Frankenstein:Horror Archetype
March 14, 2007 at 2:17 am | In horror, monsters | Leave a Comment
Saricks, Joyce G. (2001). The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction.Chicago: ALA.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (1818). Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus. NY: Random House (Knopf, 1992).
Horror fiction differs from other genres in that it does not have a defining plot or exhibit unique themes and conventions. Instead, horror’s purpose is to create a visceral, emotional response of fear in the reader. Subgenres vary in the pace and intensity of the horror story’s emotional rollercoaster ride. 
At one end of the goosebump continuum lie spooky but restrained horror classics such as Turn of the Screw or Frankenstein; at the other extreme lie gory borderline pornographic novels such as “splatterpunk” :
Abstract fear — Terror and revulsion —- Graphic Excess
(Frankenstein) (Carrie) (Texas Chainsaw Massacre)
Saricks (2001) proposes some intuitive guidelines for identifying horror fiction (p. 107)
- Produces emotions of fear and foreboding in the reader
- Dark menacing mood conveyed by setting, violence, sex, strong language
- Usually includes supernatural elements, such as monsters
- Endings are ambiguous or unresolved, suggesting the “horror lives on”
- Fast-paced, action oriented plot with unexpected twists
- Protagonists may be psychologically scarred, and the antagonists are evil
Frankenstein spans horror and speculative fiction genres, since it explores the consequences of attaining forbidden knowledge: of challenging accepted science/technology to make the “unknown known” (Diabello lecture). Within horror plot structures, Frankenstein illustrates the over-reacher plot” :
- Preparation–Victor Frankenstein devotes years of secret solitary research to discover how to breathe life into cobbled together parts from human corpses;
- Experiment–After Victor creates a sentient superhuman monster, his scientific pride dissolves into shock and horror at the grotesque being he wrought;
- Boomerang– Frankenstein rejects the creature by running away, refusing responsibility for nurturing his monster. In response, the monster’s naturally open, inquisitive nature is twisted by human cruelty until the monster is driven by anger and a desire for vengeance upon his heartless creator;
- Confrontation–When the monster first confronts Frankenstein, he attacks only with words, leaving his master physically unscathed. After the monster’s pleas are scorned, it tries negotiation and threats to spur the scientist to sympathetic action. As the novel proceeds, the confrontations between creator and creation spiral to extremes of rage and vengeance. The “mortal conflict” culminates as Frankenstein chase the demonic monster across the Arctic until the human is on the brink of death;
- Resolution/Ambiguity– Frankenstein dies a broken soul since he is unable to kill the monster. After revelling in the scientist’s death, the monster is overcome with remorse and disgust, but denies that it is evil. The monster maintains that its creator is responsible for all the death and destruction resulting from his meglomaniacial drive to create life. In a single final paragraph, the monster jumps out of the boat, with an implication of suicide. However, in classic horror fashion, there is some ambiguity whether the monster is truly gone forever.
Oke: Christian Fiction
March 12, 2007 at 2:25 pm | In awards, christian fiction | 7 Comments
Oke, J. (2000). Like Gold Refined. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House.
Canadian author Janette Oke is one of the most popular and internationally acclaimed writers in Christian fiction. In 1979, her first Christian novel, Loves Come Softly, was published by Bethany House. This title has sold over 1 million copies and Oke’s work is credited with pioneering the inspirational fiction market. She received the 1992 President’s Award from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, the 1999 CBA Life Impact Award and the Gold Medallion Award for fiction. Several of Oke’s novels have been translated into made-for-TV movies by Hallmark. For details about her books and movies, visit http://www.janetteoke.com
In the last 15 years, Oke has created more than 75 novels which feature pioneer or farming life on the prairie, cohesive families and strong
female protagonists. Her bibliography spans 6 series:
- Song of Acadia with co-author T. Davis Bunn (5 titles, 1999-2002)
- Prairie Legacy (4 titles, 1997-2000)
- Women of the West (12 titles, 1990-1996)
- Canadian West (6 titles, 1983-2001)
- Seasons of the Heart (4 titles 1981-1989)
- Love Comes Softly (8 titles, 1979-1989)
The book Like Gold Refined, represents the fourth and final volume in Oke’s Prairie Legacy series. It explores how Virginia and Jonathan Lewis, their four children and extended family struggle to cope with significant changes and to reconcile life’s challenges with their steadfast Christian faith. The book cover shows Virginia embracing “daughter” Mindy with their farm and the girl’s beloved colt Buttercup in the background. (The time frame is mid-20th century). After 10 years, the Lewis’s parental rights are legally challenged when the absentee birth mother returns and asserts her rights.The family agonizes over other life decisions, such as moving frail grandparents from their homestead, and supporting nephew Slate who longs to leave to build a life of his own.
