Student Question
What is the significance of the monstrous in the Gothic, comparing "The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories" with "Dracula"?
Quick answer:
In both The Bloody Chamber and Dracula, the gothic idea of monstrousness is generally shown to be something that can exist outside of the self as an opponent and within the self as a dark side.
The idea of the self being potentially monstrous is explored in both Dracula and through some of the stories of The Bloody Chamber. Dracula is the main monster in the novel bearing his name, but the good characters also have dark sides. Lucy's desire for several men at once evolves into a sexual rapaciousness when she becomes one of the undead. Even Mina's imminent transformation into a vampire after being forced to drink Dracula's blood suggests a potential for corruption should the party be unable to save her.
This same potential for corruption is explicitly called as much in "The Bloody Chamber," where the heroine is prized by the Marquis because he wants to corrupt her innocence through his sadistic sexuality. While the heroine never becomes like the Marquis, she does note she has the potential to be like him and even delights in the sadomasochistic sex they have...
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on her wedding night.
The easiest story in The Bloody Chamber to compare to Dracula is "The Lady of the House of Love," since it is also about a vampire. Even more relevant to the idea of monsters existing within the self, both the Countess and her virginal would-be conquest have monsters inside them. Like Count Dracula, the Countess is a vampire of Eastern European origin. She must kill humans and drink their blood to live, and her violence contains a sexual element as well. She preys after young men in particular, just as Dracula mostly preys on young women. She is indeed a monster, but unlike Dracula, she longs to be human and know real love untainted by murder.
The young soldier she intends to kill ends up unwittingly freeing her from her vampiric life. However, ironically, he is a soldier involved in the First World War. He too must kill to live, implying that though the Countess is a monster longing to be human, her love is a human who also commits monstrous acts for the sake of his profession, showing a level of complexity even Dracula does not suggest explicitly. Purity and monstrosity can coexist within the same individual, which is indeed the case with both the Countess and the soldier.