Bram Stoker’s Dracula is not only a classic story of men and monsters, but a dramatic reactionary work to the perceived threats to Victorian society in nineteenth century England. In modern times there have been many film adaptations of the novel, each developing a unique analysis or criticism of the literary text within the framework of the society and time period in which it was created. The 1972 film Blacula is one of the most culturally specific variations on the story of Dracula, and highlights many of the themes and messages found in Stoker’s original text. Among the primary similarities between the novel and the film is the portrayal of race, sexuality, nationality, and culture, and the characterization in each work speaks to the …show more content…
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). Race is a key element in the movie Blacula, in which the film’s eponymous villain is an ancient African prince cursed by Count Dracula to walk the earth for eternity in search of human blood. Blacula is literally and metaphorically an updated version of the Transylvanian count, adapted for a primarily
The novel, Dracula was not chosen in vain as this particular work of Stoker’s boldly tackles the subject of immigration and its dangers. The main plot of the story is that a powerful vampire from Transylvania, Count Dracula, enters England to conquer it. Essentially everyone is oblivious to Dracula’s invasion except for our six heroes who are all that stand in his way. These heroes successfully save England, and humanity as a whole, by driving Dracula, the foreigner, out and eventually brutally murdering him. Through the tale of Dracula, Stoker and his stance on immigration become extremely clear: uncontrollable immigration must be stopped. As stated by Stephen Arata, this fear of the “primitive force”
Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish author, most famous for his novel Dracula. After working as a daily paper writer, Stoker started composing his realistic novel and incorporated the written work abilities he learned. In order to make the novel more genuine, he included journal sections, letters and telegrams to enable the reader to dive further into his characters. ‘Dracula’ is still today a standout amongst the best-known horror stories composed and is considered a classic. Therefore his life will be investigated since it affected his style and tone of the story, and in addition why ‘Dracula’ is viewed as a classic text.
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
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
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
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
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a story of horror, suspense, and repulsion. The main antagonist, Count Dracula, is depicted as an evil, repulsive creature that ends and perverts life to keep himself alive and youthful. To most onlookers that may be the case, but most people fail to see one crucial element to this character. Dracula is a character that, though it may be long gone, was once human, and thus has many human emotions and motives still within him. Let us delve into these emotions of a historically based monster.
A noticeable difference in the way movies have changed over the years is evident when comparing and contrasting two films of different eras which belong to the same genre and contain the same subject matter. Two vampire movies, Dracula and Bram Stoker's Dracula, present an interesting example of this type of study.
In Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, Stoker’s use of inverted gender roles allows readers to grasp the sense of obscureness throughout, eventually leading to the reader’s realization that these characters are rather similar to the “monster” which they call Dracula. Despite being in the Victorian era, Stoker’s use of sexuality in the novel contributes to the reasoning of obscureness going against the Victorian morals and values. Throughout the novel the stereotypical roles of the Victorian man and woman are inverted to draw attention to the similarities between Dracula and the characters. Vague to a majority of readers, Bram Stoker uses Dracula as a negative connotation on society being that the values of
According to Dictionary.com, a vampire is “a corpse, animated by an undeparted soul or demon, that periodically leaves the grave and disturbs the living, until it is exhumed and impaled or burned.” Our society’s view of Vampires has unfortunately been tarnished by several novels that shall remain nameless. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, however, is an excellent novel that shows just how menacing vampires should be. More importantly, it is a classic book that can provide many different readings and analyses. By using a Marxist approach, elements of this book can be easily compared to the oppression and eventual overthrow of a dictatorship style government. Dracula and Trannsylvania
Hidden in Bram Stoker’s Dracula contains abundant amounts of allusions and social commentaries. These rhetorical devices help connect the reader to the experience of the novel and allow them to have a more in depth understanding of the characters, and usage of religious allusions abets the reader in achieving that goal. In the worldwide masterpiece Dracula, Stoker uses religious, mythical, and archetypical allusions to depict Dracula as a peculiar and distinct creature as well as providing social commentary for current problems during the late Victorian era.