The common theme in Jeanette Oke’s books is that love and devotion to God and family will provide the strength to overcome hardship. Through her stories, Oke demonstrates that God has a plan for everyone’s lives, although it’s often not the plan the individual has envisioned. As Jeanette Oke explains in her website Faithful Reader , she views writing as “..an opportunity to share my faith.. . If my books touch lives, answer individual’s questions, or lifts readers to a higher plane, then I will feel that they have accomplished what God has asked me to do.”
As a Christian but not a reader of Christian fiction, I found this work by Oke to be preachy, stylistically flat and unrealistic. The birth mother Jenny is the only non-believer in the book, and she is a painfully unsympathetic character. Jenny’s a sullen, swearing chain smoker who has a sleazy lawyer uproot Mindy to tend to her last months as she dies from lung cancer. The children are perfect little angels–they never complain, talk back or fight except over who gets to help do chores. The happy ending is that Jenny asks the forgiveness of God, friends and family on the eve of her death. Not my idea of fiction entertainment reading!
While Oke’s reviewers laud her strong female characters, I regarded Virginia as a submissive even clueless protagonist. When Jenny demands her child back, it is husband Jonathan who calmly takes control, without discussing his plan with Virginia. Similarly, it is the strong male figure, nephew Slate, who saves the Lewis family farm by contributing part of his inheritance. This is the first genre work I’ve read for this course which lacks an obvious sidekick. aside from trusty Slate. The world of the Lewises and grandparents Davises is a world of family, and neighbors, teachers and other community ties were not explicitly drawn into this world.
The strength of Oke’s work was in its depiction of how evangelicals practice and articulate their faith. It was enlightening to read descriptions about morning devotions, weekly scripture competition and evening prayers.
ECPA lists annual winners of the Gold Medallion (now Christian Book Award) from 1978 to 2006 at http://www.ecpa.org/goldmedallion/gm2005.php
Sidekicks in Buffalo Girls
March 9, 2007 at 11:51 am | In sidekicks, western | Leave a CommentM
cMurtry, L. (1990).Buffalo Girls. NY: Simon and Schuster.
This western novel offers an eccentric array of sidekick characters to discuss. The book’s central figure is the real-life Western scout and frontierswoman Calamity Jane. The novel is set in the 1890’s stretching from Missouri to 
Deadwood, South Dakota. The book focuses on Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show with his motley cast of “Western legends”.
At the novel’s start, Calamity Jane is in her 40’s, swearing, drinking and fighting up a storm as she searches for her “old gang” with her dog Cody and horse Satan. This gang includes mountainmen, an Indian, Bill Cody, and a retired madam.
Jim Ragg and Bartle Bone have been together for decades as stagecoach drivers, scouts, and now as solitary mountainmen scratching out a tenuous life in the wilderness. Ragg and Bone have complementary temperaments to amplify parts of Calamity Jane’s ornery persona. Note McMurtry’s sardonic wit in these character names. The expression “rag and bone” is a British term for the shop where the worst castoffs end up. I suspect this is McMurtry’s commentary on how civilized society has treated the vestiges of the old West’s land and people.
