Gothic, Angela Carter, Dracula and Cormorants

Dear year 13,

once you come back after the Easter holidays, we shall be working on the Gothic unit, so I am going to use the blog to keep up with some Gothic thoughts and background reading over the break.

We shall be working on Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber next term, but I would like you to start thinking about the Gothic precursors to Carter, and the ways in which other texts can be helpful in approaching the Gothic from--for instance--a feminist angle.

But today, I am going to blog about Dracula and Cormorants.

Did you know that these inoffensive seabirds are supposed to be as popular a symbol for Dracula as the bat? Well, you can easily see why, when you think of Lucy's vaguely menacing reference to being 'as hungry as a cormorant', though it always makes me think of that HSBC advert with the wise chinese fisherman... You can see an article about the connection here.

Satan in Paradise Lost is also seen as a cormorant in Book4, ll 194-6:

Thence up he flew, and on the Tree of Life,
The middle Tree and highest there that grew,
Sat like a Cormorant;

This reminds me of one of my favourite poems, by Christopher Isherwood:
The common cormorant or shag
Lays eggs inside a paper bag
The reason you will see, no doubt,
It is to keep the lightning out
But what these unobservant birds
Have never noticed is that herds
Of wandering bears may come with buns
And steal the bags to hold the crumbs.

Notice the sentential adverb?

Thursday afternoon

Dear Year 13,

I am looking forward to seeing your plans for your comparative coursework--you do need to have decided on your texts AT LEAST and written a basic plan if you want to have the freedom for more independent working. Ideally, your plans should be fairly detailed.

As I am not here today, I would like you to please share your plans with each other--just as we did with the essays and plans last term, try and see what you can learn from each other in terms of organisation. You may have tomorrow's lesson to look through them and check them (rewrite if necessary) before showing them to me on FRIDAY. As you will have had an extra lesson to work on them, excuses for work not done will NOT be welcomed, you have been warned...

I will see you on Friday,

MMc

Thursday 26th January

Dear Year 13. Many apologies, but I will be out tomorrow. You may spend the time working on your coursework, and planning your comparison if you have aleady decided on your paired texts. If thisis the case, I expect to see evidence of this tomorrow.

If you have not used the time for this, I would like you to please tackle an essay questIon on The Handmaid's Tale. Plan the essay and try to write the first part of it, at least, in the hour available to you.

Consider one of the following quesitons:

1. Is Offred a heroine? Discuss


2. Compare the ending of this novel to that of 1984. How are they different? How deos the end ing affect the message of the novel?


3. 'Dystopian novels are often used to signal injustice in society at the time of writing'. Is this true of The Handmaid's Tale or is the novel more subtle than such a reading might suggest?


4. Is the reader meant to take the final section of The Handmaid's Tale seriously or not? What difference does it make to the narrative? Explain.

Good luck--and see you on Friday to discuss this.