{"id":1222,"date":"2023-10-22T22:17:07","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T02:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/?p=1222"},"modified":"2023-10-22T22:17:07","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T02:17:07","slug":"obsession-with-the-supernatural","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/2023\/10\/22\/obsession-with-the-supernatural\/","title":{"rendered":"Obsession with the supernatural"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vernon Lee\u2019s Dionea <\/em>(1890) draws interesting connections to the more modern novel Beloved <\/em>by Toni Morrison published in 1987. I believe that texts expose the fascination with the \u201cevil\u201d supernatural appearing as young women that are overly sexual and malicious beyond their physical appearance.<\/p>\n

While both are written in different time centuries, the main parallel is drawn when a supernatural force in the form of girl has appeared to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting adults. Throughout the novel Dionea was described in an animalistic way with her \u201craising her head with that smile like the twist of a young snake\u201d and having lips like \u201ca tiny snake\u2019s curves\u201d (pg 11 & 13). In seeing the comparison between Dionea and a snake it suggests that her humanity isn\u2019t acknowledged in the male narrator\u2019s perspective. It serves as a way to make Dionea seem creepy yet sexual by describing her physical features like a snake\u2019s \u201ccurves.\u201d This connects to the description of Beloved in Toni Morrison\u2019s novel who makes home feel \u201cspiteful. Full of a baby\u2019s venom\u201d (Chapter 1). We can see that the narrative of vengeful girls is something that continues from the 1800s well into the 1900s. The same language of comparing them to snakes reveals their slimier motivations that goes beyond the unsuspecting appearance of a young girls.<\/p>\n

Dionea and Beloved motivations are made visible in the way that they haunt and terrorize males throughout the novel. Dionea was described as having multiple occurrences of violence towards males. One notable incident was the death of Sor Agostino who was hit by lightning and \u201cwas killed on the spot; and opposite, not twenty paces off, drawing water from the well, unhurt and calm, was Dionea\u201d (pg 14). The convenient placing of Dionea in a Sor Agostino\u2019s death paints her out as a murderous girl who appears innocent and \u201ccalm\u201d to the unsuspecting eye yet, the narrator is shaken by these constant unnatural actions of Dionea. This evil and unusual girl archetype is present in Beloved <\/em>when Paul D, who\u2019s Beloved mother\u2019s lover, falls prey to Beloved schemes when she torments him into sleeping in the cellar and commands that he \u201ctouch on the inside part and call me my name\u201d (chapter 11). In this instance, while she\u2019s not outrightly violent like Dionea, Beloved fulfills her deeper desires which was to overtake Paul D and drives him into isolation to complete this plot. Similarly, to Dionea killing Sor Agostino in a more secluded area.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the connection between these two texts over 100 years apart depicts the popularity of the supernatural semi-sexual young woman horror stories which intrigues the imaginations of readers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vernon Lee\u2019s Dionea (1890) draws interesting connections to the more modern novel Beloved by Toni Morrison published in 1987. I believe that texts expose the fascination with the \u201cevil\u201d supernatural appearing as young women that are overly sexual and malicious beyond their physical appearance. While both are written in different time centuries, the main parallel … Continue reading Obsession with the supernatural<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5321,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125361],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5321"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}