Gothics, vampires, and and l'écriture-femme

The Vampire Tapestry

by Suzy McKee Charnas

From: Ellen Moody To: Litalk-l@frank.mtsu.edu
Subject: Unicorn Tapestries

Ten points to anyone who can tell us about any of the various Unicorn Tapestries.

I saw one set when I was in Paris this past summer at the Cluny Museum. Alas, I didn't buy the catalogue -- even churches have museum shops nowadays.

For about 11 years I lived at the top of New York City, off 200th street, at the foot of the cliff on which stands the Cloisters, medieval museum built from parts of churches, cloisters, nunneries, and monasteries mostly from Spain and which used to house a single unicorn tapestry from another set. There were apparently different sets of these things.

Do we have any medievalists on Litalk-l?

Re: Unicorn Tapestries:

Here are two sites where you can read about and look at the two series of tapestries I referred to in my posting earlier this morning.

The first is about "The Lady and the Unicorn", the series I saw in Paris:

http://orion.it.luc.edu/~avande1/unicorn.html

The second is about "The Hunt for the Unicorn", which is the name for a series of tapestries which are today found in the Cloisters Museum in Manhattan:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/medny/albertini2.html

Ellen

From: Elvira Casal
To: litalk-l@frank.mtsu.edu
Subject: Unicorn Tapestries

Tangentially, I just read a mystery/thriller which rests in part on the idea that there was another unicorn tapestry and that it was stolen and hidden by an influential Cuban family. For those who like that sort of thing, it's Carolina Garcia-Aguilera's Havana Heat.

Elvira

From: Angela Richardson
To:
Subject: Unicorn Tapestries

I've not been reading along with the second book but cannot resist of few words on the Unicorn Tapestries in Paris and New York. Visiting the ones in the Cluny is almost an essential element in every Paris trip. I enjoyed looking at their images on line (thank you for finding that Ellen). Good though these are, they do not prepare you for the size of the tapestries themselves and the splendour of them, all collected and hung together. I always love the detail of plant, flower and creature in tapestries of this era, and the Unicorn Tapestries have these curious and engaging touches in abundance. So too the play of expression in the Lady, the Unicorn and the Monkey's faces. They are a complete delight and remain mysterious, despite the explanations about senses etc. You feel they must have another coded meaning.

I therefore visited the tapestries in Cloisters in New York with the same expectations, but was sadly disappointed to find the collection made up of bits and pieces which failed to cohere in the mind.

Angela

To Litalk-l

December 24, 2001

Re: The Vampire Tapetry: Part Three, "Unicorn Tapestry"

Rereading this chapter now for the third time, and having listened to a young man give a very good talk on it in a college classroom (where I was Teacher), after which the class entered into a reasonably alert comparison of "The Unicorn Tapestry" with Bram Stoker's Dracula and Marion R. Crawford's "For the Blood is the Life" (the other short vampire story we did that day in class), I found the chapter still held my interest and in my the same way it did this past summer. It reverses what is true of most vampire stories until the middle of our century: the woman is no longer powerless, someone who is shaped by the fears and hatreds of a "masculinist" (I use this word to distinguish an attitude from a whole subset of people, meaning males) imagination. She is not on top, but she has the power of the pen (pun intended). Dr Weyland needs her to sign a document which will permit him to return to his comfortable niche in society. It is also sophisticated: the psychological assumptions are (to me) closely similar to those we find in Byatt (ultimately Freudian/ Jungian), with some astute and witty use of allusions to literature and the arts -- in particular the myth of the unicorn and the lady.

To expatiate: the structure compares well with Stoker's Dracula though it seems to me taken from Anne Rice's influential Interview with a Vampire. In thinking of Rice's novel I am struck by how little Weyland tells of himself: it is Floria whose mind we enter into. Charnas still keeps this mystery figure apart from us; we only get marginal details of his hunts -- I do feel a frisson when he emits that "I hunt". I found Rice's book much harder to read because we were asked to enter into that vampire's hunting and it left me queasy.

