Marxism and the Gothic
“Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” – Karl Marx
The Gothic as a genre has long been utilised as a medium through which political upheavals and societal taboos can be deconstructed and criticised with the protective veil of metaphor. From its history in the invasion and conquest of Europe, to becoming a political justification for liberalism and corporations, to being a Romantic critique of growing consumerism, there has not been a time when the message and convention of the Gothic, or the Goths, has not been appropriated to contradict the status-quo.
The Historical Gothic:
The Gothic, no matter which of its many iterations, owes its existence to a barbarian Germanic people. They were an agrarian and sedentary people, mobilised only by the incursion of the Huns from the east, which resulted in the suicide of King of the Goths, Ermenrichus. Following their loss, they began their encroachment on the Roman Empire, killing Roman Emperor in the East, Flavius Valens (AD 378). The Visigoths declared independence from the Roman Empire not 100 years later (AD 475). In their overrunning of the Roman Empire from their independent settlements, they, as missionaries, sung the requiem of the pagan world. Their Arian crusade is in no small part a strand of the Catholic Church’s history.
Marx categorises the conquest of the Roman Empire by the Barbarians as having ‘destroyed a number of productive forces’. With the slave society of the Roman Empire in ruins, and many developing and industrious processes diminished, the Goths settled and continued to live their primitive agrarian lives; and, from their system of election for village officials favouring a privileged few families, feudalism arose. Class brackets solidified, and the give-and-take between Kings and subjects became common practice.
How, then, did the dismantling of an empire and the advent of feudal serfs translate into dark, cathedralic imagery, and fantastical creatures victimising innocent young girls?
In the Renaissance period, there was a reimagining of what it meant to be ‘Gothic’. This definition of Gothic rested on interpretations of medieval architecture and the aesthetics surrounding it. Naturally, with the reverence paid to Graeco-Roman and other classical architecture and styles, the Gothic and its ‘squat, unnatural, and irrational’ (Donato Bramante, 1444–1514) buildings were written off as ‘barbaric [and] accursed’ (Giorgio Vasari), and being, in general, against the aesthetic and cultural values of the Renaissance.
The Gothic style had its redemption arc, however. With the English Reformation under Henry VIII, the ‘exceptionalism’ of the English identity was born out of great violence with the executions of Catholic religious leaders and the ransacking of their cathedrals, and thoroughly rooted in an antagonistic attitude towards the past. The ruins of buildings stood out, remnant of a medieval past, and Protestant historians such as John Foxe (Book of Martyrs/Actes and Monuments, 1563) imbued the English’s consciousness with images of pain and suffering on the path to establishing their legitimate religion, the Church of England.
The Bourgeoise Gothic:
“It is to the Gothick Constitution that we owe our Parliaments, which are the Guardians of our Rights and Liberties.”
So far, the Gothic has established itself as a tool of iconoclasm. The people after which it is named dismantled the slave-society of the Roman Empire and took Western Europe to the third stage of historical materialism. Its themes were present in the Protestant Reformation, the definitive split from the omnipresent, patriarchal Catholic Church.
The next great political disruption in England was, of course, the 17th century English Revolution. In its earliest stages, the English Revolution was not explicitly a bourgeoise revolution, but the aristocrats in Parliament wishing to do away with the absolute monarchism that prevented them from sharing in the feudalist exploits of their serfs. Of course, with Oliver Cromwell and the New Model Army came something closer to a bourgeoise revolution, and resulted in a republican commonwealth, uniting corporations that were divided along the line of breaking into the capital available to them from the revamp of English imperialism.
The so-called ‘Gothick Constitution’ was a suggested form of government in the 17th century, one which valued freedom, and was inimical to the tyranny and absolutism exerted by Charles I and his abuse of prerogative powers and divine right. Above all others, this Gothick way of governance appealed hugely to the liberal Whigs, who had mercantile and manufacturing interests that supremacy of Parliament and a rejection of the final bastion of feudalism, a monarch, would help facilitate. Previous to this, the commercial dimension had not entered the canon of Gothic constitutionalism. But, as with many ideologies, they can be twisted and contorted into the narrative of the beholder. So, the Gothic became synonymous with not blindly following leaders, but engaging in discourse that ensured returns of shares in land and government, as well as adventuring outside of the domestic market to go and exploit and rape foreign lands and people, who were doing just fine without us.
This is a prime example of the interpenetration of opposites. The effect of the first Goth mission, the rise of feudalism out of Romanic slave societies; now feudalism is the cause of the bourgeoise revolution, again on the (interpreted) spirit of Gothicism.
