Links in Gothic Texts

Lamia, The Bloody Chamber, Wuthering Heights

Links 

The all consuming power of love

• 'Lamia' can be seen as a warning against all consuming love, like the kind of obsessive love that Keats had for Fanny Brawne, because it threatens to blind you from the truth and reason, just as Lycius is is blind to Lamia's false form. CONTEXT: Rebellion against Enlightenment, not focusing on such intense human emotions.
• Catherine and Heathcliff are so consumed with each other that they feel they are each other. When she dies, Heathcliff moans that he can't live without his 'soul' and Cathy famously states: 'I am Heathcliff'. But this love, believing they are identical, is dangerous because both of them trap themselves; neither develops or grows. This is shown through Catherine's child-like nature, eg her inability to understand that she cannot commit to one man and still continue her love affair with her childhood sweetheart. CONTEXT: Transgressing the boundaries of conservative Victorian unions of marriage by presenting a passionate love that is also immoral (she is married), but does keep to moral codes by presenting it as dangerous. Daughter of Vicar.
• In contrast,  The women in the stories in 'The Bloody Chamber' are generally symbols for feminism, and the men are too, so there are many examples of a love that is not all-consuming, but one-sided or even oppressive. CONTEXT: This reflects the more post-modern or late modern society Angela Carter lived in, where her world was becoming less patriarchal as feminism entered societies consciousness. 

Contradictory female sexuality

• ""A virgin purest lipp'd, yet in the lore / Of love deep learned to the red heart's core" Lamia is both a virgin, and sexually aware. She is sensual, "sweet" and excessively beautiful. But she cannot help this, she is not deceiving Lycius in this way, she just cannot help that she is naturally sensual, implying that female sexuality cannot be denied or repressed.
• In 'The Bloody Chamner', the female protagonist presents herself as virginal, innocent: she "knows nothing of the world". However, it is made clear to the reader through confessed emotions and events that she is actually a sexual being like any other: when the Marquis undresses her she was "aghast to feel myself stirring". Carter seems to imply that a woman is not always passive; patriarchal society believes that men should be the powerful ones in both sexual and general relationships, but the woman can have an active role in this, she can have her own will and emotions and can be fulfilled.
• CONTRAST- Catherine and Heathcliff never really have a sexual relationship, they are content with their feelings and holding hands and closeness.