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THE OUTSIDER |
The Gothic outsider character is driven by strange longings and destructive needs. While everyone else appears sane, s/he is insane; while everyone else appears bound by law and morals, s/he defies these; while everyone else seems to lack any peculiarities of taste or behaviour, s/he feels only estrangement, sick longings, terrible surges of power and devastation. |
The Other Mother , a creature living in a barren, bleak world, moulds and re-mould’s the world in which she lives, while creating, altering, controlling, destroying and abusing creatures that she desires in order to lure countless innocent children from another world into her own, to have with her forever. Although real parents have an affection for their children, the Other Mother seems to love them as prized possessions, as a miser loves money, as a dragon loves gold and nothing more (p.73). The Other Mother was quite overpowering, for she forced children to stay with her through removing their parents and imprisoning them in cupboards, while she also abused children so that they may act as she pleased. At times, she stole the children’s souls, and took their lives away, leaving them in a cupboard, forgetting about them in the dark. She was a character with a profoundly greedy personality, for she would do anything to acquire her prize, which was mostly a child. She is a character with long, sharp nails, and is thin, while she eats large black-beetles as one would eat normal food (p.53). She is an inhumane being who is hated by all, including readers for she symbolises evil itself.
Women threatened by a powerful, impulsive, tyrannical male |
One or more male characters has the power, as king, lord of the manor, father, or guardian, to demand that one or more of the female characters do something intolerable. The woman may be commanded to marry someone she does not love (it may even be the powerful male himself), or commit a crime |
This gender stereotype is radically altered, for the tyrannical character in Coraline is the other mother, who seems rule over both the males and females the she both has trapped and created in her world. Thus, the gender stereotype of the evil character being a tyrannical male is largely broken by author Neil Gaiman placing a female to be the tyrannical figure that overpowers all the characters in her world in this novel. Such a flip seems to uniquely modify the way in which the plot has been structured, since while a male tyrannical figure would be predicably tyrannical, the female tyrannical in this novel seems to be unpredictably tyrannical, for the reader does not know the surprises the Other Mother has in store for Coraline at every point in the plot of the story.
women in distresss |
Female characters often face events that leave them fainting, terrified, screaming, and/or sobbing. A lonely, pensive, and oppressed heroine is often the central figure of athe novel. The women suffer all the more because they are often abandoned, left alone (either on purpose or by accident), and have no protector at times. |
Coraline partly fits this gender stereotype for although she is initially overpowered by the other mother, she, along with the cat saves both the males and females under the Other Mother’s spell and conclusively escapes her grasp. Thence while initially fitting this gender stereotype, Coraline breaks out of this and performs the role of the male stereotype as a saviour and an escapee, that defeats evil and saves those tortured by it.
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