Dichotomy In Jack The Ripper's

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The Victorian era was marked by an aggressive belief in the purity of women. Queen Victoria herself, the most powerful matriarch of the time, perpetuated the image of a docile, subservient woman serving as the perfect help-meet for her husband. Women were viewed as “angels of the house” and anything that failed to fit this ideal image was ostracized or rationalized into erasure. The most notorious serial killer of the time, Jack the Ripper, chose prostitutes as his victims. Not middle-class wives, but women of “sin.” This exemplifies the pervasive stigma attached to any person who strayed from the Victorian Era’s stringent standards and persists to this day. The binary perception of virginity constructs a false dichotomy; one is either a prude or a slut. However there exists a Although this idea of the “angel of the house” was pervasive during the Victorian Era, …show more content…

Carmilla challenges this construct with her relationship with Laura, Although Laura is initially repulsed, she ultimately overcomes all internalized homophobia and their relationship transitions from that of strangers to livers. Laura writes of Carmilla “[pressing] me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek,” overtly implying the romantic nature of their relationship. Laura and Carmilla’s coupling excludes them from the homosocial exchange described by Elizabeth Signorotti. Signorotti claims women are used within society to distance men from each other and therefore from any suggestion of homosexuality. Without their use as currency, women’s existence is irreconcilable with the patriarchy, a fact that drives them, specifically Carmilla, to

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