A Review of The Moth Diaries
There’s a fancy word in the writing world – intertextuality – that refers to the practice of using literary references in your writing. On the surface, this sounds like the social practice of name dropping: throwing out a name here or there in conversation just to sound more sophisticated, or important. But, when done well, the two are nothing alike. Well-executed literary allusions can add multi-dimensional nuance and even new meaning to your writing. While we take a look at Rachel Klein’s brilliant writing in The Moth Diaries, I’ll show you how intertextuality can enhance your writing.
The Moth Diaries features a teen-aged girl who’s away at boarding school after her father’s suicide. While she’s there, a new student, Ernessa, claims the attention of the protagonist’s best friend, Lucy. This new student seems particularly strange. She’s a foreigner, doesn’t eat, wanders out at night, has unnatural strength, possesses exceptional intelligence, and seems to be entirely immune to the effects of recreational drugs. Simultaneously, Lucy shows signs of increasing weakness and ultimately becomes so ill that she must be bedridden.
It isn’t surprising that the unnamed protagonist (Rebecca in Mary Harron’s film adaptation) is convinced that Ernessa is a vampire and that she is feeding off of Lucy.
On the surface, that’s exactly what is happening, though the protagonist can easily be read as an unreliable narrator. Written as a series of diary entries, the novel is the protagonist’s journey to save her best friend while also struggling with her own pain. But that’s where the intertextuality kicks in and makes this story so much more.
What is Intertextuality?
I picked up The Moth Diaries after a bunch of people recommended it on Twitter as one of their favorite vampire stories of all time.
This one is a mere 240-ish pages, and given the youthful protagonist, I didn’t necessarily expect much. But it did come highly recommended and something about it spoke to me. I can’t begin to tell you how surprised I was. The writing is amazingly profound, and most of that is due to the author’s use of intertextuality.
In this story, the protagonist is away at school, so she’s reading books for her classes. She’s also very bright and especially found of literature, so she reads extensively in her spare time. Both of these give the author opportunities to introduce different titles and passages from various works. If/when you read the book, don’t overlook any of these. Every one is intentional and changes the way that the story should be understood.
Intertextuality is the idea that we bring all of our past literary knowledge to everything new we read. Thus, those writings, especially those that are either explicitly or implicitly referenced in the novel, color how we understand the story.
At a superficial level, that means that the referenced writings help to clarify what we’re reading; they parallel the novel’s story and deepen it’s meaning. (I’ll give an example in a minute.) But at a deeper level, those referenced writings can actually cause us to understand the author’s intent such that they can entirely change the way the book should be understood.
Mind blown?! Yes, that’s the point.
Examples
In The Moth Diaries, Klein references 30 different works. When I read the book, these immediately stood out to me. Not just the references themselves, but the fact that the author is subtly suggesting something in her use of each one. Some I could pinpoint; others I’ll have to examine in greater detail later.
After I finished the novel, I looked for others who had also commented on this intertextual use and found this incredible Harvard MLA thesis by Irina Cashen. It’s a must-read and is fascinating from start to finish. It opened my eyes even more to the profundity in the novel.
As Cashen walks through Klein’s use of intertextuality, she points to three reference points that strongly influence the reader’s perspective of the work, which we’ll focus on today:
- The 1872 novella, Carmilla, by J. Sheridan LeFanu, which the protagonist reads for her class: “Beyond Belief: Writers of the Supernatural,”
- Dracula, by Bram Stoker, which is only mentioned once in the book, but which parallels the story in some very different ways, and
- Sigmund Freud who’s never mentioned in the book, but who walks through the background of this extremely psychological tale as an ever-present character
Note: Before we get started, it bears noting that the extent to which the readers have experienced and understood (and remembered) the referenced works will greatly influence how they read the novel. That’s the point of intertextuality. What you know changes what you read. I’ll show you why that is true as we highlight Cashen’s three reference points.
Carmilla Reinterpreted
Carmilla is the most obvious reference as the protagonist is reading and discussing it in class, it’s frequently referenced, and it parallels the surface level story most obviously. In many ways, Carmilla reinforces the protagonist’s perspective that Ernessa is a vampire, has Lucy in her sights, and is feeding off of her. After all, that’s what happens in the referenced novella. A young girl, Carmilla, comes to a small town after having killed another young girl and sets her sights on Laura, the story’s protagonist.
In the interest of time, I’ll highlight just one use of Carmilla as an example and leave the others for you to research yourself.
One of the many ways that Klein uses Carmilla as an intertextual source is in the protagonist’s reimagining of Carmilla herself. For example, our unnamed protagonist writes in her diary the following words:
Who is Carmilla? Dark, depressed, death-drawn.
“Her name is Carmilla.”
“Her family was very ancient and noble.”
“Her home lay in the direction of the west.”
Who is Ernessa?
Klein 63
What Cashen astutely identifies is that Carmilla is not described as dark, depressed or death-drawn. Rather, LeFanu describes her as beautiful, smiling, melancholy, animated, and very intelligent (27, 29, 33). What’s happening here?
Readers who know Carmilla will instantly realize that our protagonist is reinterpreting Carmilla so that she fits her perception of her classmate, Ernessa. This is crucial because it raises questions about the narrator’s perspective. If she’s unable to ferret out reality versus fiction as she draws a connection between Carmilla and Ernessa, is her understanding of Ernessa’s actions correct? Is Ernessa even a vampire?
Dracula – A Metaphor
Simultaneously, the entire novel will bring to mind the story of Dracula for those who have read it. This isn’t an accidental association either. Cashen points out that Klein uses at least two scenes in which The Moth Diaries parallels Dracula.