More Interpenetration; Cause and Effect in the 19th Century:
“The Vampire is the arch-consumer.”
Dracula has a property portfolio. Isn’t that ridiculous? I suppose he does own a castle. The castle is an interesting device in the Gothic: a reminder of the old guard of feudalism, a reminder that you haven’t reeaalllyy escaped the shockwaves of that period of history. Lords are still around in England. The monarchy came back. Perhaps the appearance of the castle, the Counts and Countesses, in the English iteration of Gothic literature is a bitter acknowledgement that the bourgeoise revolution hadn’t worked quite as well as it could have, particularly following uprisings such as the French Revolution. 19th century Gothic is riddled with inflections of Unionism and race issues (written in conjunction with Whiggish commercialism and nationalism). This is explored obliquely in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) in which national differences are coded as racial differences, and inter-relational issues between characters are remnant of the bondages of slavery which had only been outlawed in the British Empire 13 years prior. Healthcliff is black, yes, but — more scandalously in the Gothic interpretation of class — he disrupts the purity of the genealogical line of the aristocratic family in the novel, the same genealogical purity that has denoted the ‘village elites’ since the period of Barbarism in Europe with the Goths.
The 19th century not only saw the abolition, but a huge advance of industrialisation in the U.K. There is not a more fitting representation of the Romantic fear of such scientific supremacy over nature than in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein. Subtitled ‘the Modern Prometheus’, attitudes towards industrialisation and modernisation are made clear in the invocation of Prometheus, a Grecian myth detailing a man who stole the god’s fire to give to humanity, thus defying those deities. The momento mori embodied in Shelley’s monster captures the peur de jour, of scientists advancing the new-fangled industrial processes to the point of ‘playing God’.
A fellow Romantic, Coleridge, points out why the bastions of the Gothic spirit of iconoclasm of the time fell to Romantic notions of nature over rapid technological development:
“Gothic art is sublime. On entering a cathedral, I am filled with devotion and awe; I am lost tot he actualities that surround me and my whole being expands into the infinite; earth and air, nature and art, all well into eternity, and the only sensible expression left is, ‘that I am nothing!’”
Commentaries about opium also entered the Gothic canon of the 19th century. The Opium Wars, contemporary to the period, were a direct result of British colonialism, as the commodity of the drug was, and still is, dependent on empiric trade. With the exceedingly modern nature of the novel, then, it is no surprise that opium ended up characterised as vampiric through its appearance in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula.
Capital is Dead Labour:
Besides Dracula’s property portfolio, the supernatural figure possessed quite a few (in 1897, at least) modern assets, such as:
“typewriters, train timetables, the phonograph, telegrams, newspapers, medicinal drugs, blood transfusions, brain operations, and radio communication.” (Nick Groom, 2012)
Stoker’s novel is not a fear of the supernatural, the pale, blood-sucking, inhumane beings that prey on the innocent — wait, no, it is, but the pale, blood-sucking inhumane being is not supernatural; it is, instead, the perfect metaphor for the ruling class of the time.
Marx is quoted at the beginning of this discussion, and he is right, if only proved by the ambiguous commentary of the rebellious Gothic novelists of the time. The vampire became the fictional manifestation and symbol of the ‘ravenous government ministers sucking the blood out of the people’ (Ibid.), and therefore the vampire became the wealthy, cultured figure of the genre.
To divest slightly, the first female vampire, Carmilla (Sheridan Le Fanu, 1872) is equally not a commentary on same-sex relationships; not in a positive light, at least. Instead, the mostly feminine focus of the novel reflects the fears of the time, the eradication of man in homosexual relationships, as well as anxieties about marriage and child-bearing. It revealed worries of women realising that ‘love is her slavery’ (Cesare Lombroso). Each of these aspects divulge bourgeoise fears, as the breakdown of traditional family was viewed as a threat to the stability of the capitalist system (as it is today).
What Dracula and Carmilla reflect, therefore, is not just novels about hypersexuality and displaced lust. Rather, it shows the growing rejection of greedy, imperialistic consumerism, as well as of an overcharged patriarchal system controlling familial ideals. Dracula relies on international financial systems for his investments; in this sense, and many others, he is a very modern, bourgeoise man, despite his feudal backdrop. Once again, could this contradictory combination be a snide remark towards the abject failure of the English Revolution? I would argue, yes.
