Jonathan
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Lucy
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In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner...All three had brilliant white teeth, that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet Mina’s eyes and cause her pain; but it is the truth. They whispered together, and then they all three laughed- such a silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sounds never could have come through the softness of human lips. It was the intolerable, tingling sweetness of water-glasses when played on by a cunning hand. The fair girl shook her head coquettishly, and the other two urged her on...
‘He is young and strong: there are kisses for us all.’ I lay quiet, looking out under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation. The fair girl advanced and bent over me till I could feel the movement of her breath upon me. Sweet it was in one sense, honey-sweet, and sent the same tingling through the nerves as her voice but with a bitter underlying the sweet, a bitter of offensiveness, as one smells in blood.
I was afraid to raise my eyelids... The fair girl went on her knees and bent over me, fairly gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and could feel the hot breath on my neck. The skin of my throat began to tingle as one’s flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer-nearer. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips, on the supersensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited--waited with beating heart.
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‘I didn’t quite dream; but it all seemed to be real. I only wanted to be here in this spot-- I don’t know why, for I was afraid of something--I don’t know what. I remember, though, I suppose I was asleep, passing though the streets and over the bridge. A fish leaped as I went by, and I leaned over to look at it, and I head a lot of dogs howling-- the whole town seemed as if it must be full of dogs howling all at one; and then I seemed sinking into deep green water, and there was a singing in my ears, as I have heard there is to downing men; and then everything seemed passing away from me; my soul seemed to go out from my boy and float about in the air. I seem to remember that once the West Lighthouse was right under me, and then there was a sort of agonizing feeling as if I were in an earthquake, and I came back and ound you shaking my body. I saw you do it before I felt you.’
Then she began to laugh.
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"The face, clean-shaven, shows a hard, square chin, a large, resolute mobile mouth, a good-sized nose, rather straight, but with quick, sensistive nostrils, that seem to broaden as the big, bushy brows come down and the mouth tightens. The forehead is broad and fine, rising at first almost straight and then sloping back above two bumps of ridges wide apart; such a forehead that the reddish hair cannot possible tumble over it, but falls naturally back to the sides. Big, dark, blue eyes are set widely apart, and are quick and tender or stern with the man's moods" (163).
Forehead Principles:"The form, height, arching, proportion, obliquity (slanting), and position of the scull, or bone of the forehead, shew the propensity, degree of power, thought and sensibility of man... I consider the peculiar delineation of the outline and position of the forehead... to be the most important of all the things presented to physiognomical observation" (57).
"The eye appertains to the soul more than any other organ" (64).
"I have generally considered the Nose as the foundation or abutment to the brain. Whoever is acquainted with the gothic arch will perfectly understand what I mean by this abutment; for upon this the whole power of the arch of the forehead rests, and without it the mouth and cheek would be oppressed by miserable ruins" (68)."Its length should equal the length of the forehead" (69).
"The contents of the mind are communicated to the mouth. How full of character is the mouth, whether at rest or speaking, by its infinite powers" (71)."Well defined, large and proportionate lips... may denote an inclination to pleasure, are never seen in a bad, mean, common, false, crouching, vicious countenance" (73).
In Dracula, feminism is a central theme that is constantly contradicted throughout the entire novel. Depending on the situation, male characters such as Jonathan Harker, Van Helsing, and Dr. Seward feign promotion of feminism in times of tranquility, but when dangers comes in close proximity, true antifeminist ideals disguised as gallantry are exposed. Stoker cleverly creates the notion of an independent woman, only to contradict it by making the women very fragile and in need of protection and saving from men. This portrayal is witnessed in many interactions involving Mina with the Van Helsing’s group, and with Lucy.
