others welcomed it as it introduced change to every day literature. Gothic Literature became popular in the late 18th century for its different style to other types of literature. Gothic literature was different because it used elements of dark fiction like death, monsters, ghosts, sex and using the supernatural. This was uncommon in the 18th century as they were different ideas that brought up suspicion and that caused interest and curiosity into the gothic fiction. Gothic literature has many famous books, for example, Dracula written by Bram Stoker, Frankenstein written by Mary Shelly, The Castle of Otranto written by Horace Walpole, The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe and The Monk written by Matthew Lewis. Many of their ideas have inspired other writers to use their ideas; also many of these books have inspired motion pictures like Van Helsing, Frankenstein and Dracula. The Monk: A Romance is a Gothic novel written by Matthew Gregory Lewis, published in 1796. It was written before **Matthew** turned 20 and in the space of 10 weeks. **__The monk__** is about Ambrosio who is a pious, well respected monk in Spain. Ambrosio has a lust for a pupil named Antonia who he later rapes and kills. Ambrosio is given to the hands of the inquisition, and then sentenced to the death sentence but avoids it by selling his soul to the devil. Ambrosio later finds out that Antonia was his sister. This book differed from other gothic novels of the time as it concentrated on the extraordinary and horrendous instead of the romance and because it didn’t explain why these supernatural events happened. This novel when it first came out caused a lot of controversy in the late 18th century as it was a dark story. It would have been highly criticized and even called sacrilegious. This was the first time a priest had been used as a villain; this would later inspire the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The moral of this story seems to be that one’s own sexual wants will have its consequences on that person. This book has a lot of **spiritually in it/** proof of this is “Using magic spells, Matilda aids him in seducing Antonia, whom he later rapes and kills.” Matilda then later turns out to be an instrument of Satan in female human form; this would have been highly criticized as a disgrace to Christianity and caused a stir to the public. The Monk in political terms was thought to be a reaction to the French Revolution. The novel was considered by Marquiz De Sade as a reaction to the 1789 French Revolution, with Lewis using the gothic to express concerns circulating around England in the Romantic Period. **This idea is worth developing. Need more studying in your discussion. Separate out your ideas with paragraphs.** Concerns such as social stability and the misuse of power are some of the issues explored. Intellectually this book was one of the first gothic novels to go this extreme into the dark areas of literature. The use of Satan and having a Monk the villain was out of the ordinary. This way of writing then inspired other authors to take it to the next level and cause some controversy among the public. **Some of your content seems overly simple and general. You want to impress the marker you fully understand your material. You don’t quite convince here.**

__** Q1. Plot overview chapters 1-4. **__ Dracula starts out with several enteries in Jonathan Harker's journal, which goes for the first 4 chapters. The first section introduces Harker, who is a recently promoted English solicitor. Harker travels to Transylvania to sell Count Dracula a house in London. Later on Harker discovers that he is a prisoner and is told by Dracula that he will be staying with him for another month. Harker looks around the castle and sees Dracula running up a wall and has a dream about 3 beautiful women who try to bite Harker but Dracula saves him. In chapter 4 Dracula sets a pack of wolfs on a lady demanding for her baby back and later on in that chapter Harker finds Dracula sleeping in his coffin and hits him with a shovel but dosen't kill him.

__**Q2. Gothic elements: atmosphere/settings**__ "pine woods that seemed in the darkness to be closing down upon us, great masses of greyness" (Page 14) "there were dark, rolling clouds overhead, and in the air the heavy, oppresive sense of thunder" (Page 15) "All at once the wolves began to howl as though the moonlight had some peculiar effect on them" (Page 20) "the driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the moonlight sky."(Page 20)