Victorians! discussion

This week we have a vampire story of sorts, which centers around a sadistic painter, his beautiful daughter/model, and the young apprentice he tortures.

Karl Wolkenlickt (cloudlight) becomes enamored of the lovely daughter of a brilliant but twisted painter, whose obsession is misery and whose nickname is Teufelsbürst, (devil’s brush). Karl decides that the way he can get to know Lilith is to become her father’s apprentice. Her father gladly takes him on, knowing that he can manipulate the situation, in order to observe the young man’s discomfort and misery. To further this end, the painter gives the young man herbs, which should bring on a state of influence, but instead put him into a catatonic state. Oddly, the artist decides to take a cast of the handsome youth in order to preserve his beauty for future work. Meanwhile, the apparent death of the apprentice, puts him so much in the mind of Lilith that she comes to believe herself in love with him.

Suddenly another violent electrical storm breaks, sending the painter away before he finishes the cast, but which awakens Karl from coma in his absence. Due to the infusion of vampire stories from the village, Karl believes that he has returned as the undead, and goes to seek the blood of his beloved. The sight of the resurrected Karl convinces both father and daughter respectively that the young man is indeed a vampire like those of village rumor. In turn, the sight of Lilith brings clarity and Karl comes to himself, leaves the house of the painter, and seeks refuge with a friend.

Karl and his friend decide to keep up the impression that he is a vampire in order to pay the painter back a little of his own. To this end, Karl slips back into the house at night and repaints portions of the painter’s works, while the inhabitants of the house suffer several disturbed nights contemplating the undead body they believe resides in their cellar. Until one “trick” gives Lilith the hope that Karl remains among the living. So she gets herself up as a ghost and hides in the studio to await her lover, where she gives him a good scare then falls into his arms. Together, they destroy the vampiric cast in the cellar and restore the studio and most of the paintings. When the painter returns to his studio in the morning, he finds a healthy Karl painting as if nothing had happened, while the rest of the household acts as if this is indeed the case. Believing that the experiences of the week were a figment of his disturbed mind brings a change of heart within the old man. He continues to paint brilliantly, but without the obsession. Karl and Lilith marry and the final scene is that of the reformed cruel painter surrounded by grandchildren.

1) How does MacDonald make use of the vampire mythology which inspired Carmilla (1872) and Dracula (1897)?
2) Is Karl justified in playing his tricks on his mentor? How does this turn of events change the timbre of the story?
3) Is Lilith’s change of heart believable? What about that of her father?
4) Is there any significance in the names of the main characters?
5) In what ways does The Cruel Painter echo Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter (1844)? Does The Cruel Painter qualify as a Gothic tale?

Please pardon the lack of links. GoodReads was undergoing some updates as I posted.

You might find this article interesting…

https://www.snc.edu/northwind/documen...

It makes some fascinating comparisons. :)

This was an entertaining story, with flashes of humor in what originally felt like a tale of death and damnation. I enjoyed the happy ending but do think it was unrealistic that the painter and his daughter could change so completely over what was essentially a series of elaborate pranks. I would like to have known more about what made Teufelsbürst so cruel and angry and why Lilith was so emotionally remote. But even with those minor criticisms, I enjoyed the story very much.

I agree that some more backstory would have been nice. I liked it too, but I’ve read a fair amount of gothic literature, and there’s often no reason given for the behaviors of the antagonist. MacDonald seems to hint at something related to Lilith’s mother, but never makes that clear. Which might be part of the reason that the redemption seems a bit of a stretch. The humor makes this a fairly quirky gothic.

I wasn’t expecting this story to turn ‘vampire’ even if it did begin with a weeping girl sitting on a grave.

The efforts of Karl to withstand the cruel painter’s determination to make him suffer were truly remarkable, if a little hard to believe, but he was totally besotted with Lilith.

However, his love was based almost entirely on her looks as he had hardly spoken to her and only seen her image previous to their meeting in her father’s grotesque paintings. I actually understood better how Lillith could grow to love him by his continual presence in her household, a presence that exuded warmth and goodness that counteracted the cold, evil influence of her father.

The ‘vampire’ section of the story was truly gothic as was the outrageous use of mind changing drugs. I was intrigued by the account of Lilith closely examining her own body to check if ‘vampire Karl’ had left any tell tale marks. At that point it felt like an episode from a Hammer Horror film.

The happily ever after ending, particularly for the painter, was both unexpected and somewhat unbelievable, but I think the author’s own beliefs may have had something to do with that.

Renee wrote: "You might find this article interesting…

https://www.snc.edu/northwind/documen......."

Thank you for such an interesting article which was well worth reading.

I am not surprised that George MacDonald felt that Shelley should be forgiven for his misdemeanours considering MacDonald’s religious beliefs. However, I was surprised that Robert Browning agreed with MacDonald. Perhaps it was the fellow poets society.

Karl did not come across as a Shelley figure to me, as the young apprentice seemed to represent redemption within the painter’s household. Considering what happened to Shelley’s first wife, his children/other close family members and his association with Byron there seems to be a distance between them, at least regarding values such as constancy and virtue.

Renee wrote: "You might find this article interesting…

https://www.snc.edu/northwind/documen......."

thank you - a fascinating article for me, not so much with regard to MacDonald specifically, but to the constant rewriting of history, literature, etc. according to the 'zeitgeist'. - In MacDonald's time, it seemed impossible to accept an atheistic Shelley.

We continue doing the rewriting, of course. And sometimes it has consequences that reach far into the future (thinking of the enormous influence of Burke on the analysis of the French Revolution, for example) . Reading 'old' literature, I am often reminded these days of the ongoing war between Enligthenment and Romanticism - with the dangerous aspects of Romanticism (anti-science, subjectivism, esoterism, ... ) particularly 'en vogue' today.

This was an enjoyable story and I enjoyed the vampire elements.
I don't see any similarities to Carmilla or Dracula, especially since those books had real vampires.
I liked the humourous touches towards the end, especially the spilled wine.

I saw many gothic elements at the beginning of the tale, but then MacDonald took it in his own direction.