The Gothic Text

1
The Gothic Text
2
Narrative Terminology

• Plot
• Narrator
• Style ? How is a story told?
• Structure ? How is the story organised?
• Textuality ? the construction of the narrative
• Intertextuality ? allusions to external texts

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THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE

• Langauge is a system of signs. Semiotics imply a
  sign / signifier represents a meaning /
  signified.
• But often a signifier may have multiple meanings.
  Thus, the accuracy of language is often
  indefinite.
• Imply a secret code e.g. shorthand, dialects.
• Spoken Voice vs Written Text - Mental Image ?
  symbolic representation/relationship
• What is said and what is meant/implied and who
  says it. Results in misinterpretation.
• Understatement and overstatements e.g. detail in
  staking scene vs Minas post-wedding sexual
  initiation.
• In the beginning was the Word and the Word was
  with God, and the Word was God (John 11)
• Language as key to meaning/knowledge/information
  and therefore power.

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THE READING WRITING CONNECTION

• The author-narrator character
• Characters both writers and readers
• Characters as narrators who do not understand the
  full significance of their experiences e.g. Mina
  failure to grasp significance of her own
  experience which is apparent to reader.
• Focus on how events are being recorded
• Skeptical characters lead readers to accept
  events when provided evidence
• Author as God -- The idea of creation and
  reproduction
• As an observer observing herself, Jane is
  author/narrator/character, the detached narrating
  self/the involved narrated self, Jane
  experiencing then-child/reminiscing now-adult

5
The reliability of the text

• subjective witnesses vs objective reality
• Single event may be reported by different
  characters in different ways
• Factual Preface vs Open Epilogue in D
• Handwritten or phonographic (p 284)
• Suspicious paranoid reading Trust the tale not
  the teller.

6
Why do we write?

• We write to be read -- Narrative implies
  ordering, organising experience into meaningful
  form
• We write to plot -- Involves a manipulative
  withholding of information and/or the
  self-conscious staging of its revelation at the
  moment when it will carry the greatest force
• We write to prove what happened happened -- A
  record of events, partly to convince themselves.
  Not rely on abstract memory but on collation of
  accounts. Effort to relive or make sense of the
  past.
• We write to hear ourselves think -- Introspective
  reflection duplicates self by displacing self.
  The self who writes and the self written about.
  Intimacy between narrator and reader as it allows
  readers access to internal workings and secret
  feelings of character.
• We write to stay sane. To normalise strange into
  discourse of order. Distance allows writer to
  confront what he cannot accept. Therapeutic.
• Spoken word vs written word ? Fixity of text vs
  fluidity of imagination.

7
Writing is defining.

• To define what cannot be defined
• Transcribe boundaries around the uncanny to
  define is to limit (Oscar Wilde)
• Creates certainty and make concrete the
  intangible.
• To know thy enemy (Sun Tzu)
• All big and little, must go down perhaps at
  the end the little things may teach us most
• What I can define is contained and understood.
• Dracula sees writings as threat to existence as
  it reduces him from an otherworldly entity to
  something predictable and defeatable. Accounts
  are recorded, collated and duplicated. Dracula
  attempts to destroy records.
• To assert and maintain community
• Creates a reading circle that excludes Dracula.
  A safe and mutual bond of disclosure and
  confidence.

8
The Gothic Text as Fragmented

• Intertextuality
• Multiplicity
• Self-reflexivity

9
Multiplicity

• Diverse array of narrators, genres, texts and
  languages ? a collage / pastiche
• does not originate from any one source
• Multiplicity of voices ? Bakhtins dialogic
  polyphonic text of heteroglossia ? no master
  discourse or supreme voice -- voices subverts and
  challenge each other
• It is difficult to summarise the plot of the
  novel as it is important to know not only what is
  said but who is saying it and to whom.

10
The epistolary style

• Not realistic to be writing all the time yet
  realistic record of everyday life
• Immediacy and urgency to the moment and under
  threat like a CNN Gulf War Report
• Personal access into characters but no
  identification with single protagonist
• Narrated collectively yet Narrative unreliability
  
• Failures in judgement, lack of self-knowledge,
  subjective and limited
• Second-hand information e.g. log translated by
  Russian consul, transcribed by local journalist
• Authenticity
• Not isolated individual but independent accounts
  of all

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Fragmentation of epistolary style

• Narrative is fragmented and disjunctive
• Filled with gaps and silences how much is
  taking place in between letters?
• One POV is favoured and supercedes another to
  tell story
• Narrator records only what he has experienced
  and often fails to analyse their own experience
• Diminished individual traits esp the men who
  begin to sound alike and speak with one voice.
• Dracula never seen objectively and never
  permitted to speak
• Only described through eyes of enemies e.g what
  are his thoughts when killing?
• Moreover, his actions take place offstage

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• Besides the melodrama and theatricality, Dracula
  is a code book holding a secret. Only the reader
  has access to all the accounts at any one time
  and is invited to interpret the events, thus
  participating in the novel.
• Mythopoesis the making of myths any kind of
  writing that draws upon older myths or resembles
  myths in subject matter or imaginative scope
• Important note DO NOT mix archetypal / mythic
  conventions with Gothic conventions.