Ragg is morose and stoic, a crack-shot hunter and skillful wilderness guide. Bone is cheerful, garrulous and sociable, enjoying the company of prostitutes when in town. Bone is competitive and considers himself exceptional at everything though he’s average at best. His boasting is just like Calamity’s exaggerated retelling of her exploits. Ragg and Bone join Cody’s show only because Ragg wants to earn money to repopulate the Missouri River with beavers. Ragg wants to atone for his years of animal slaughter as a trapper.
Calamity Jane considered Ragg and Bone her family because they befriended her as a teenager, teaching her how to scout and drive a coach. Ragg and Bone, as rugged individualists, could accept Jane’s aberrations. Like “Ragg and Bone”, Calamity is a misfit and castoff. She was scorned and marginalized because she violated society’s ideas of feminity by acting and dressing like a frontiersman.
No Ears , an Ogala Indian in his 50s, is another sidekick and my favorite character. No Ears was so dubbed at age 10, after French traders shot him, cut off his ears and left him for dead . Inasumuch as No Ears and Calamity have rescued each other during terrible storms, the Indian’s secret nickname for Jane is Helpful. No Ears can hear, but he uses his disability as a cloak, while communing with animals or tapping into his mystical senses (regrettably narrated in a heavy-handed, stereotypical way by McMurtry).
Dora DuFran is the former madam and big-hearted saloon owner who befriends her Martha Jane. Her role as sidekick is to bring out the nurturing, feminine dimensions of Calamity Jane’s character. As Dora lays dying after childbirth, however, Calamity is unable to comfort her friend or to help raise the orphan baby, revealing her inadequacies lurking beneath her scout bravado.
In 1995, Buffalo Girls was faithfully translated into a TV movie starring Angelica Huston as Calamity Jane with dead-on casting of sidekicks such as Jack Palance for Bartle Bone. Buffalo Girls movie (IMDB summary).
McMurtry Western
March 9, 2007 at 7:46 am | In awards, postmodern, western | Leave a CommentMcMurtry, L. (1990).Buffalo Girls.New York: Simon and Schuster.
Award Winning Author If you want to read a recent (1990+) western, Larry McMurtry’s Buffalo Girls (Winner of the Western Heritage Award) is a natural choice. McMurtry is an iconic contemporary writer in the Western genre, author to more than 20 books, 2 essay collections and over 30 screenplays, Clad in jeans and cowboy hat, Texan McMurtry accepted the 2006 Golden Globe and Academy Awards as co-author of the screenplay Brokeback Mountain, a breakout Western about Montana sheepwranglers who are secret gay lovers. McMurtry’s novel Lonesome Dove won Western’s Spur Award (1985) and the 1986 Pulitzer Prize.
BygoneWest McMurtry is a masterful storyteller, weaving memorable characters into a narrative rich in authentic details about a bygone West. He is an unusual author of this genre because he uses satire and black humor to debunk myths of the romantic West. That said, my reading experience of McMurtry’s Buffalo Girls, was like showing up at a rowdy wedding reception when all that’s left are cake crumbs, strewn confetti and maudlin drunks. I did not enjoy reading the book, and would not recommend it because of its relentlessly depressing plot. However, for students of popular culture, I feel it accurately captured the frontiersmen’s delight conquering the wild unknown and despair fighting loneliness, poverty and hostile elements.
In Buffalo Girls, McMurtry tells the story of the last days of the rough-n-ready West, combining characters who are real aging Western legends –Calamity Jane, Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill Cody– with a fictional ensemble of Western stock types including mountain men and Indians. It is a sad, meandering tale about the characters’ roles as actors touring in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show sprinkled with reminiscences about “the good old days” of the open frontier.
Post-Modern Western I’ve dubbed Buffalo Girls a “post-modern” Western, for several reasons. The protagonist, Calamity Jane is an androgynous anti-hero. She’s an incorrigible drunk with a propensity for starting fights and exaggerating about past feats. Unlike the classic Western hero, Jane is a poor shot, inept camper, failed wife and mother whose glory days as a scout and solder’s nurse are long gone. Secondly, it’s hard to map this work into Western plot variations as defined by Berger (Popular Culture Genres, 1992). Since it falls beyond the “professional–hired gunfighter” stage, I’d propose to add a “professional celebrity or icon” stage. The characters are now Western stars re-enacting roles as sureshots or Indian fighters for an urban paying audience.
