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Id like to consider Gothic fictions virtuous women: the heroines of sensibility. Born from the eighteenth-century discourse of sensibility[ 2 ] (the study of the correlation between emotional stimuli and physical responsiveness), these fictional heroines are fair-haired and virtuous, whose goodness illuminates the forces of darkness; they are hostages to villains, often in the guise of malevolent father figures; they rely on protection from paternal figures, namely brothers and suitors; and their susceptibility to a dangerous world often leaves them physically incapable of movement or resistance. These heroines are doubly trapped in castles or dungeons, and in their own bodies. The woman of sensibility featured in hundreds of Gothic novels in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She is revised in Dracula as Lucy Western (before she becomes a lustful vamp); and is revised as Mina Harker. Like the traditional Gothic heroine, Mina is praised for her beauty, sensitivity, compassion (she even pities Dracula); she is surrounded by men who try to protect her from evil; she is saved in the end.
However, Mina differs from these traditional heroines: she has what Van Helsing calls a mans brain... and womans heart (Dracula 234) she combines the traditional feminine attributes of emotional responsiveness with masculine logic. She is, within cultural limits imposed on women, active: she subverts, to an extent, ideas about female capability by hiding her typing the work which leads the men to Dracula within her embroidery workbasket, concealing her real work within the bounds of conventional womens work. Moreover, Stoker emphasizes her importance to the group by showing how, when the men try to protect her by leaving her ignorant of their plans, she is attacked by Dracula: they can only follow his movements when Mina is included in the hunt.
Like Frankenstein's Elizabeth, most vulnerable when least informed, Minas real status as the key to the mens success is contingent on her knowledge. Women of sensibility, both Shelley and Stoker tell us, are most useful when most informed: a somewhat radical position in nineteenth-century culture. Buffy would seem to be light years away from the more typical Gothic heroine. However, there are aspects of Buffy which, on closer inspection, dont seem so different to her hysterical fore mother. These similarities seem to congeal around Buffy's twin status as adolescent and Slayer, and cast shadows over Whedons claims that, after watching a lot of horror movies that starred pretty blonde girls who walk into alleys and get killed he decided to write a movie where [she] could walk through an alley and take care of herself. [ 3 ] But on what terms does Buffy take care of herself that is, just how independent is she? Physically, she easily outclasses the typical heroine of sensibility.
But to what degree can this new heroine function without the aid of her traditional standby, the paternal protector? To gauge the power of this new, Buffy heroine, lets consider the episode in which both the typical and the new heroine appear Halloween (2006). In this episode, the Scooby Gang hire cursed Halloween costumes; when worn, costume becomes character. Xander becomes a soldier; Willow becomes a ghost; and Buffy, dressing to impress Angel in an eighteenth-century ball gown, becomes a heroine of sensibility.
Since we see Buffy in the guise of contemporary and traditional heroine, we can see clearly the differences and the surprising similarities between these two female types. The Gothic, a genre born in the eighteenth century and most popular in the shadows of the French Revolution, has proven a highly adaptable vehicle for expressing the anxieties and concerns of generations. Dracula's reflection of Victorian sensibilities, and Buffy's engagement with twentieth-century culture, share more than just Gothic conventions. While we might expect the concerns of Victorian England and twentieth-century USA to be radically different cultures, my reading of Dracula and Buffy has highlighted a surprising number of similarities. Both texts recognize the limits of choices and freedoms placed on women; both express an ambivalence towards modern technologies; both seem to, at one and the same time, fear yet sympathize with the foreign and the monstrous, seeing their angst as deeply human, and their persecution as one of the more violent aspects of human nature. In the light of comparisons, Stoker seems to prefigure of Whedons promotion of a strong but limited heroine, mistrust of dehumanizing technology and compassion for the Other in a way that makes Dracula seem less a Victorian, than a modern, text: In turn, Buffy, a show which on one level promotes female independence and modernity, can now be read as taking a more conservative view of technology and womens freedoms than might be expected from our own, contemporary culture.
The Gothic, it seems, remains infinitely adaptable as a genre for reflecting, or revealing, the questions and anxieties confronted by each generation.
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