Reflection

Throughout this class, the theme that resonated with me most was the amount of culture reflected through our vampire novels. I was very skeptical of this class at the start of the semester. The only vampire books I'd read were Twilight and I was convinced that I wouldn't like any of the novels assigned. Much to my surprise, I enjoyed a number of them, namely Carmilla and Wuthering Heights.

In these works I saw themes I recognized from other books, movies, and even life experiences. Looking back, it seems silly that I didn't expect to gain anything from vampire novels. As much as I read I should have realized that every facet and genre of literature reflects its society. In the past I've come across this fact but I suppose I thought that because of the sort of wild topic of vampires, there was no way it could connect to something I would recognize and appreciate. It definitely did, though.

This class has reminded me to be more open minded, especially when it comes to literature. Not judging a book by its cover would be a good way to put it haha.

I really like how my final project turned out. Once I started researching, I realized that there was so much information on the subject, my paper I turned in is very much a condensed version of my original. My final project has absolutely helped me to explore the role of women in vampire lit more in depth. I only used two books as examples to reflect some of the themes I found and I can only imagine how much more I could have written had I expanded the number of references.