As Dracula is made up of a series of diaries, letters, journals, intertwined first-person narratives where the person writing doesn't know how it's all going to end (and thus availing the novelist as Samuel Richardson said so long ago, of the heartbeating of someone who is caught up in a crisis in the present tense and doesn't know what will happen next), so although "The Unicorn Tapestry" is written in the third person (as a framework), it mostly made up of first-person dialogue or notes and records of conversation. Probably that account for much of its power. We are seemingly confronted directly by the thoughts of Weyland and the interviewer (psychologist) as they play the game of "the talk cure". By-the-bye I have played this game three times; the first two I had an intelligent doctor (perhaps I was lucky), but the third time I had a fool and like Weyland walked out before the end of the first interview. Unlike Weyland I didn't need the woman (it was a woman) to sign anything for me. One of the advantages of not having a vulnerable career :) (all careers are vulnerable -- or so I think). I don't know if most psychiatrists are women or men; my first two encounters were with men. Charnas can also in this late 20th century world make her lady a doctor, someone who is in a powerful establishment position, respected, who networks with other people high in universities.

The chapter is also derived from a typical modern situation: one form of power in our society is the power to sign a document which enables someone else to have access to a job, position, change of life, apartment; an attestation. You need letters of recommendation to get an interview and as we all know in our world one of the games you must play to get a job is be interviewed -- by committees. I have been on one of those too and the dialogue after the interviewee left was shall we say far more illuminating about the power structure of the committee members than the person interviewed.

While Stoker seems unaware of the real or humane implications in the psychological dramatic scenes he dreams up, his book manifests an intense concern with psychological states, including hypnosis, the ability of people to control one another's moods and behaviors. So too this chapter. Although Floria Landauer has the literal power, as the chapter progresses it becomes clear Weyland takes the lead. He decides where they will meet; he shapes the conversation; he matches her wit and does her one better repeatedly.

The entertainment here -- and the book is an entertainment -- is in the witty to-and-fro conversation of the psychologist and the vampire. Unlike a number of the recent vampire tales we read (e.g., "Cabin 33" by Yarbro), Charnas presents a vampire who clearly kills. There is a tendency among some recent writers who in their efforts to make us side with the vampire soften him, make him a "good guy" caught up in this body; it's not his fault he needs blood, is wired as a hunter. Weyland quietly exults. He is amused at the antics of those he preys upoin. There are in this chapter some remarkable insights into the human character; I was drawn to Dr Weyland's characterization of what those who listen hear in the air:

The air vibrates constantly with the death cries of countless animals large and small. What is the death of one dog? Leaned close, speaking quietly, instructing: 'Many creatures are dying in ways too dreadful to imagine. I am part of the world; I listen to the pain. You people claim to be above all that. You deafen yourselves with your own noise and pretend there's nothing else to hear. Then these screams enter your dreams, and you have to seek therapy because you have lost the nerve to listen.

Remembered myself, said, Be a dying animal. He refused: 'You are the one who dreams this'

The vampire figure stands for a group of perceptions into the human condition which are deeply pessimistic and Weyland articulates one version of this core of feeling in the above aggressive counterturn. The "you are the one who dreams this" makes me think of the writers of female gothic like Radcliffe with their victim-heroines.

There is also some real fun with older legends. Weyland says he is not a communicable disease; or

"Mention of Dracula (novel). W dislikes: meandering, inaccurate, those absurd fangs.

And unlike just about every vampire tale we read in our class, we lack the climax of a male driving a stake through someone's heart (most of the time a female) and cutting off her head. This concludes Crawford's "For the Blood is the Life" even though the female is a sympathetic figure, someone who was powerless and abused by the peasant society she couldn't escape. Now Dr Weyland was clearly thinking of throwing Floria out the window. The name is an allusion to Pucini's Tosca based on a French story by Sardou where in a climactic scene, the heroine throws herself to death from a high castle wall: her lover, and the hero of the play, has been brutally shot by the army-henchman of a dictator; she also despairs because the world is such an uncaring, indifferent absurd place where she will have to prostitute herself and continually lie to get along. Weyland could have claimed that Floria threw herself from the window. Who would know? Would anyone beyond her daughter care? And nowhere else in the novel do we have such a scene: the explicit sadism and cruelty are enacted in Part 2 (last week's "Land of Lost Content") by the people who cage Weyland in show him off to others as a freak. In the Yarbro "Cabin 33" although the archetypical female figure who stands in for the Radcliffian Adeline is treated very badly, sneered at, disdained and she dies (and is dismissed as not worth bothering about), still the horrendous act of the stake through the heart and cutting off of a head, does not happen. Maybe it's too savage, too primal, too awful for modern readers? Or maybe the writer senses we know our Freud too well and can interpret what this act is a metaphor for.

