Talk:The Blood of the Vampire

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:The Blood of the Vampire/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Vaticidalprophet (talk · contribs) 06:36, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
It is reasonably well written. a (prose, spelling, and grammar): Mostly fine, but see below. b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): As necessary at the GA level. It is factually accurate and verifiable. a (references): No issues. b (citations to reliable sources): No issues. c (OR): No issues. d (copyvio and plagiarism): No issues. It is broad in its coverage. a (major aspects): Broad coverage, although some sections are much longer or shorter than others. b (focused): See below. It follows the neutral point of view policy. Fair representation without bias: No issues. It is stable. No edit wars, etc.: I suppose it would be difficult to have edit wars with one person, wouldn't it? It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate. a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): god I love the public domain b (appropriate use with suitable captions): No issues.
Overall: Pass/Fail:
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Hey, Tiger. Following up on my comment. Like I said at the time, I really enjoyed reading this article, and I think it can make GA for sure. I'll get the prose nitpicks issues out of the way first.

Thanks for picking this up, VP. — ImaginesTigers (talk)

The Blood of the Vampire is an 1897 novel by Florence Marryat. It is generally classified as Gothic fiction.

I don't think this needs to be two sentences -- it feels a bit unfinished to read out that way. "...an 1897 novel by Florence Marryat, generally classified as Gothic fiction" works just fine.

 Done Reworded.

(Anything I don't respond to here, assume I'm 1. fine and 2. don't see the reason to explain why I'm fine.)

Bobby dies.

This sentence made me laugh, which I'm fairly confident wasn't the intent. As is, it seems dismissive and almost a non-sequitur. Try see if you can get the gravity of the matter across more and synthesize it better into the broader issue of Harriet killing the people around her.

Actually, I was very much aware that it had a comical effect. I don't think it’s my job to generate gravitas (it’s a plot summary), but I've added "Shortly thereafter" to conjoin it a bit (I agree that it was stilted).

Academic Helena Ifill writes that the Female Gothic typified by Ann Radcliffe was no longer relevant to readers at the end of the nineteenth century.

'Female Gothic' isn't usually capitalised that way (ime or elsewhere on Wikipedia; Ifill does seem to use it, but the de facto MOS here appears lower-case 'female'), and "19th" is written with numerals elsewhere in the article.

No—hard disagree here. Female Gothic is a particular discipline of Gothic fiction, and is a proper noun. It was coined by Ellen Moers (with that proper noun) and is always capitalised; I'd get into trouble at uni for not capitalising it. From the MoS: Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. Every other Wikipedia article about Female Gothic is wrong here, not academia at-large. A quick Google would clear this up for you. — ImaginesTigers (talk)

Eminently reasonable; I've seen the term elsewhere (it's not the field of literature that interests me, but is enough steps adjacent to it for >1 time) with inconsistent capitalization, and was leaning on other Wikipedia articles for the lead here. "Every other Wikipedia article is wrong here" strikes me as something to make progress on... Vaticidalprophet (talk) 11:50, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Female Gothic imagery related to women's vulnerability, but—by the time of Marryat's novel—women were experiencing "unprecedented levels of freedom and responsibility".

While I make allowances for the em-dashes of your personal writing style, I don't see the need for them here, especially considering they're immediately preceded by a comma. "But by the time of Marryat's novel, women were experiencing..." reads much better.

Sure! — ImaginesTigers (talk)

Ifill concurs, noting that Harriet's pleasant childhood memories of whipping slaves reflects upon the "the morally unwholesome conditions in the West".

Now, I haven't read Ifill on this, but in context is that 'West' supposed to be to Western world? It strikes me as referring to the West Indies specifically.

It’s indeed supposed to be the Western world; I see that it’s already wiki-linked. "The West", as far as I know, has a pretty clear meaning, and makes more sense in context. I'll just change it to the "western world", though! — ImaginesTigers (talk)

I saw the link, which was what was confusing me. All good, though. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 11:50, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

For example, Sarah Willburn analyses Harriet's psychical feeding on Margaret as an instance of Stephen Arata's reverse colonisation.

'Psychical' should just be 'psychic'.

Disagree again. "Psychical" has a connotation which is academically important for this book. Although today they might be close to synonyms, it had a very specific meaning in the 19th and 20th century. I've added quotation marks? Unfortunately there's no article on that yet (Wikipedia's coverage of literature and literary theory is... poor), but I'll get to it eventually.

I'm thinking about general-audience accessibility here (this article will, with any luck, be read by many people unfamiliar with its original context). That said, psychical is on Wiktionary. Do you think you could link the word there? Vaticidalprophet (talk) 11:50, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

I can do that! My general approach is that this article will primarily be read by students studying the book, I think, but I do hope people unfamiliar with the book read it. Change made. Good idea! — ImaginesTigers (talk) 12:19, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Willburn goes on to discuss how Harriet's feeding is characterised as "a lesbian threat [...] unsophisticated, practically accidental", but nonetheless "a serious threat".

The quote-crop here appears to be synthesizing some thoughts. "..."a lesbian threat", and as "unsophisticated, practically accidental" but nonetheless "a serious threat"" makes more sense to me, but again, I haven't read where you're quoting from, so I may be wrong.