13
Intertextuality and allusion

• There are 37 Biblical and 11 Shakespearean
  allusions and references to over 20 writers in
  JE.
• Allusions to external texts contribute to the
  texture of the narrative infusing the fantastic
  into the realism of the novel
• As a young child, Janes range of texts includes
  fairy tales and childhood fireside folklore. In
  this way, allusions to Cinderella, Little Red
  Riding Hood and Bluebeard layer the plot with
  parallel undertones and archetypal contrasts.
  Each specific reference to an outside text casts
  a shadow text that lurks beneath the veneer of
  the main text. Within the main, realistic text
  there exists another non-realistic one,
  camouflaged and concealed, but constantly
  present. This gives the reader a sense that the
  text contains a secret that has to be unlocked.

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• Allusions draw attention to the role of the
  narrator and to the potential of alternative
  plots and meanings
• Our ability to recognise these allusions also
  give us a sense of elitism and identification
  with Jane. These references transmit metaphoric
  and thematic meanings with respect to character.
  More is said about character motivation in Jane's
  dismissal of Johnsons Rasselas as "dull to my
  trifling taste" (JE 82) or in St John's symbolic
  gift of Scott's Marmion than if mere words were
  used. A familiarity with this background of texts
  enhances the appreciation of the reading of Jane
  Eyre but it also generates a collection of
  parallel alternative narratives that compete with
  the main text.
• Allusions make us aware of the creative process
  of the narrative
• The Gothic text exhibits its acute awareness of
  its diverse literary origins and the rules of
  conventional literature and then self-consciously
  flouts them. The narrative strategy of the Gothic
  is to employ familiar conventions to build a
  common-ground with the readers before using them
  as a platform to further extend the bounds of the
  Gothic text.

15

• Allusions are used to create character
• Jane is perceived to be a strange "almost
  unearthly thing". To Rochester, Jane has "the
  look of another world" and is a "mocking
  changeling fairy-born and human-bred".
  Throughout the novel, she is, in turns, a "witch,
  sorceress", a "fairy, and come from Elf-land",
  and a "malicious elf, sprite". In this way, Jane,
  who is the most accessible character to the
  reader because she is the narrator, is given an
  aura of mystery.
• Allusions are used to create a sense of
  other-worldliness
• Fairy tales, folklore, evocation of supernatural
  images highlights this magical fantastic element
  other world of Gothic fantasy Gothic fantasy
  becomes Gothic horror.

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Other forms of intertextuality

• External Texts and Shadow Sub-texts ?
  Intertextuality
• Brontë's meticulous interface of sub-texts is
  deliberate to highlight the creative process of
  the narrative ? potential of alternative plots
  and hidden meanings.
• 1. Faces as texts ? phrenology and physiognomy
• 2. Pictures as texts ? in books and Jane's art as
  projection of psyche
• Body as texts ? courtship in visual exchanges and
  gazes
• "I read as much in your eye (beware, by the by,
  what you express with that organ I am quick at
  interpreting its language)"
• Images as texts ? reliance on images to convey
  theme/concepts

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Self-reflexivity

• Self-reflexive ? consciously aware of the acts of
  reading and writing and the relationship between
  narrator and reader explains its stylistic
  methods and flaunts its textuality. By telling us
  that This is a text I am writing and you are
  reading it, the reader is conscious of the
  fictional artificiality of the work.
• The author-reader relationship writing process
  stresses artificiality of novel itself

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The self-awareness of Jane

• Awareness of genre - "this is not to be a regular
  autobiography".
• Range of genres Bildungsroman, Gothic romance,
  social satire, governess treatise and "adult
  fairy tale complete with a happily ever after
  ending" (Ronald 178).
• Awareness of reader apostrophes to the Reader
• encourages intimacy and trust, but this hinders
  the reader from identifying or sympathising with
  anyone except Jane.
• Her apostrophes consciously call the reader's
  attention from the events of the narration to the
  reader/writer relationship and the act of
  storytelling itself. This creates a double
  perspective with the reader watching the writer
  in the task of producing the narrative. The
  narrative consciousness of Jane is demonstrated
  when she relates her dreams to both Rochester and
  the reader concurrently.
• Awareness of story-telling and of herself as
  story-teller.

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JANE AS NARRATOR

• Her voice is her self. Her narrative is her story
  and is, thus, an expression of her identity.
• A portrait of an artist tracing the maturing art
  of Jane the author-narrator
• The narrative, the demonstration of Jane's
  ability to express herself, becomes the means by
  which Jane's self controls and dominates the
  characters in her story.

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Structure the framed tale

• Multiple narratives
  e.g D
• Embedded narratives i.e. a
  tale within a tale e.g. Frankenstein
• Fragmented self / reality expressed in fragmented
  text
• Emphasises act of story-telling
• Texts are parasitical interdependent on one
  another
• No objective ONE truth. Truth is
  multi-dimensional.
• The collation of the texts is representative of
  synthesis of perspectives.
• Metaphor of depth hidden secret message in maze
  of echoes

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CONCLUSION

• The Gothic Text as Monster
• Multiple fragments stitched together
• Transgresses conventional literature
• Liminal parasitical existence as genre
• Given life by author