Résumé:
The theme of our dissertation is "The Evolution of Vampirism throughout American
Gothic fiction. A case study: Stephen King's Doctor Sleep.". Our aim in this dissertation is to
study the evolution of the vampire representation and depict the shifts and changes while
making a gothic feminist reading of the novel. Furthermore, this theory aims at
acknowledging the situation of women, in which social aspects were held in the chain of
events. The author lived and witnessed the different waves of feminism. Thus, the content of
the work leads us to discover a major evolution even if he is a male gothic.
In our study, we will concentrate on the portrayal of femininity by examining characteristics
of female gothic in it and gender role through time. In order to do this, "Gothic Feminism" is
the most suitable theory, which will help us to discover the existence of feminist ideas in a
novel written by a male figure in the modern era. In addition, this work helped us to draw our
attention to the way women faced their awkward conditions of their times.
Our real aim is to prove that there are changes in the representation of vampires and the
image they convey in gothic literature, which is in constant evolution.
Our research paper is divided into two chapters. The first chapter will be devoted to the
introduction of the major concepts in the theoretical part by providing definitions to terms
such as: Vampirism, Vampires, Gothic, Feminism and "Gothic Feminism" for understanding
our works. The second chapter will be a contextual and textual analysis of both the evolution
of the vampire figure and the selected novel, and this will be achieved through the
introduction of the author’s biography. In the analysis, weapply the traditionalgothic
elements and Gothic feminism as a theory on it in order to spot the changes.