Another post-modern motif is the sense of loss or passage. The frontiersmen ruefully regret their decimation of wildlife, so now a trapper has to visit a London zoo to see live beaver. A final post-modern element is McMurtry’s unvarnished descriptions of the grit, privations and stresses of mundane Western life. No romantic night under the stars for his cowboys. Instead, they wake up with spittle-frozen beards to roast a prairie dog with meat so tough it takes an hour per piece to chew.
Reading the Romance
March 6, 2007 at 4:56 am | In genre fiction, pop culture, romance | Leave a CommentRadway. J. A. (1984). Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill,NC:Univ.of North Carolina Press.
Berger, A.A. (1992) Popular Culture Genres: Theories and Texts. NY: Sage Press.
Why do women read romantic fiction?
How is the romance narrative structure defined ?
What makes a romance a success or a “garbage dump” candidate?
Professor Radway (Faculty, UNC and Duke ) explored these questions in a provocative 1984 field study of reading “motives, habits, rewards” for 42 Midwestern romance readers. Radway approached the research first as an ethnography of reading: how different communities interpret text. However, Radway soon realized that it was necessary to examine the text’s meaning within the context of the reader’s response to the event or behavior of reading. Her approach reflects a multi-disciplinary approach combining social science methodology with anthropology as well as literary and sociocultural analysis. Radway’s research attempts to address both feminist and psychoanalytic interpretations of romance’s lure.
Reader Motives: Most of Radway’s subjects expended significant energy nurturing their families, receiving minimal appreciation in return. For these self-sacrificing souls, romance reading provided a critical outlet for escape, relaxation and security (p 60-61). “We read books so we won’t cry” is how one subject explained her habit. These women viewed the solitary, deliberate act of reading as a “declaration of independence” –It is my time. In the context of 1970-90s popular culture, this sentiment is summed up by the bath salts ad: “Calgon take me away!”
While Radway’s interviewees stressed they were happily married, their comments revealed that romance novels fulfilled needs and desires their bona fide male partner did not. I was fascinated by Radway’s interpretation of romance readers’ drive as an “ongoing search for the mother” as feelings of love, acceptance and security are vicariously consummated in the man-woman relationship. I remain skeptical concerningRadway’s application of Chodorow’s feminist interpretation (Chapter 3) with her contention that romance novels help women resolve their ambivalence and fear of male/paternal dominance.
Narrative Structure Radway (p 67) summarizes reader feedback on the 3 most important ingredients in romance. The narrative begins with tension created of clashing, binary character traits between the heroine and hero. The classic heroine is virginal, unconcerned/unaware of her beauty, intelligent and yearning for love and commitment. In contrast, the classic romantic hero is sexually experienced, emotionally detached, and aware of his devastating good looks.
Radway’s discussion of binary traits (p 132) echoes Berger’s (1992) discussion of bipolarity in popular culture genres, such as the battle of “good vs. evil” in Dr. No. Moreover, Radway employs a variant of Propp’s analytical method by determining that the ideal romances follows a 13 narrative structure (p 134) from 1) destruction of heroine’s social identity (loss, poverty, disgrace,,,) through antagonism to physical separation of protagonists to 12) heroine responds emotionally, physically and 13) heroine’s identity is restored.
Ideal vs Failed Romance A true romance focuses on the one man-one woman relationship. If there is a rape scene, it arises from the hero’s misunderstanding about the heroine’s past and results in aggrieved repentance and hero reformation. There must be a happy ending, culminating in a committed relationship if not a marriage.
Once these narrative guidelines were revealed in reader responses, one can readily discern the “failed romances”. Readers rejected romances that emphasized sex and physical attraction divorced from love (p 74). Equally unacceptable were novels with promiscuious heroines juggling more than one love interest or narratives containing physical violence and brutality against the main characters. While many of the failures proferred a “happy ending”, readers felt the ending lacked credibility because no true resolution and character bonding had occurred prior to the afterthought ending.
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