Dracula's Vampirism

Vampires have been around for centuries, they represent the fear of many things such as sexuality, race, gender, etc. and above all, they stand for the fear of diseases. Vampires have once been the symbol of horror due to their terrific depictions and were described as a threat to the humanity. Throughout time, the image of vampire has changed dramatically from a monstrous, inhumanely creature that doesn’t belong to human society to such an attractive and adaptive figure that expresses more of the human side than the evil. They developed human feelings, senses, and live within our society. Modern vampire movies are often more romantic and “sympathetic” comparing to the past. Vampires have abandoned their horror and evolved to a more

Batman beats the Joker. Spiderman banishes the Green Goblin. For centuries story tellers have used the basic idea of good beats bad to guide their tales. Stories of blood sucking, human possessions and other tales have been passed down generations and vary between cultures. Among the creators of the famous protagonists is, Bram Stoker, the creator of Dracula. This fictional character was soon to be famous, and modified for years to come into movie characters or even into cereal commercials. But the original will never be forgotten; a story of a group of friends all with the same mission, to destroy Dracula. The Count has scared many people, from critics to mere children, but if one reads betweens the line, Stoker’s true message can be

Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” is a story about a Vampire named Count Dracula and his journey to satisfy his lust for blood. The story is told through a series of individuals’ journal entries and a letters sent back and forth between characters. Bram Stoker shows the roll in which a certain gender plays in the Victorian era through the works of Dracula. This discussion not only consists of the roll a certain gender takes, but will be discussing how a certain gender fits into the culture of that time period as well as how males and females interact among each other. The Victorian era was extremely conservative when it came to the female, however there are signs of the changing into the New Woman inside of Dracula. Essentially the woman was to be assistance to a man and stay pure inside of their ways.

The most powerful part of the vampire is their sexuality. According to Eric Yu, the dread of the vampire "needs to do with sexual hazard or the appalling view of sexual perversity. It "threatens through subverting proper gender definitions and behavioral expectations which keep the imperial subject in place” (147-8). Vampirism is fear-inciting, therefore is powerful, because it disfigures the sexual standard. This is apparent in Harker's experience with the three female vampires in Dracula's Castle.

Lucy is fully aware that she is desired by many men and she lets that get into her head, essentially she is feeding off the attention. This vulnerability and openness is why Lucy Westenra is Count Dracula’s first and easiest target. The first time the Count starts to get into Lucy’s head is after her and Mina see the wrecked boat upon shore, containing the containers of dirt. These were Dracula’s sleeping quarters. This fact was not known by the women at the time, but soon after this event is when Lucy starts to sleep walk. This sleep walking is not a coincidence but is psychologically connected to her sinful desires of lustfulness. Count Dracula only has the power the attack willing victims, which could only mean Lucy knew in her subconscious what she was doing by going out to the cemetery at nights. This spell Dracula puts on Lucy is the same spell he put on the three women who now life in Dracula Castle with him. These women were just as innocent and virtuous as Lucy was and are now sex crazed and evil just as the Count is. This “spell” was a way to undermine women so that Dracula would feel powerful and controlling over them.

The vampire is the popular character in folklore from early civilization to modern life. The vampire appears in people mind with the passion of immortality, fear, love and mystery. People are attracted with vampire because the superstition of the vampire has done for centuries. Are they real? What are they? Where they come from? There are a few of thousand questions about the beliefs of vampire during many centuries. People don’t stop their curiosity with vampire- the legend that emulates the world cultures and religions. One of the most important reason that made vampire still popular until today is the great transformation. During the time, with the creative of human, vampire reforms to fit with modern age. According to the “Jung and the Jungians on Myth”, Steven Walke implies myth is a metaphor and come from the collective of human psyche. People use vampire as the tools to explain human thinking. Therefore, the charging in the thinking of people in different period of time will effect to the symbol of vampire. The research will explain the transformation of vampire by diving to three main topics: the vampire in the historical and religion thinking; the charging of vampire in literature and movie; the symbol of vampire in modern people thinking. Although three main topics seem separately, these connect and develop other idea like cause and effect. Depend on the information of history, the image of vampire in novel become reality. From the idea of vampire in novel, modern

Bela Lugosi is arguably the most classic example of an actor taking on a vampire role. However, during 1931 when the universal studio was casting the 1931’s Dracula, Lugosi could only barely speak English, and therefore almost lost his chance at playing the iconic part (“Dracula (1931 English-Language Film”). Nonetheless his accents and costumes, which has become the classic look of the vampire, he himself was so typecast in his role that he was actually buried after his death in his Dracula costume. Certainly, it is Lugosi’s performance that makes Tod Browning’s film such an influential Hollywood picture. Overall, I will give it a 3 star out of 5, compared with the older version film of Dracula, because of the dialogues and sounds, the plot is much easier for the audiences to understand, without any editing or background music the horror of the film is not inferior to