Let’s look at one of these – the scene in which the protagonist and Dora witness Ernessa walking along the gutter outside the windows.
“I’m going to find out what she’s up to at night,” said Dora… She went over to
Klein 102-103
the window and opened it. We both stuck our heads out… The moon was
completely hidden behind clouds, and in the faint greenish light from below, I
could barely make out the gutter… “Look,” said Dora, nudging me with her
elbow. The gutter was nothing more than a thick green line… At the far end of
the building, by Claire’s window, I saw something… The person stood up and
started to walk toward us along the gutter. She walked as if she were on the
ground, without hesitation, without a single misstep, the way she played the
piano. When she reached her window, she turned and stepped into the glass…
Those who are familiar with Dracula will recall a similar scene when Jonathan Harker witnesses Dracula leaving his castle.
I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down
Stoker 38
the castle wall over the dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out
around him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was
some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow, but I kept looking, and
it could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones,
worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection
and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves
along a wall.
Notice that in this use of intertextuality, readers must have the preexisting knowledge of Dracula in order to make the association. Otherwise it’s simply a scene that confirms the protagonist’s opinion that Ernessa is a vampire.
However, with the knowledge, it points to something else entirely.
Dracula & Antisemitism
For example, one of the prevailing interpretations of Dracula is that it’s a work of antisemitism. I tend to take the stance that Dracula is a symbol of the west’s fear of eastern migration and the impact it will have on the western culture. However, this is only one step removed from antisemitism and I can see how some scholars arrive at this point.
In case you’re thinking that this is a stretch, it’s important to note that the protagonist’s Jewish background is a dominant factor in the story. She, Ernessa and Dora (who’s half-Jewish) are the only Jewish students at the school and are subjects of persecution from some of the teachers.
In conjunction with that, scholars have noted that readers in the 19th century would have interpreted Stoker’s depiction of Dracula as Jewish. Apparently, Stoker’s description of his features was a common caricature of Jewish people at that time. I’ve never perceived Dracula as being Jewish, but I can believe that the audience at the time might have held different stereotypes about the Jewish race.
All that to say, in this example of intertextuality, notice how differently Klein presents Ernessa versus Stoker’s depiction of Dracula. Ernessa is a study in grace and beauty. Dracula is something monstrous and reptilian. One who is familiar with Dracula will note the differences here and will understand what Klein is very intentionally accomplishing.
She’s rewriting the readers’ perceptions of Jewish people and presenting them as something beautiful and good (though opposed throughout the story), rather than something bestial and dangerous.
Thus the intertextuality here lends another very distinct nuance to the story and casts the entire purpose of the novel in a different light.
Sigmund Freud
And lastly, Cashen points out (and I agree) that it’s impossible to miss the influence of Freud in this novel, though he’s never mentioned.
The protagonist bookends the story with a mention of her time in a psychiatric hospital after the events of the main story. The psychiatrist had taken her diary and has only now – thirty years later – returned it to her.
Further, Klein tells us that the protagonist was diagnosed as “suffering from borderline
personality disorder complicated by depression and psychosis.” (Klein, 2) This, coupled with our knowledge that the protagonist is suffering from the severe trauma of finding her father as he was dying from his suicide, should cause us to doubt the protagonist. To see her as an unreliable narrator who is suffering from some form of delusion or post-traumatic psychotic break.
But we don’t. I’ll show you [partly] why that is.
Freud’s Failings
As with Carmilla and Dracula, Klein uses intertextuality that refers to Freud in a myriad of ways. One of these is her choice of Dora’s character. Cashen reminds us, assuming we know much about Freud, that the female subject of Freud’s most famous case, Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, was named Dora.
This case is notable for the fact that it pointed out many errors on Freud’s part and the subsequent negative coverage that the case received. It’s an example of Freud’s failings, not his successes.
Within The Moth Diaries, both the protagonist and Dora, the daughter of a psychiatrist, imply or overtly state that psychiatry and therapy in general are largely ineffective and may do more harm than good.
The protagonist goes so far as to recount an instance in which a therapist listened to her memory of her father tucking her in and helping her to fall asleep and then, rather than empathizing or understanding why the memory was so important to her, suggested that perhaps the situation was inappropriate. In other words, he dismissed the patient’s needs and feelings and instead relied on Freud’s theories of the Oedipal complex – that children are sexually attracted to their parents – to interpret the situation.
This is just one of many subtle indictments of Freudian psychology that Klein utilizes in the book, none of which are labelled as such. But what readers – most of whom likely have at least a basic understanding of Freud’s theories – perceive is that the psychiatric assessment of the protagonist is most likely false and misses the entire crux of what is happening within and around her.
In her implicit assessment of Freud, Klein is warning readers not to make the same mistake that the psychiatrists did in their assessment of the protagonist’s story.
Conclusion
There’s more – so much more – to Klein’s use of intertextuality in this novel. Entire books could be written on what she accomplishes through her use of these. However, by looking at the three above, we can see how intertextuality, whether it’s overtly or only implicitly utilized, can completely alter how the readers interpret the book.
Those with fewer literary data points will still enjoy the basic story. They’ll read it as if it’s nothing more than a vampire story about a girl at boarding school. But by using intertextuality, Klein created a vastly more nuanced story that’s accessible in different ways to readers who have varying degrees of knowledge about the references cited therein.
If it does nothing else, it adds to the readers’ sense of the work’s profundity and it might cause them to research some of these references. Thus welcoming them into a broader story world in the future.
If you enjoyed this post, share it with your friends!