Fin-de-Siècle and Motion Sickness in Florence Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire

Year 2019, Vol 18 IDEA Special Issue, 60 - 70, 31.12.2019

Ayşe Naz Bulamur Baypınar

https://doi.org/10.21547/jss.593965

Abstract

In Florence Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire (1897), the nineteen-year-old orphaned heiress, Harriet Brandt,
embodies the social turbulence of the fin de siècle with her shifting identity as a human and vampire, British and
Jamaican, a former convent girl with dubious sexual orientation, and nurturer and killer of her loved ones. The
white upper-class guests of Hotel Lion d’Or, a seaside resort in Belgium, feel motion sickness due to her multiethnic and interspecies identity that shakes patriarchy, scientific authority, and Orientalist cultural distinctions.
They feel nausea because they are disturbed with her “unrefined” blood, unexplainable psychic powers, and
sexual decadence that contaminates the hotel. The people Harriet cares for at the hotel—a baby girl and her husband Anthony—die due to her uncontrollable ability to drain the life energy of those close to her. Harriet’s loved
ones gradually die because they are not “fit” to survive in fin-de-siècle Europe, where racial and gender categories were becoming unstable. Her suicide after unwittingly killing her newlywed husband suggests that she herself cannot embrace her liminal identity. In the novel, sickness serves as a metaphor for the social disorientation
of the fin de siècle that takes the lives of Victorians, who cannot adapt to changing sociopolitical conditions. 

Keywords

Florence Marryat, The Blood of the Vampire, sickness, vampire, poscolonial theory

Supporting Institution

BOĞAZİÇİ UNIVERSITY

Florence Marryat’ın The Blood of the Vampire Romanında Baş Döndürücü Bir Yüzyıl Sonu

Abstract

Florence Marryat’ın The Blood of the
Vampire (1897) romanında on dokuz yaşındaki Harriet Brandt, vampir ve
insan, İngiliz ve Jamaikalı, seven ve öldüren ve gizemli cinsel kimliğiyle on
dokuzuncu yüzyıl sonu Avrupa’sındaki kültürel değişim ve türbülansı temsil
etmektedir. Belçika’nın
sahilinde Hotel Lion d’Or’da konaklayan zengin Avrupalılar Harriet’ın ataerkil
düzeni, bilimin üstünlüğünü ve ırkçı söylemleri altüst eden çok kültürlü
kimliği karşısında adeta hastalanır. Harriet’ın oteli kirlettiğine inandıkları
melez kanı, doğa üstü güçleri ve cinsel özgürlüğü karşısında başları döner ve
mideleri bulanır. Sevdiklerinin hayat enerjisini istemsiz bir şekilde içine
çekmesi yüzünden otelde sevip okşadığı bir bebek ve kocası Anthony yavaş yavaş
hastalanır ve ölür. Harriet’ın yakınları, on dokuzuncu yüzyıl sonunda tür, ırk
ve cinsiyet kategorilerini sarsan çalkantıya uyum sağlayamadıkları için ölür.
Kontrol edemediği ruhani güçleri yüzünden balayında kocasını öldürdükten sonra
intihar eder çünkü tabuları kıran, değişken ve arada derede kimliğini kendi de
kabul edememiştir. Bu makale, romanda hastalığın yüzyıl sonunun baş döndürücü
etkisini vurgulayan bir metafor olduğunu ve Victoria İngiltere’sinin değişen
sosyal ve politik atmosferine ayak uyduramayanları öldürdüğünü savunur.

Keywords

Florence Marryat, The Blood of the Vampire, hastalık, kimlik, yüzyıl sonu

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