... soul is with Him! (279). The idea of the damnation of the victim was perhaps the most damaging aspect of the curse of vampirism in past ages. This is notably concurrent to developing cultures' attitudes to rape. In earlier centuries, women who had been raped were often punished harshly for having behaved immorally'. It was believed that the nature of the victim could ... as Lestat attempts to reconcile the contradictions between his human' need for love and his inhuman' need for blood, Gothic literature as a whole is a symbolic site where our culture wrestles with contradictions sometim...

• Word Count: 2816
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: Undergraduate