Eudora Welty’s psychological gothic short story “Clytie” is about a pitiable woman named Clytie Farr and her unraveling family. As her older sister Octavia fights to either keep the once-prosperous family together or be personally in charge of their destruction (it’s almost impossible to tell which), Clytie is desperately seeking her own meaning by scouring the town for a familiar face she half-remembers. In the end she loses hope of ever finding a satisfying conclusion to her search, and in a startling final scene Clytie submerges her head in a rain barrel and dies. Her drastic action may at first seem random, or merely the outcome of frustration at the constant nagging by her older sister. However, a more thorough understanding of Welty’s use of faces as reoccurring symbols reveals that Clytie’s sudden death is actually the result of her stunted emotional development and abandonment at the hands of her dysfunctional family.
Disregarding all the other men in the group, Jonathan Harker, her husband, treats her in a deprecating manner as well. Starting from his trepidation in showing her his journal, to the boat headed for Varna, he always felt as if she could not handle what was about to happen. Despite her helpfulness to each person, her value in the group never increased much because of her gender. Jonathan even says on the boat that “Mina is sleeping now, calmly and sweetly like a little child. Her lips are curved and her face beams with happiness” (Stoker 484). His description of her includes the words little child, which leads one to conclude that he does not think of her as an equal. It is apparent that he cares for her greatly, but she is not given the same respect as any of the other men. In addition, by calling her a little child, one is able to easily see why everyone is able to tell her what to do. Mina is not the only character treated unfairly, Lucy is also deceived through the guise of duty.
Clytie is not confined physically; there are no locked doors or barred windows. Instead, the method by which she is confined is through control of her will. It is her sister Octavia who has created the psychological cage for Clytie, as evidenced by the scene in which Clytie prepares dinner for the entire family. Octavia refuses to step on to the ground floor of the house, where the kitchen is housed, and so forces Clytie to cook and bring the family’s meals to them upstairs (426). The image of Clytie cooking and carrying each family’s tray of food – each meal separately prepared, because no one eats the same thing (426) - is very reminiscent of Cinderella, except in this case the abuser isn’t an intruder in the family but rather a flesh-and-blood relative of the mistreated Clytie. Any time she defies her sister Octavia, she is immediately shut down and reduced to a state of confused tears. A prominent example of this is when Clytie wants to feed their paralyzed, stroke-victim father the soup that she prepared for him (427). Octavia at once refuses her and chooses to feed him herself (427). It is more than likely that she does this simply to assert her control – nowhere else in the story is she shown as being a motherly or care-taking type of character at all. We see that this pattern of getting her way must be historical, because Clytie sees no point in fighting outright and relinquishes the bowl of soup even while she quietly disagrees with Octavia’s decision (427). However, we learn that throughout all of this and despite her situation, Clytie is not numb. After a moment, she cries and curses at Octavia, yet still brings her sister her meal when prompted (427,428). She is miserable, and free to leave, as she proves by defying Octavia and wandering the town every day. Yet it is this small act of pitiful defiance that further emphasizes her psychological confinement because, as Octavia smugly points out, Clytie always returns (425).
"There is no place you or I can go, to think about or not think about, to summon the presences of, or recollect the absences of slaves; nothing that reminds us of the ones who made the journey and of those who did not make it. There is no suitable memorial or plaque or wreath or wall or park or skyscraper lobby. There's no 300 foot tower. There's no small bench by the road. There is not even a tree scored, an initial that I can visit or you can visit in Charleston or Savannah or New York or Providence or, better still, on the banks of the Mississippi. And because such a place does not exist (that I know of), the book had to." -- Toni Morrison, "A Bench By the Road"Memorialization and Enforced Silence:
"All of Morrison's works are about silence as well as about language, whether that silence is metaphysical or physically enforced by circumstance. All African Americans, like a great many immigrants to America, write and speak in a language they do not own as theirs. Historically, the dominant culture has enforced black silence through illiteracy, through the metaphoric and the actual insertion of the bit in the mouth [. . .]. Morrison indicates in each of her novels that images of the zero, the absence, the silence that is both chosen and enforced, are ideologically and politically revelatory." -- Barbara Hill Rigney, "'A Story to Pass On': Ghosts and the Significance of History in Toni Morrison's Beloved"