We can also see how the Victorian Society also helps create the story, how it is wrote and how it influences Dracula so much. Vampirism is just a polite way Stoker has made to secretly talk about sex since anything that brought a blush to your cheeks was forbidden during the Victorian era. For example, when Lucy first gets bitten while sleepwalking “There was undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure” (Dracula 98). Lucy gets bitten by Dracula and she is already talking with three other men, ends up marrying one, this is in no way the ideal Victorian woman. Not only is she not an ideal Victorian woman, but to add on to the list of why she is not “The vampiric tradition of blood-sucking is symbolic of the exchange of bodily fluids during sex. For Stoker, writing in the sexually repressed Victorian age, vampirism is a convenient metaphor for sex and the closest he could get to writing about sex in a 'respectable' novel” (NovelGuide). As we all know she has many exchanges of bodily fluids, not only the blood-sucking of Dracula, but in fact blood transfusions from all three men as they vowed to never speak of it since Arthur believes that the transfusion made him and Lucy truly married “None of us said a word of the other operations, and none of us ever shall” (Dracula 188). Even though the audiences knows that the blood transfusion made by the men was meant as a kind gesture to save Lucy’s life as opposed to Dracula’s blood being the

Orlomoski, Caitlyn, "From Monsters to Victims: Vampires and Their Cultural Evolution from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century" (2011). Honors Scholar Theses. Paper 208.

The Gothic genre does suppress vulnerable women. They are exploited in order to please the tyrannical male and feed his desires. When the women is no longer of use, she is then discarded. The Gothic genre is described as ‘formulaic” and one of the key features is a tyrannical male who abuses his power to assert his dominance over a perceived futile women. Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ was written in time where women started to want more equal rights and opportunities. For example, in the same year Dracula was published (1897), Millicent Fawcett founded ‘The National Union of Women’s Suffrage’. Bram Stoker feared the decline of the patriarchal figure and could have created ‘Dracula’ as an attempt to scaremonger the public into thinking what would

Jonathan Harker, Mina Murray’s fiancé, represents a typical human dealing with sexual desires. He knows for certain that he wants to marry and spend the rest of his life with Mina but still struggles with natural, sexual urges. The reader clearly detects Jonathan’s struggle when he encounters the three vampire ladies in Dracula’s castle. As he lies there, Jonathan feels “an agony of delightful anticipation,” and also describes one of the ladies as having “a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive” (38-39). Here Jonathan uses contrasting words to describe his encounter with the vampires. In his mind, he knows this is wrong, but his body is telling him otherwise: “[T]he skin of my throat began

Kostova utilizes the setting in The Historian to reinforce the legitimacy of the legend of Dracula. The reader is taken on a journey throughout time and space all over Europe, which is made all the more realistic by Kostova’s use of imagery and sensation.

Not many people would think that they can be compared to Count Dracula. Considered to be one of the most well-known monsters of all time, Count Dracula sucks the blood of his victims, which would ultimately lead to their death. While this seems like a very unique example, it can be applied to nearly every person, specifically in the college stetting. This phenomenon that can be linked to this monster is called the “vampire effect.” First used in the book ______, this term refers to the what happens in social groups due to different personality types that were caused by a difference in economic background. Set in a college dormitory, chapter 4 of the book discusses how there is a difference in the social lives of students who are quiet versus students who are more outgoing. Students who were shy were generally ignored and did not seem to partake in many social activities. While Armstrong and Hamilton suggest that the “Vampire Effect” arises due to the social students knowingly ignoring and rejecting the shyer students, that is not the case. The cycle through which the effect takes place starts with self-comparison due to economic status, envy, and self-blame, and results in anxiety and self-isolation. Although this is done unintentionally, consciously known factors such debt and class also play a role in the process.

With the creation of Stoker’s vampire, his book enters into Gothic literature. Dracula however was not the first of the Gothic genre, but was a standout feature in it. Gothic literature focuses on mystery and horror and a lot of time supernatural elements. Nevertheless, Gothic literature was big in Stoker’s life according to Nicole Lobdell’s article, “Stoker & the Victorian Gothic Stage”, Stoker loved Gothic plays, sensation melodramas, and vampire melodramas. Lobdell states “He interprets the causes and effects of melodramatic performances and translates those elements into his fiction” (Lobdell 273). In Dracula, a key component of its story is its supernatural elements which are a key element of Gothic literature giving forth the whole story being about vampires. Horror aspects of Dracula can be seen in moments where vampires lose their humanity. In addition to horror and mystery aspects, Gothic literature is also about the setting. The settings in Dracula give a sense of suspense and mystery making them Gothic settings. Settings in Dracula are shown in Galens’ novel, “Dracula”: Novels for Students when he states, “the various settings—including Dracula's imposing castle, the ghostly landscape of Transylvania, and the graveyard and Lucy's tomb in London—are all settings that are found in Gothic fiction” (Galens 32). Aside from Bram Stoker’s Dracula being a Gothic novel it is also classified into different subjects of literature.

acts as a seducer and corrupter of virtuous women, whose transgression of moral conventions inspires horror within the righteous Aubrey. Especially the act of biting as a form of penetration of the victim links vampirim closely and so obviously to sexuality, than showing it on screen was still considered a great risk in the early Dracula movies of the mid-nineteenth century (Beresford). Finally, Coppola's movie Bram Stoker's Dracula (1993) went one step further, showing explicit sexual interaction between Dracula and his victims, rendering the sexual metaphoric quality of vampirism superfluous. This does not mean vampirism lost its ability to portray sexuality, but in Twilight they are not equivalent. On the one hand, Bella is attracted to Edward first and foremost due to his vampiric qualities, and as