The Representation of the Mother and Daughter Relationship in Contemporary Horror

The Mother - Daughter Dyad in

Cinematic vampires are inevitably products of their historical moment and the expression of underlying fears and desires concerning sex and race and the human relationship with technology is always local – culturally specific and time bound” (Weinstock, 2012, p.3)

Dracula Carmilla

• Vegetarian vampire• Vampire as a family member• Vampire as a friend, a lover, a

flatmate

Countess Millarca Karnstein

Lilith

Countess Elizabeth Bathory

“Female vampire is monstrous – and also attractive – precisely because she does threaten to undermine the formal and highly symbolic relations of men and women essential to the continuation of patriarchal society” (Creed, 1993, p 61)

Female vampires are “defined by their hyperbolic materialisation of cultural standards of feminine beauty” (Weinstock, 2012, p.8)

• lesbian vampire•woman as victim •woman as creature• gender and

metamorphosis• abjection• the maternal

• The vampire as a mother and her lover as a child• The oral sadistic mother• The maternal world as pagan

Once out of nature I shall never takeMy bodily form from any natural thing,But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths

makeOf hammered gold and gold

enamellingTo keep a drowsy Emperor awake;Or set upon a golden bough to singTo lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

William Butler Yeats 1928

‘Sailing to Byzantium’

‘My story can never be told. I write it over and over, wherever we find shelter. I write of what I cannot speak, the truth’

•Visual style of British kitchen sink drama• Social realism

settings

• Working class environment

• Infantilised male protagonist

Eleanor

•Uses archaic vocabulary and diction• Lives her life in the past•Obsessed with telling a truth•Restrained and self loathing

Clara• Socially adaptable and

contemporary figure• Lying is her essential part of

existence•Provocative and comprehensively

eroticized• Feminine figure from both, Girl’s

culture and the Third Wave feminism•Demonstrates fierce mothering

Mother is my saviour my burden my muse

•Daughter’s disapproval of mother’s profession•Different choice of prey•Daughter’s aim to define herself in opposition to her mother•Mutual love

“The girl’s relationship with her mother remains forever unresolved, incomplete. In heterosexuality she is forced to turn away from her primary love object and is destined never to return to it” (Kaplan, 1990, p.201)

“There's also a cool feminist fable in here, about women who steal something from the male fraternity of vampires and use it for their own ends” Neil Jordan

“Women have rarely existed as interesting characters once they are mothers, especially mothers of daughters. While occasionally sentimentalized and idealised, they are more often incompetent, monstrous, or just not there.” (Karlyn, 2011, p.12).

BYZANTIUM

•Motherhood and daughterhood liberation from the patriarchal traditions• Employs popular culture as a natural site of identity

formation and empowerment •Highlights the necessity of a strong mother-daughter

bond•Reflects more engaging picture of the dominating fears

and fantasies today

THANK YOU