Furthermore, Dracula peripherally tackles contemporary anthropological issues. Criminal anthropologists Cesare Lombroso and Max Nordau examine social deviancy. What sort of ‘deviancy’, you ask? Homosexuals, New-Women (the feminists of the late 19th century), criminals, and even Pre-Raphaelite artists. As Dracula transforms into a wolf, a modern, wealthy man returning to a bestial state, this reflects the fear of a Hobbesian State of Nature, that dismantling the institutions that uphold imperialism, consumerism, and industrialisation (umbrella term: exploitation) would result in anarchism, and a war between everyone and… everyone.
To make a return to the genealogical issues explored in Wuthering Heights as a response to the abolition of slavery, Dracula makes a prideful claim to a pure and long bloodline, despite the fact that he is a mere usurper of feudal bastions. This was felt to be an omen to the end of society and, again, a precursor to the Hobbesian State of Nature. To once again quote Nick Groom:
“Dracula articulates not only the terror of a past that refuses to die, but also the horror of modern technology that knows only how to consume.”
Even then, it seems the most perceptive of us knew that one day, such greed would consume so much that we would end up consuming ourselves.
What’s Your Bloody Chamber? Dismantling Grand Narratives:
Just as the industrial revolution took the jarring social position of the English Revolution, as has the civil rights movement (encompassing LGBT, women’s, and racial rights) usurped the disruptive energy of capitalist industrialisation.
Polarising author Angela Carter wrote at the peak of second-wave feminism, but also during the rise of Thatcherism. The main discourse for feminists at the time was the question of pornography, answered by Carter through the Freudian, Lacan death-drive, arguing that, so long as women were allowed to be empowered by such an exploitative institution, it may as well be considered Kosher amongst feminist circles. This continues the discourse prompted following le Fanu’s Carmilla, with the primary concern surrounding the novel being sustained female subscription and enslavement to traditional family roles and subordination to patriarchal figures.
Carter objectively rejects this principle. In each one of her novels in The Bloody Chamber, she presents women who are simultaneously agents in and of themselves, but also victims of a patriarchal society that they can do little about (except, of course, kill them, as is practiced in Lady of the House of Love, the Erl-King, and in the title story). Regardless, her heroines persist, and eventually discover or adapt their feminine sexuality and desires in accordance with the disappointment of feudal relics such as the Marquis, or other aristocratic figures such as Milord (Tiger’s Bride) and the Beast (Courtship of Mr. Lyon). Carter herself has described her work on The Bloody Chamber anthology as anti-bourgeoise, by reclaiming the gruesome, gory fairytales of the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault from the ‘bourgeoise library’ of Disney-ified tales.
Even so, her aristocratic characters have an axiomatic post-modernism about them — if you’re willing to do the research. Carter’s supposed intertextuality between her upper-class characters and highbrow art are, in fact, a rouse. In the title story of The Bloody Chamber, Carter attributes fake works of art to very real, and very respected amongst the bourgeoise, artists. Not only is this cleverly-executed contempt for the unobservant, slavish reader who is willing to go along with the assertion that such-and-such artists produced such-and-such painting, conveniently named for the novella (such as The Adventures of Eulalie at the Harem of the Grand Turk not existing whatsoever, and the work The Sacrificial Victim being attributed to Gustave Moreau, a very real artist, is entirely fictionalised). In this example, Carter pokes fun at the status-symbol of owning art because of name only as opposed to appreciating the subject of the art in front of you, regardless of the brand attached to it.
Conclusion:
Carter proves that the tradition of the Gothic has continued in the vein of its unwitting founding-fathers, the Germanic Goths. Iconoclasts and something of a revolutionary body, the spirit of their struggle and violence has certainly continued through English political and literary practice.
Just as the original Goths aided the transition from slave-society to feudal production, the 17th century interpretation of the Gothic constitution facilitated the bourgeoise revolution. A mere hundred years later, the bourgeoise found themselves shifting in their seats at the newest iteration of the Gothic convention, once again the cause of those now rejecting what it had once effected.
Now, we may be seeing a similar process. Though Carter wrote fifty years ago, the need to reclaim feminine sexuality, balance wealth divide, and dismantle grand narratives in this post-modern era is as prevalent as ever. Though the 19th century Gothic/Romantic writers rejected consumerism and imperialist greed, there was much work to be done in this regard, and it now comes to light in the context of civil rights movements vanguarded by Stonewall, BLM, and numerous feminist advances.
The Gothic will always be on the side of the taboo, whether objectively off-beat, or only undesirable due to the fears of the ruling class’ status-quo. Though writing another Dracula will unlikely prompt a revolution, it is nonetheless interesting to consider the roots of the conventions, both political, genre, and aesthetic, that precipitated and were co-opted to support iconoclasm and dissidence of the time.
