Having the same elements in the same genre is nearly impossible to avoid. Even throughout the years many aspects have gone unchanged in one way or another. Obviously, the atmosphere in many genres have changed based on the type of audience they were wanting to go after or simply because their inspiration was different. In comparing books from the 1800’s to more recent ones, we can see how each genre has changed dramatically during the course of the years.
Vampire: Dracula (1897) VS Twilight (2006)
Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” is what brought the vampire genre to light. Written in 1897, Dracula is one of the most famous horror stories in the world. The atmosphere itself is enough to sendchills down your spine, but add that to the fact that Dracula was based on a a real life historical figure (Vlad the Impaler) and it most likely will keep you at night for the next few days.
This is the reason why many people dressed us as vampires for Halloween, because of how scary they were. Nowadays vampires have been romanticized thanks to novels like Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight”. Unlike Dracula, Twilight actually made many women want to be a vampire because they thought it would bring them sexual pleasure or that it’s just plain romantic to them.
Twilight also takes away all of the scary aspects its ancestors in the vampire genre had and only brought a slight sense of mystery throughout the series.
Romance: Jane Eyre (1897) VS The Selection (2012)
Charlote Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” is one of the most iconic stories written by a woman that shows the difficulties an educated woman shuch as herself had to face because they didn’t want tobebossed around by other people, and claiming what was rightfully hers. Brontë based off many of the events of the novel on her own family and life. Throughout the story, Jane falls in lovebut she has to wait a long while before she can be together with Rochester. Like Jane Eyre, America Schreave from Kiera Cass’s “The Selection” had to work hard into getting what she wanted in the end.
Obviously, there’s a major gap in differences since The Selection is a novelistic version of The Bachelor while more or less having the same concept of society as The Hunger Games. Overall, these two novels show how powerful women can be and have the message that everything will get better in the end if you work hard enough and don’t stop doing what you believe in.
Fantasy: Alice In Wonderland (1865) VS Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
Lewis Caroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” is an example of how imagination can take us to places we never thought were possible. Filled with mystery, riddles, and adventure, the story has us wanting to live in Wonderland ourselves. Of course, everything that happens in Wonderland came from Alice’s desire in wanting to bend reality. This came from Carroll’s way of nonsensical storytelling in which he had acquired at such a young age, along with him becoming friends with a certain girl who later became his inspiration for Alice herself. Years later, Roald Dahl wrote “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, which became such a major hit that it wasn’t long before they made a film or two of the novel. Dahl wrote this book based off two chocolate factories near where he lived during his childhood, both of which were very competitive and secretive for their recipes of delicious chocolate. The story was also written based on the imagination of a child how it works inside the magical world of a chocolate factory. Like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory makes you want to live and work in the factory itself whilst it being filled with wonder and riddles that make the experience twice as fun.
Modern literature has changed many factors in the genres written by their famous counterparts from the 1800’s. Though they are completely different and maybe for different audiences, many of their elements have stayed untouched even centuries after. Many people read the stories from modern literature, yet they never think twice about how the original stories of the exactsame genre were like. If we were to read literature from the years like the 1800’s it would give us more of an understanding as to why these genres have become so popular and how man elements are still shown to this day in many other novels.
Many times people would think that such elements are “cliches” and what-not, however without them, we feel like they don’t fit into the genre the authors were aiming for. We feel as if there’s a huge aspect missing in the novel itself if the author just leaves too many elements out. So knowing that even though aspects such as atmosphere and the way the author is projecting their message to their readers have changed, there will still be afew that have gone untouched one way or another.