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The Fiction Genre Of Gothic Fiction

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The Literary fiction genre of Gothic, including Crime and Horror, usually features a figure of Otherness as either the protagonists of antagonists of the story. The noun Otherness is used in this context to describe a being that is different from the norm. This could be a creature that is not human at all or an individual as representation of a minority group in the human society, in either race, class, sexuality or gender. These figure often have the function of discussing issues, such as homosexuality or gender inequality. “Gothic fiction of the nineteenth century specifically used the body of the monster to produce race, class, gender and sexuality within narratives about the relation between subjectivities and certain bodies.” …show more content…

The most famous vampire however, is Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”, antagonist of the eponymous novel that was first published in the year 1897. Since its popularity in Victorian Gothic literature, the versatile creature has never lost its position as one of the most used monsters in fiction, not only restricted to the genre of Horror. The vampire is able to adapt to every generation without any difficulties and thereby avoids being exposed in its Otherness. In Victorian times as well as contemporary times, the vampire is used to raise attention to social anxieties and fears about differences in mankind. In the early nineteenth century, one of the biggest threats to humanity were contagious illnesses, such as tuberculosis and syphilis. After the fast increasing of cities during the Industrialisation, illnesses spread more quickly and every member of society could be infected. Being turned into a vampire was often used as an image of the outbreak of a lethal illness. One the most apparent similarities between a lethal disease and the transformation to a vampire is the infectiousness through blood or other bodily fluids. The way Dracula’s victims are infected is through exchange of blood, which is how sexual transmitted diseases, like syphilis or nowadays the similarly as lethal AIDS, are carried. Bruce Hale offers a description of the development of cholera in Victorian times: “thirst and dehydration; sever pain in the limbs, stomach, and abdominal muscles; a change skin hue to a

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