Dracula, By Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker’s Dracula illustrated fears about sexual women in contrast to the woman who respected and abided by society’s sexual norms. Joseph Sheridan LeFanu’s “Carmilla” represented not only the fear of feminine sexuality, but also the fear of sexuality between women. John William Polidori’s “The

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.

Though it appears on the surface to be an engaging horror story about a blood-sucking Transylvanian man, upon diving deeper into Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, one can find issues of female sexuality, homoeroticism, and gender roles. Many read Dracula as an entertaining story full of scary castles, seductive vampires, and mysterious forces, yet at the same time, they are being bombarded with descriptions of sex, images of rape, and homosexual relationships. In Francis Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, Stoker's presentation of homoeroticism is taken, reworked, and presented in a different, stronger light. Coppola does much in the area of emphasizing a homoerotic relationship between Mina Harker and Lucy Westerna: a relationship Bram Stoker

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

In Dracula, Stoker portrays the typical women: The new woman, the femme fatale and the damsel in distress, all common concepts in gothic literature. There are three predominant female roles within Dracula: Mina Murray, Lucy Westenra and the three vampire brides, all of which possess different attributes and play different roles within the novel. It is apparent that the feminine portrayal within this novel, especially the sexual nature, is an un-doubtable strong, reoccurring theme.

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.

    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

Their dalliances are things that rips away their very souls, turns them into a creature of the night, even then non-consensual sexual activity are forced upon them by a powerful man. It is a paradoxical situation that Stoker has created, one where there is an emphasis placed upon remaining pure and virginal while at the same time being the submissive recipient of male sexuality, and then after that being the ones blamed for inciting this male sexuality. Even Mina, having attained her acceptable ‘pure’ status as commented upon by Van Helsing: “She is one of God’s women, fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth. So true, so sweet, so noble…”, and her radiant and angelic figure that should have been acceptable enough to grant her some reprieve, it is still not enough to spare her from being cast down through her position as the item of Count Dracula’s

The relationship that exists between gender, sexuality and sexual practice is one that is not static, but is ever changing and shifting dependent upon the society in which it exists (Brickell, 2007). This essay aims to describe how Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula, presents a “characteristic, if hyperbolic, instance of Victorian anxiety over the potential fluidity of gender roles” (Craft, 111-112), whilst also inverting and subverting conventional Victorian gender patterns through the characterisation and portrayal of the vampire women residing in Count Dracula’s castle, Mina, and Lucy as well as the ‘feminine’ passivity and submissive depiction of Jonathan Harker.

In the 1897 novel “Dracula” by Bram Stoker, a vampire named Count Dracula is brought about and brung into the “real world”. Many stories, books, movies, and games have developed from this novel. In the novel, Dracula has a lot of myths attached to him. These myths are what make him a vampire, and so when other people come up with these new stories or books or movies, they also implement myths into their characters to give them life as a vampire. In every story, most of the characters are considered either “bad” and “evil” or “good” and “friendly”. These labels are based on the characters actions, thoughts (when possible), and personality traits. In Dracula, Count Dracula would primarily be classified as the antagonist and evil. As previously mentioned, this is based on the fact that he made evil decisions, and had very bad qualities about him. However, in Twilight, Edward is a much more difficult character to label. Him and the Count have many similarities, however they are also much different.

During the Victorian period, women’s sexual behavior was dictated by society’s firm expectations. A female in the Victorian times were supposed to be either a virgin or a mother and wife. If she was neither of these things she was labeled impure. But at the same time, the woman was not supposed to be too “forward” in the company of men because it would suggest that she had a bad sexual appetite. Marriage for a woman during the Victorian period was assumed to be desired by women for the sole reason that it allows them to become a mother. A woman was not supposed to desire marriage to pursue sexual or emotional satisfaction. The sexuality of Mina and Lucy differ throughout the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.

The gothic novel Dracula by Bram Stoker portrays the fears and anxieties of the Victorian society between 1837 and 1901. England was in that time an imperial force and in the peak of the industrialization. Through the numerous colonisations they came in touch with various nations. This paper will analyse the fears and anxieties. The first chapter offers a brief look into the Victorian era and the most important events that shaped the society. The second chapter is will examine the contrast between modern science and folklore, how the legends of Eastern Europe fused with the objective science. The third chapter will discuss the taboo topic of that period, sexuality and homosexuality. Stoker used blood as a device to demonstrate

The story Dracula begins with a diary, this diary is kept by Jonathan Harker. Jonathan Harker, who is a English soliciter/lawyer,used to live in England hoever recently he moved into Europe. The reason he moved was because he was embarking on his first professional assignment as a solicitor. Harker travelled to the castle of count Dracula.

Dracula is a novel that indulges its male reader’s imagination, predominantly on the topic of female sexuality. When Dracula was first published, Victorian women’s sexual behaviour was extremely restricted by social expectations. To be classed as respectable, a women was either a virgin or a wife. If she was not either, she was considered a whore. We begin to understand once Dracula arrives in Whitby, that the novel has an underlying battle between good and evil, which will hinge on female sexuality. Both Lucy Westenra and Wilhelmina “Mina” Murray embody two-dimensional virtues that have been associated with female. They are both virgins, whom are innocent from the evils of the world and that are devoted to their men. Dracula’s arrival threatens those virtues, threatening to turn Lucy and Mina into the opposites, noted for their voluptuousness, which could lead to an open sexual desire.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a story that narrates the association between a woman and a small group of men led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing that counteracts with Count Dracula. The Count Dracula travels from Transylvania to England to change human beings into something they refer to as, “foul things of the night like him, without heart or conscience, preying on the bodies and the souls of these (they) love best” (p. 223). The author utilizes the epistolary format in the short story (Cranny-Francis 38). Today, Dracula is the most loved epistolary works written in the nineteenth century but representing the current situations in the society. Literary the term epistolary stories represent novels written from various sources documents such as newspaper clippings, letters, and journals (McNally 18). Bram Stoker achieves the effects of using the epistolary style in conveying the characters inner states through different story setups and broad descriptions that develop the conscious self and the context (Cranny-Francis 64). The paper analyzes the gender roles as depicted in the short story by Bram Stoker.