Dracula, the Bloody Chamber, and John Keats Poetry Comparison

“Women in literature are presented as either vampires, controlling and manipulative, or victims, passive and submissive”. Discuss this statement by comparing the poetry of John Keats, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Angel Carter’s The Bloody Chamber.

Through studying these three diverse but interrelated texts, the reader can see that the women are presented as being both vampires and victims; through the writers depiction of the objectification and subjugation of women the reader sees women presented very much as victims; through the presentation of the threat of female sexual expression, the reader sees the vampirism in women. Perhaps more importantly, through the depiction of virginity and sexuality, violence and death and the repeated motif of blood, the reader is presented with a more complex depiction of women as both vampire and victim simultaneously.

Objectification and subjugation is very relevant to all three texts, but perhaps is most clearly seen in Angela Carter’s short stories. The heroine in The Bloody Chamber is the most obviously objectified. The Marquis is the one in control, undressing her whilst remaining dressed himself. He dictates that his wife always wears her ruby choker, much like the collar of a dog; "He made me put on my choker, the family heirloom of a woman who had escaped the blade". This symbolises how the Marquis wants to turn his wife into a literal object -a corpse- by beheading her, and then display her body in his bloody chamber, alongside his other wives whom he has gruesomely murdered. The Marquis not only kills his wives, he then goes on to make elaborate displays with their dead bodies, like they are valuable collectables. He clearly gets extreme sadistic pleasure form her pain, a pleasure which can only be stopped by the rescue of her mother, as Marina Warner writes: “Within a spirited exposé of marriage as sadistic ritual, she