This is long enough for one posting so I'll talk about the lady and the unicorn in a separate one.

Ellen

Re: The Vampire Tapetry: Part Three, The Lady and the Unicorn

Underlying the chapter -- at least if the allusions are meant to be taken seriously -- is the story of the lady and the unicorn which goes back to Greek and Roman times. There are many variants, but basically the pattern goes like this: the lady who is pure is all powerful, and she attracts unicorns. A central element in the European form of the archetype is the claim that only the purest of maidens could tame a Unicorn. Floria is no virgin, but she is chaste in the modern way: strong; she doesn't indulge in masochism; she's not promiscuous. She may have made some mistakes, but not the ones her daughter has made: clinging to a man, giving up her self-hood for him.

Well, in medieval European lore, the Unicorn, upon seeing a maiden sitting in the woods, would come approach her and meekly lay its head in her lap. That is the end piece in the tapestries I've seen, the close. At one point Weyland asks Floria if she expects him to do this:

"Prompted by him, 'I resent ...'

'I resent your pretension to teach me about myself! What will this work that you do here make of me? A predator paralyzed by an unwanted empathy with prey? A creature fit only for a cage and keeper?' He was breathing hard, jaw set ...

W. whispered, 'As to the unicorn, out of your own legends -- Unicorn, come lay your head in my lap while the hunters close in. You are a wonder, and for love of a wonder I will tame you. you are pursued, but forget your pursuers, rest under my head till they come and destroy you.' Looked at me like steel: 'Do you see? The more you involve yourself in what I am, the more you become the peasant with the torch!'"

The analogy of the psychiatrist with the peasant with the torch is good. American psychology as comes out of an idea that the doctor is supposed to make the patient part of society, which is in effect to tell the patient what is not fitting has to be repressed. But what if that is the very basis of your existence? The close of the chapter -- the normative beautiful love-making of Floria and Weyland is, though, a bit tame. It is part of the skein of the book which is optimistic about people, life, the world, nature, and presents the woman as strong, but I was compelled into belief by his leaving and her getting up and having to get on with life, having herself as "lady" held the beast in her lap wihout his horn destroying her.

There is a couple of other analogies which are of interest. The unicorn is another part-beast, part man, and I suggest a beautiful polished version of the werewolf. The werewolf as we've said is related to the vampire. The horn (our phallic symbol on this otherwise hairless and white beast) was in medieval times believed to have powerful medicinal properties. Floria needed to have it :). Originally also the unicorn's relationship to the classical satyr was clear as in very early pictorial representations it can be seen to be a goat-like creature. In a recent (cartoon) movie, "The Last Unicorn" (a film adaptation from a book both my daughters read before going on to see the film), the unicorn is a sweet lonely beast, noble in character. Another clean up. Has anyone seen this film? It is visually very beautiful: lots of turquoise, green forests, oneiric lakes, soft pink-purple white skies in the distance. Pastoral.

Cheers to all,
Ellen

To:
Subject: Unicorn Tapestries

On Sun, 23 Dec 2001, Angela Richardson wrote:

words on the Unicorn Tapestries in Paris and New York. Visiting the ones in > the Cluny is almost an essential element in every Paris trip. I enjoyed ... though these are, they do not prepare you for the size of the tapestries themselves and the splendour of them, all collected and hung together.

Nothing, but *nothing*, prepares you for Cluny, period. If you ever have the joy of going to Paris but have limited time, I'd strongly advise giving the Musee National du Moyen Age (aka Cluny, with the 3rd century Gallo-Roman baths) priority over such comparative (IMHO) trifles as the Tour Eiffel and the Arc de Triomphe. There's a sense of magic to that place, I felt it first when I entered the frigidarium (cold bath), the Unicorn Tapestries just plain glow, and I guarantee you you'll be in utter awe of the vaulting on the ceiling of the chapel.

