Gothic heroes : the monster within
It is convenient to dismiss the gothic villains within as invasive and is a threat that the dominant community desires to expel. By invasive, I refer to the intrusive way in which the villains or monsters posit an abnormality within the heteronormative hegemony of the Victorian period. The heteronor...
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| Format: | Final Year Project |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10356/59148 |
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| Institution: | Nanyang Technological University |
| Language: | English |
| Summary: | It is convenient to dismiss the gothic villains within as invasive and is a threat that the dominant community desires to expel. By invasive, I refer to the intrusive way in which the villains or monsters posit an abnormality within the heteronormative hegemony of the Victorian period. The heteronormative hegemony sets the framework of the balance that the heroes vow to protect since any breach of it is deemed transgressive and threatening to order. By using this framework, any foreign body outside the hegemonic is abnormal, or queer. The gothic hero becomes the person who eventually overcomes the gothic villain. The texts that inform this inquiry will be Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Sarah Waters’s Affinity and three of Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories, William Wilson, Ligeia and The Fall of the House of Usher. Focusing on Gothic Literature brings to mind theories of the abject, the uncanny, and the motivations of ritual, because these realms of study ground the motivations for why the horror of gothic novels simultaneously compels and revolts us. Delving into these theories point at the doubling effect of the hero upon the villain and vice versa; so my thesis proposes that they are essentially the same being. |
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