I'm really not quite sure what you mean here. "[...]" denotes that I'm leaving some words out for brevity. In this case, I'm using these because I don't want to have a full sentence in the middle of the quotation. From Willburn: Here it is interesting that the danger of Harriet, unlike later in the novel, is classified as a lesbian threat, and furthermore, that a lesbian danger is described as unsophisticated, practically accidental. All the same, it is still a serious threat

I know what the [...] means -- I may have explained myself poorly (I have some speech-and-language issues, and being away from university for so long has killed my ability to use any kind of academic discourse on top of that). I think the way you abbreviated the quote makes it lose its impact somewhat. In the context of the full quote, the abbreviation that strikes me as getting the intent across best is along the lines of:

"Willburn discusses how Harriet's feeding is classified as "a lesbian threat". She goes on to say this threat is described as "unsophisticated, practically accidental", but nonetheless "a serious threat"."

(I don't think I'd copy that verbatim -- it's a first-pass and I'm not happy with the prose quality -- but 1. this is me being my own worst critic and 2. I trust you get what I'm trying to get across.) Vaticidalprophet (talk) 11:50, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

As a result, comparisons of the two novels are fairly common.

There are more than two novels involved in this clause. Clear this up?

Good catch! Done. — ImaginesTigers (talk)

The matter that concerns me somewhat more here is the article's focus. I'm not sure what to say about this, and frankly I think I could be persuaded to drop it, because it troubles me to ask about something you've clearly researched in elaborate depth. As is, this is closer to a literary essay than an encyclopedia article. The section on contemporary reception barely exists -- it satisfies GA requirements (which require a broad overview rather than a deep one), but the juxtaposition between it and the modern analysis belies a focus imbalance. I quibble with myself over what to recommend here. GA is not supposed to be a terribly imposing process, and you've clearly done a lot both regarding modern analysis of the novel and to find what contemporary takes you do have (19th century book reviews and literary analysis are not trivial to find) such that recommending sweeping changes would risk becoming a terribly imposing process, but simultaneously I think the current focus is off in important ways.

I don't know what to make of "this is closer to a literary essay", because it's really nothing like a literary essay. There's no sustained analysis other critics (only clarifiers and topic sentences, per our style guide), there's no original research (I'm just representing what exists in modern discussions of the novel).

If at all possible, see if you can find some more substantial contemporary reaction than you have. I recommend this before I recommend cutting down the analysis section, because, well, I'm a bleeding heart, and I know how hard it is to kill your darlings. Considering the degree to which the analysis section is rooted in modern associations, it would be really interesting to see more about how Marryat's contemporaries perceived those aspects of the novel, not to mention their thoughts on the work more broadly. We already have a sense that they found it an overall unimpressive work, but what more did they think? They thought it sensationalist -- what were the worst parts? Did other reviewers disagree and like it more? How much was the "this doesn't seem particularly vampiric, actually" picked up on?

The review in The Speaker is the only extant review on The Blood of the Vampire. As a result, it is pretty much mentioned in every major piece of criticism, because it’s all we have until someone manages to dick something else up. Marryat was prolific, but not entirely acclaimed. I can't add more to Reception because nothing else exists. That would be a problem for FA level, but isn't at GA. If I had more to add, it'd certainly be there. I agree it isn't trivial to find them, sure, but close to three decades of academia have failed to turn up anything outside of The Speaker. I'm covering what currently exists. I've just spent a while searching for a source to that effect, to add to the section, but unfortunately, they haven't mentioned it. I'm not generalising to "they found it an overall unimpressive work", because the sources don't reflect that. You'll note that the lead mentions one contemporary reviewer; not all of them. I can't say anything about what her contemporaries thought outside of what the review in The Speaker did. I won't expand on that, because I can't. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 11:23, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes -- this is the issue I thought it might have. (You may want to mention in the article that other reviews are either lost or never existed; this is a problem I'm facing myself with some early seeds of articles.) Regarding essayism, I'm thinking about the degree to which the article is about modern analysis of the novel over and above other relevant aspects, but like I said in my original review, I don't currently have any thoughts about that which don't trouble me. I'll sleep on it. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 11:50, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

RE: Mentioning that other reviews are lost, I can't, because no such statement is corroborated by the sources. That would be original research—I know that, and so do these writers, but they don't mention it, so nor can I. Verifiability is very important, but does obviously suck for simple things like this. It is definitely a net good to the project, but in these edge-cases, makes me sad.

RE: essayism. That's just what this book's coverage is. It’s an old book, forgotten for a couple decades short of a century. Marryat's writing is receiving some more attention now, and I do think that it'll gather more criticism as times goes on. I'll continue to reflect what critics write, but being mindful of the size. Right now, as it stands, what you're describing could be solved by changing "Analysis" to "Themes", but I'm not comfortable making that change. "Themes", as MOS:NOVEL says, should only be written when you have the sources to back it up. Right now, I don't think I can call them themes—which are universally acknowledged. When the body of research expands a bit, and talks in more depth about these subjects, I'll happily make that change, though. Until now, I think "Analysis" is pretty much the best we've got. It might be changed (uncontroversially) to "Criticism", but I'm just following the precedent set by other literary FAs for what to work with there. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 12:19, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Regardless -- great work. Good job, good luck. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 08:17, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks again for the review! Kind words. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 12:19, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Back here now. Let's call it a pass. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 02:15, 27 January 2021 (UTC)