External Factors In Dracula

Are there still connections between Bram Stokers famous novel Dracula and modern day society? In Dracula, Stoker expands on many themes that indeed exist today. Not only does he touch on the most obvious theme, sex. He expands on gender division and good versus evil. Some say since times have changed the themes I introduced have changed as well, leaving connections between then and now irrelevant. However, I feel that although times have changed they still have roots from the time of the novel to now. In this essay I will expand on the themes of this novel while connecting them to modern day society, the critical texts I have chosen and will mention later on in the essay are a good representation of the commonalities between the chill, dark Victorian days in which the era that Dracula was written in and modern day.

Bram Stoker's Dracula is highly acclaimed and has received many different interpretations which deal with complex symbolisms and metaphors. These interpretations often require a great deal of knowledge in psychology, political science, anthropology, and other non-literary disciplines. These interpretations may be valid, as they are related to the disciplines on which their arguments are based, but the true power of the novel is due to a very simple theme that lies beneath the other, more convoluted interpretations. This theme is the universal concept of identity: us versus them. This criticism sets aside outside disciplines and focuses on the literary motif of identity. John

Dracula is of mixed racial heritage and blood “in the whirlpool of European races,” a concept which would have been fearful to the novel’s white, upper-class English audience. This widespread xenophobia, a fear and hatred of foreigners, was a reaction by Victorian England to the perceived threat of outsiders to white genetic purity. Dracula’s real threat is not in the physical destruction of Western Europe, but in the assimilation, reproduction, and infestation caused by the literal and figurative mixing of his barbarian animal blood with that of the “superior” English race. The concept of eugenics, the “qualitative and quantitative improvement of the human genome” (Galton 99), gained widespread popularity during Stoker’s lifetime and became a prevalent theme in the works of many authors aiming to make a social commentary or criticism on the invasion of England by foreign peoples. Adolph Hitler would later adopt eugenic ideals in the intended creation of a “master race,” one which victimized many of the same groups and relied upon almost identical anti-Semitic imagery as the earlier Victorian proponents (Hauner 15).

Unremarkable though it may seem, to affirm the obvious truism that Bram Stoker’s Dracula originates from a century that historians often describe as the most significant in terms of revolutionary ideology, whilst wishing to avoid the clichéd view held, it is undeniable that the more one delves into the depths of this novel the greater wealth of meaning demonstrates significant correlation with Marxist ideology. The 19th Century saw the emergence of revolutionary socialist Karl Marx, who himself used the vampire metaphor to describe the capitalist system as ‘dead labour which, vampire like, lives only by sucking living labour’. Through Stoker’s opulent use of narrative structure, use of setting and imagery, this novel presents a multiple

Stoker’s novel Dracula, presents the fear of female promiscuity, for which vampirism is a metaphor. Such fear can be related to the time in which Dracula was written, where strict Victorian gender norms and sexual mores stipulated

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

The setting of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is in the late nineteenth-century London, where the flourishing of technology is replacing people’s belief of the old superstitious ways. The characters in this novel experience contacts with the supernatural beings that is unable to be proven even by the most advanced technology at the time, which leads them to doubt their own sanity. However, the progression of the novel proves that peace is restored into the characters’ lives after their doubts and confusions about what is reality and who is really mad. Ultimately, the categorization of the sane against the mad is unnecessary since the distinguishing factors shown in the novel are ambiguous. Subsequently, no characters can

Because the Victorian Era was an age so heavily influenced by religion, it is hardly surprising, that Bram Stoker’s Dracula contains many religious references. The Victorian Era was a time period from 1837 to 1901, during which Queen Victoria reigned in the United Kingdom. During this time, women were expected to be quiet, proper, and pure. All people were expected to attend church, and sexuality was incredibly censored. Religion played an influencing role in Victorian art including visual and literary. Likewise, the fear of being sinful, or not following the Bible was still a fear from the under educated members of society. The prominent branches of Christianity in this era, Protestants and Catholics, dominated the popular culture of western societies. Given the religious context of the Victorian Era, Vampires in Bram Stoker’s Dracula represent sin and have inherently sinful behavior, whereas the humans represents goodness and religion, no matter which kind of religion.

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.

Dracula is a proud of his lineage. His blood is noble among gypies (criminals) but when placed in comparison to the elite of England, he is considered primitive, “…Dracula's criminality dominates over his noble blood: 'science' assimilates him to a lower type, associating him with animals and 'inferior' human groups” (McWhir 34).

    Perhaps no work of literature has ever been composed without being a product of its era, mainly because the human being responsible for writing it develops their worldview within a particular era.  Thus, with Bram Stoker's Dracula, though we have a vampire myth novel filled with terror, horror, and evil, the story is a thinly veiled disguise of the repressed sexual mores of the Victorian era.  If we look to critical interpretation and commentary to win support for such a thesis, we find it aplenty "For erotic Dracula certainly is.  'Quasi-pornography' one critic labels it.  Another describes it as a 'kind of incestuous, necrophilious, oral-anal-sadistic all-in-wrestling matching'.  A

Developing the inside versus outside tensions between England and Eastern Europe, Bram Stoker challenges Victorian social norms. This tension is particularly evident when understanding the spread of vampirism to be an invasion of England. Although this invasion is fantastical and not realistic, its targets the legitimate Victorian fear of invasion. As an island nation close to other significant European powers, England was able to escape many years of land invasions, but always had to remain wary of the threat of a naval invasion. This fear of invasion is realized when Dracula launches a small scale invasion of England. He enters by boat and proceeds to terrorize England through its women. This idea of subliminally addressing the fears and desires of England is effective because Stoker masks them in fantasy. Furthermore, this is effective because “individuals in a culture act out certain unconscious or repressed needs, or express in an overt and symbolic fashion certain latent motives which they must give expression to, but cannot face openly” (Cawelti, 11). Because this novel is a fantasy, Stoker is able to challenge the social norms of the period within a popular work. Therefore, aided by fantasy, Bram Stoker uses the contrast between Eastern and Western cultures to challenge Victorian ideals and reveal the changing nature of gender roles and sexuality in British society.

The gothic vampire classic Dracula, written by Bram Stoker, is one of the most well known novels of the nineteenth century. The story focuses on a vampire named Dracula who travels to England in search of new blood, but who eventually is found out and driven away by a group of newly minted vampire hunters. A major social change that was going on during the late nineteenth century, around the time of that this novel was being written, was the changing roles of women in British society which constituted as the “New Woman” movement and the novel seems to explore and worry about this subject extensively. These women wanted to be freed both politically and sexually, but much of the general population at the time found it unsettling (Dixon,

COUNT DRACULA FREEDOM FROM FANDOM is a light-hearted fantasy tale that brings to life the iconic characters from many novels and films about Dracula and the other monsters. There’s no doubt that the strength of this script is the ensemble cast of colorful and offbeat characters, especially Dracula, Frankenstein, and Wolfie. Together they feel like iconic, authentic friends and it’s fun to watch them interact with each other. However, with that said, the overall script would benefit from more development.

Is a vampire a sinister blood sucking monster, or is a vampire an attractive teenager who sparkles? Dracula was written in 1897 and is the first piece of literature that includes vampires and sets up the characteristics of future vampires. Dozen of works of literature has been created based off of the creature in Dracula for example the novel Twilight and as time goes on literature has tweaked some of the vampire’s traits, powers and weaknesses. Dracula is a gothic novel with gothic elements such as a decaying setting and supernatural beings or monsters. Bram Stoker is an author from Britain during the Victorian era, and it is shown that this novel was written in that era as they were prudish,