L.O: To
compare the
use of Setting
in Beloved
and Dracula
Dracula is the
unheimlich spirit
who . . .
Using “unheimlich” in your writing
(L3C) In two groups:
Brainstorm the settings
Dracula
cc
Beloved
cc
• Which settings would be most useful to compare?
(L3E) Brainstorm the settings
Dracula
cc
Beloved
cc
• Which settings would be most useful to compare?
Brainstorm the settings in Beloved or
Dracula
Castle
Transylvania
Borgo Pass
Whitby Abbey
Purfleet, London
Piccadilly
Hampstead
Asylum
Graveyard
Ship
Lucy’s House
Sweet Home
The Loft
The Ohio River (crossing to safety)
The boat where Denver is born
124 Bluestone Road
The Clearing
The church where Paul D sleeps
The woodshed
The schoolhouse
The restaurant
• Which settings would be most useful to compare?
Compare the ways in which the writers of your
two chosen texts make use of significant locations in
their texts.
In your answer you must consider the following:
•
the writers’ methods
links between the texts
the relevance of contextual factors.
(Total for Question 10 = 44 marks)
Indicative content
• comparisons of scene setting: Harker’s journey to Count Dracula’s castle
• comparison of the ways writers might choose to use a few significant
settings: 124 in Beloved or a range of locations (e.g Wilde and Stoker) and
the reasons for these choices
• effects of the locations on the characters: Harker’s reactions to Count
Dracula’s castle;
• ways writers use settings to indicate social class, wealth, etc, and their
significance; what these details tell us about society at the time
• writers’ choices about the periods in which the chosen texts are set and
how they affect the ways we respond to settings: mid-19th century USA in
Beloved (and the significance of the historical and social context),
• comparisons of the ways modern readers might react to the settings in
each
• Use of the house/castle/religious buildings
• How genre affects settings
Everything must be pinned onto the Supernatural
• Setting: Often in a Catholic European country. Includes an oppressive ruin
or castle in a wild country
• Story features: a heroine of sensitivity; her impetuous lover; a tyrannical
older man (“with a piercing gaze”) who is intent on imprisonment, rape
and murder
• There is a great interest in: religious institutions, sleeplike or trancelike
states, subterranean spaces and live burial; doubles; the damaging effect
of guilt and the discovery of family ties;
• Hints of incest
• The form: discontinuous and involuted
• There are likely to be unnatural echoes or silences
• Emphasis placed on the difficulties of communication
• Liminal states
• Transgression
• Unfinished business
• Fears about the unknown (death)
Words to focus on:
• Transgression:
• Borgo Pass, forbidden
rooms:
• Unheimlich
• The castle, 124, Sweet
Home, Westenra House
• The outside
• The woodshed, the
cemetery
• Liminal spaces
• Water, sea, rivers, boats,
Focusing on key passages
• the writers’ methods
• links between the texts
• the relevance of contextual factors.
• Dracula: The arrival of the “foreign schooner”
• Pp74-77
• “Then without warning…” to “into harbour in the
storm”.
• Dracula: The Captain’s log Pp79-82
• Beloved: Beloved’s monologues pp248-256
Dracula
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Newspaper article
Captain’s log
Tension: non-chronological
Storm
Confusion
Death
Boat
Matter of fact
Fragmented
First person
Third person
Liminal
Transgression
Transformation
Significance of Whitby (port,
produces jet)
Beloved
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
First person
Disjointed, lyrical
Confusion
Storm
Death
Mystery
Ambiguity
Key motifs
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
A hot thing
Round basket
White pointed teeth
Clouds
Diamond ear rings
The bridge
The little hill
An iron circle
A join
The face
Compare the ways in which the writers of your two chosen texts create a
sense of fear in their works. You must relate your discussion to relevant
contextual factors.
•
Fear is an essential element of the supernatural genre.
Although Toni Morrison and Bram Stoker tell very different
stories set in different cultures and countries, the fears that
they explore are connected. Ostensibly, the two stories
seem to bear no similarities: Beloved explores the legacy
of slavery in the US through the ghost of a murdered child,
while Dracula is a more conventional tale of a vampire who
ventures to a new land to replenish his vampire family. The
fears, expressed or repressed by the characters are, to a
greater or lesser degree, shared in both novels; whether it
is the fear of the unknown, of death, of the stranger (or
other), of women or the supernatural itself.
Compare the ways in which the writers of your
two chosen texts make use of significant locations in
their texts.
In your answer you must consider the following:
•
the writers’ methods
links between the texts
the relevance of contextual factors.
(Total for Question 10 = 44 marks)
Indicative content
• comparisons of scene setting: Harker’s journey to Count Dracula’s castle
• comparison of the ways writers might choose to use a few significant
settings: 124 in Beloved or a range of locations (e.g Wilde and Stoker) and
the reasons for these choices
• effects of the locations on the characters: Harker’s reactions to Count
Dracula’s castle;
• ways writers use settings to indicate social class, wealth, etc, and their
significance; what these details tell us about society at the time
• writers’ choices about the periods in which the chosen texts are set and
how they affect the ways we respond to settings: mid-19th century USA in
Beloved (and the significance of the historical and social context),
• comparisons of the ways modern readers might react to the settings in
each
• Use of the house/castle/religious buildings
• How genre affects settings