There's a website (duh, of course there is): http://www.projet-ot.org/ It's in French, but it's got pictures. (The ceiling of the chapel is on the "L'Hotel de Cluny" page; larger picture at http://classes.uleth.ca/art2850b/pictures/cluny.gothicvault.jpg, picture with more context at http://www.metropoleparis.com/backissues/70609223/cluny.html.)

Mario Rups markin@patriot.net

Reply-To: litalk-l@frank.mtsu.edu
From: "Susan Hoyle"
Subject: Unicorn Tapestries

May I second Mario's recommendation of the Musee de Cluny? I first visited it in 1964, on my first time in Paris, as a penniless student etc etc, and I have tried to go back every time I've been lucky enough to be in Paris. The Unicorn tapestries are wonderful; the carved ivory, the gold and silver and bejewelled items of devotion (or plain vanity) are stunning. The building itself, with its Roman remains and mediaeval rooms, is 'vaut le detour' as the Michelin guide might say (for all I know it does). In fact I would say that the Cluny is 'vaut le voyage' -- and while you are in Paris, have a decko (dekko?) at the Sainte Chapelle.

Susan
sue-jez@hoyle-knight.freeserve.co.uk

Re: VT: "Land of Lost Content" and "Unicorn Tapestries"

Judy wrote:

"Anne Cranny Francis suggests in her essay on VT that the vampire is male in 'The Ancient Mind at Work', but then, when he is wounded, he changes and becomes identified with the female -- he changes from rapist to powerless victim. I feel there is something in this but somehow it doesn't seem to go to the heart of the section, which surely lies in the growing attraction between Weyland and Mark and the way Mark in the end offers himself up to save the vampire."

As alluring and unsettling (or off-putting) as is the incestuous material of "The Land of Lost Content" -- it's also homosexual and pederast (spelling?) -- the material is also one of the rare moments in the novel thus far where Weyland has acted ethically, truly kindly. He behaves in a disinterested courteous way to the boy; treats him with respect; does not try to exploit his emotions or use him as an emotional tennis ball. He does not hurt him at the end, but guides him back to the subway. Similarly in his relationship with Floria, he comes off very well -- at least I think so. More than a little humane. It would have been in his interest to do away with them; he does not. In this week's segment, he does not act in the least ethically: to use Judy's allusion, he returns to the assault, to the behavior of a werewolf/vampire. The satire which emerges from his behavior to the people who drive him to the opera is partly an academic one: the phoniness and disregard of human qualities that are likable and truly admirable are to the fore when Weyland is presented as arrogant, unpleasant, cold &c&c. But it's only the surface of what happens on the parapet.

In other words in the two scenes where open and socially acceptable love-making (with Floria) and surreptitious and transgressive love-making (with Mark) go on, Weyland comes out positively. He can love or simulate some version of love, can have personal intimate relationships, understands the bases of these. It's the public impersonal creature who is the monster.

I have read about Freud's paper on the Wolfman but have not read the paper so can't help her there.

Ellen Moody

From Class Lecture on "The Unicorn Tapestry" (English 202: "Gothics and Ghosts, Romance and The Supernatural"):

I: Suzy McKee Charnas.

A: Life and works, summary:

Our second living author; she was born in 1939. Another child of upper middle class parents, she grew up in New York City as can be seen from some of the references in the story which is really one of several almost self-contained chapters in her best- selling respected novel, The Vampire Tapestry (1980). She is known for two kinds of stories: one fantasy, and the other feminist. Her Walk to the End of the World (1974) and Motherlines (1979) are feminist fantasies. In another fantasy novel, The Furies (1994), named after Aeschylus's furies (Oreisteia), she tells of a dystopian society where the women are held as slaves by the men; the women revolt and the result is a bloody horrifically violent war. Instead of the usual indirect commentary of anger, this novel socks it to you; not metaphoric war, but killing war, slave-taking war, slave-punishing war. Her strong feminism comes out in this rare vampire tale where we find an admirable woman who is also not submissive, who is independent and strong, and whose decision to yield to Dr Weyland is a considered one, not simply a matter of submission. She says of The Furies that its value is it doesn't skip over anger; it doesn't pretend that this anger doesn't exist nor that it is unjustified, and says that we must acknowledge our angers and griefs before we can begin to stop the kind of behavior that causes them and then move beyond anger. She has lived in New Mexico with her husband since 1969; apparently she has always been a writer.

