Summary: A Hot Vampire Romance With Ultra Sexy Bite

After decades of cheesy horror movies, the image of vampires has been misconstrued as sparkly, angsty teenage boys or handsome men that lure in girls for the fresh blood of a virgin. Many of these stereotypical vampires are influenced by the story of Dracula, held in the Victorian era. Yet, many of the stories published about vampires diverge from the message that Bram Stoker is trying to make. During the Victorian period, sexuality is repressed by society, as sexual behaviors from women are viewed as unacceptable. In the Gothic horror novel Dracula, Bram Stoker uses the traumatic experience of Jonathan Harker at Count Dracula’s castle and the invasion of vampires in Great Britain to create a social commentary on the sexual repression occurring in this era and its detrimental effect on the men.

In Carmilla and “The Vampyre” the authors use storytelling and descriptive language to address conventions about sexuality in European culture in the 19th century. The ideas first started in these works helped to define the vampire genre and helped to challenge established religious, cultural, and gender roles of the era. In “The Vampyre”, Polidori

Literary vampires have similar traits: an attractive old man preys on young, unmarried women. He corrupts their innocence, and he draws life from them

According to Freud's psychoanalysis, the id consists of the bodily drives, which are dichotomously subdivided into the destructive death drives and the life-preserving Eros (Freud 1994, 44). Stoker's vampires are a blend of both concepts: simultaneously dead and undead, stealing life to live themselves (Stoker 211). In their most urging motive for action, their desire for human blood, the two sides of Eros are merged: The self-preserving drives, in particular hunger and thirst, as well as the Libido, the sexual desire (Freud 1994, 45). More specifically, evidence of the vampire personifying sexual desire, and the act of sucking blood symbolizing intercourse, can be found throughout the entire novel. It occurs, for example, in the repeated description of the female vampires as “voluptuous” (Stoker 187), or in Jonathan Harker's feelings of “languorous ecstasy” (43) and “wicked, burning desire”, as he awaits the vampire's kiss (42). Even the description of Lord Godalming killing his vampiric fiancée contains a morbid sexual undertone (192). On the contrary, Stoker's vampires also portray Eros antagonists, the death drives. Those comprise the human's self-destructive desire to return to its inorganic, inanimate state (Ermann 48), which can be connected to the vampires' death-like sleep in coffins (Stoker 50), their un-dead nature (179), and

An Analysis of The Princess Bride, Divergent and “A Pair of Tickets” and How Vampirism and Quests make the stories what they are.

The authors state that the vampire combines lust and death. The passage Bram Stoker’s Dracula (pg. 196) combines both of these elements by the three beautiful vampire sisters being aggressive, insatiable and sensual, wanting to turn Jonathan Harker into one of them. Also, Harker being sexually stimulated by the attention of these three women. Our current cultural attitudes towards lust and death influences more recent vampire stories because men and women’s sexual behavior has been brought down and forbidden. If a male or female is sexually adventurous and their behavior is against social norms, they’re seen and considered dangerous. Also, vampires embody that desire and represent other attractive qualities that go beyond limits and

Of course, throughout the novel we see that vampirism most equates with sexuality.  Without overdoing a Freudian analysis of the story, there are enough sexual references to satisfy the least Victorian in nature among us.  However, the Victorian repression theme plays a role in the sexuality of the novel because though good women and men were able to control their sexual appetites in Victorian society, we see them unable to resist giving into their desires in Dracula.  As Carrol Fry writes "Mina says:  'Strangely enough, I did not want to hinder him'.  But perhaps the most suggestive passage in the novel occurs when Jonathan Harker describes his experienced while in a trance induced by Dracula's wives.  As the fair bride approaches him, he finds in her a 'deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive,' and he feels 'a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips'" (Carter  38).

Have you ever thought to yourself, what has influenced vampire literature today? Well, neither have I, but it wouldn’t hurt to touch on the subject. Dracula introduces the idea of lust and death within vampirism. Also, there are many connections that I make throughout this essay between Dracula and I am Legend, proving that Dracula was an influence on the book. The opposition of Dracula has had great influences on vampire literature.We see that these two pieces of literature are so much similar than one would think. Both authors even use similar words to describe the similar things, which I hadn’t even noticed until I made further inspection. .The book Dracula, written by

The first relationship explored in the novel, that of Dracula and Jonathan, defies the constraints of heteronormative sexuality. Dracula’s interest in seducing, penetrating and draining another male are desires that are acted out in the novel, however not solely by the Count himself, but instead by his three vampiric paramours. The homoerotic desire between Dracula and Jonathan is offered a feminine form for the masculine penetration that is being detailed (Craft,

The role of the vampire mouth as the primary site of erotic experience as well as an element that separates masculine and feminine: “brave men” and “good women”.

Whether you drowned in the text in your final year of school, or saw it in that one ‘Simpsons’ episode in 2009, everyone at least, kind of knows the story of that curse’d Scottish Play. Yet, what you might not know is that the hardest part to nail about the play isn’t the language, but instead, the complex themes that run through the story. Throughout this tragic tale, countless characters succumb to the pressures of maintaining their macho-man status, while others use their new-found ‘manliness’ to accomplish unbelievable things. Masculine ambition is a theme that underpins the entire plot and is the unfortunate downfall of many great (and not so great) characters.

There are four essentials of a Vampire story. The first one is an older person who is corrupt and usually a male. The second aspect is a young person who is usually a virginal female. Third, the young individual has her youth, energy, and innocence taken away from her, while the older individual continuous to have a prosperous life. Lastly, the young individual dies or destructs.

The book is laced with emotionally and erotically boosted encounters. A person who would enjoy reading about vampires, the urge to keep reading comes within the first few chapters; in this story early as chapter three. The novel is a new vampire paradigm that casts a steady

Here, Harker has fallen victim to the vampire’s lustful attraction. This also demonstrates an undertone of eroticism within the story since the three vampires “get much closer to Jonathan Harker than proper Victorian ladies should” (Pikula 291).

Punter and Byron reinforce this claim by stating that, “Dracula is associated with disruption and transgression of accepted limits and boundaries” (231). It is relevant to consider the aggressive behavior of Dracula towards his victims while he is on the prowl to fulfill his thirst for blood, especially with Lucy and Reinfield and the image of female vampires feeding on young children (Lucy). This bolsters the notion that the depiction of vampires in early portrays was violent. Also, as a sexually powerful creature, he preyed on men and women to fulfill his desires. The sexual representation of vampires is also evident from Ernest Jones’ early analysis of folktales, including the vampire. He proceeded to conclude that vampire’s and their counterparts, namely the Churel (India) and the Drud (vampires that prey exclusively on other vampires), do not confine themselves to sucking blood; rather “in the unconscious mind, blood is commonly associated with semen” (106). It would be inaccurate to associate these references to anything but the erotic nature of older folktales. Even in Dracula, the Count is portrayed as a seductive aristocrat who sucks on the blood of men and women, alike. The homosexual aspect of vampire tales is also apparent in “Carmilla” (Joseph le- Fanu 1872). As pointed out by Punter and Byron, Laura experiences intense erotic advances from the female vampire, to the extent of being puzzled