B. This story has won a number of prestigious coveted awards.

C. It compares well with Bram Stoker's Dracula.

1. It is written in the third person as a framework but much of it consists of first-person dialogue or notes and records of conversation; that which is in third-person is presented from the point of view of Floria Landauer. She is the one in the powerful or establishment position; at long last we have a woman doctor. She can by signing a paper enable Edward Lewis Weyland to return to his remunerative and respected career as a professor; or she can withhold the piece of paper and he is stuck. Thus he has to go through with these interviews. Modern situation: one form of power in our society is the power to sign a document which enables someone else to have access to a job, position, change of life, apartment; an attestation.

2. The material is treated in a sophisticated psychological way: although Bram Stoker seems unaware of the psychological terrains he is crossing, his book manifests an intense concern with psychological states, including hypnosis, the ability of people to control one another's moods and behaviors.

D. Compared to the other vampire tales we've read this semester:

3. It does not present the climax we expect: there is no driving a stake through someone's heart and cutting off their head. Dr Weyland was clearly thinking of throwing Floria out the window; at the close of Pucini's Tosca based on a French story by Sardou the heroine throws herself to death from a high castle wall: her lover, and the hero of the play, has been brutally shot by the army-henchman of a dictator; she also despairs because the world is such an uncaring, indifferent absurd place where she will have to prostitute herself and continually lie to get along. Weyland could have claimed that Floria threw herself from the window. I have read the whole novel and so can say that nowhere do we have such a scene: there is sadism or cruelty: the people who cage Weyland show him off to others as a freak; at the close of the novel he retreats into hibernation to await another generation. He is cornered. In "Cabin 33" although there is clearly disdain and hostility towards Emillie and she dies, still the horrendous act of the stake through the heart and cutting off of a head, does not happen. Too savage, too primal, too awful for modern readers?

4. The entertainment here is in the witty to-and-fro conversation of the psychologist and the vampire. What I like about the tale is unlike Yarbro or Chetwynd-Hayes, Charnas presents a vampire who clearly kills: when he first tells of himself for real, he says "I hunt". There are remarkable insights into human character, and an exfloriation of why pessimism is a justified point of view on life, read passage from p. 543. There is also some fun with older legends: he is not a communicable disease; the comment on Stoker's Dracula, p. 542.

E: On Its Own:

5. But somehow the tale reaches finer moments when it turns to archetypal understanding of patterns: in the story of the lady and the unicorn which goes back to Greek and Roman times: the lady who is pure is all powerful; she attracts the unicorn: The Lady and the Unicorn, a prevailing part of the European myth, claimed that only the purest of maidens could tame a Unicorn. The Unicorn, upon seeing a maiden sitting in the woods, would come approach her and meekly lay its head in her lap. Here we have another part-beast, part man, a beautiful polished version of the werewolf; the horn is a phallic symbol. He lays his horn in her lap. In medieval times the horn was believed to have powerful medicinal properties. Originally the unicorn's relationship to the satyr was clear as it was drawn as a goat-like creature; nowadays it has been purified and made pretty: white, a noble horse.

6. Another interest is the name of this vampire: Weyland. Instead of connecting to European versions of folklore and back to Byron and Le Fanu where the vampire is called Ruthven, the allusion is to among the first of the important gothic novels in the US: Weyland (1789) by Charles Brockden Brown. Brown has the same position in US gothic literature as Radcliffe in female gothic. Weyland story of someone who is subejct to pathological mental states; the hero has an identity conflict. This is suggestive, but since we have but one chapter of the book, you can't really go into that easily.