Dracula

Evie Chalmers - 11ENX13

In Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”, the innate human fear of the unknown is capitalised on

through his various uses of the Other throughout his text. The Other represents an

outcast from society, that is exaggerated by a culture’s fears and beliefs, as a

manifestation of what they are scared of most. Many of these examples of the Other

have been outcast due to their race, religion, mental health or personal beliefs and

actions. While the most obvious example of the Other in Dracula is Count Dracula

himself, Stoker also included underlying themes and messages about the role of

women in his society during the Victorian era.

The idea of a vampire as a seductive villain-like figure originated in 1819 with John

Polidori’s “The Vampyre”, as well as the 1845 Victorian horror serial “Varney the

Vampire”. Published in 1897, Stoker’s “Dracula” epitomised the evil he saw in the

modern world. The novel is an amalgamation of centuries of European folklore

surrounding vampires.

The name Dracula, meaning “son of the devil” in Romanian, is inspired by both

folklore and local wives’ tales about vampires and mystical creatures, as well as the

history of Vlad the Impaler. However, all of the locations in Transylvania that are

described (the town, the roads, the castle itself) came from Stoker’s own imagination

and prejudices.

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Stoker himself was a highly religious Anglican and was averse to many of the

explicitly sexual themes we can acknowledge in Dracula today. Many of the scenes

that include Dracula’s wives have distinctly sexual themes and language, and

Stoker’s distrust and aversion to women’s sexuality is shown through these innately

evil women, performing a sexual act of their own accord.

“The girl went on her knees and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a

deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive ... I could feel the

soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard

dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in

languorous ecstasy and waited, waited with beating heart.” 1

In this quote, Stoker shows his own opinion of women’s sexuality, as “both thrilling

and repulsive”, which is shown throughout the entirety of the text, his fascination and

disgust of women’s independence and desire.

“Dracula: vampires, perversity and Victorian anxieties” supports this notion and

explores the representation of Lucy as a dangerously modern and independent

woman. “Lucy’s moral weakness allows Dracula to prey repeatedly upon her during

the night”2. Dracula shows two female characters representing the different types of

women in the Victorian era- one a perfect example of women in that era, one the

opposite. In “Ideals of the Victorian Women as Depicted in Dracula” by Robert

Humphrey, it is stated that “Mina is the perfect embodiment of the ideal Victorian

woman … Mina is what the Victorians would consider a perfect wife” 3.

During the Victorian era, there were strict expectations for women and their level of

autonomy. Generally speaking, women had very little say in their sexual or romantic

1 Stoker, B., 1897. Dracula, p.19.

2 Buzwell, G., 2014. Dracula: vampires, perversity and Victorian anxieties.
3 Humphrey, R., 2014. Ideals of the Victorian Woman as Depicted in 'Dracula'.

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lives, often their husbands/ fathers making decisions for them. In Dracula, Lucy

Westenra defies these stereotypes and is represented as a promiscuous and selfish,

an independent woman with no thought or care to being a dutiful and doting wife. In

punishment for these sins, she is turned into a monster by Dracula, a representation

of the Victorian belief that these acts would damn you to hell.

A heavy feature of Dracula is the symbolism and hidden meaning behind many of

the themes and storylines within the novel. While Dracula was being written, Great

Britain’s empire was slowly crumbling while other countries were gaining power

against them. Dracula’s invasion of Britain has been compared to foreign invasion as

well as anti-Semitism as many British people of the era believed that formerly British

owned countries would rise up against the country and take over. Linked with this,

during the Victorian era, Jewish people were often called “bloodsucker” as a

metaphor for sucking life, such as in Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now Jews

are “fed with the blood of widows and children” 4. During the end of the nineteenth

century, anti-Semitism was socially acceptable due to the general hatred of the influx

of immigrants from eastern Europe (just like Count Dracula).

Femininity and motherhood are explored in Dracula, and though for the majority of

the book Mina is not a mother herself, she acts as one to the other characters in the

book, “We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above

smaller matters when the mother-spirit is invoked; I felt this big, sorrowing man's

head resting on me, as though it were that of the baby that someday may lie on my

bosom, and I stroked his hair as though he were my own child.” 5 Stoker treats

4 Trollope, A., 1875. The Way We Live Now.

5 Stoker, B., 1897. Dracula, p.245

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motherhood as a holy rite and passage for all women, and during the Victorian era a

woman’s main duty was to be a mother and wife. Lucy, unmarried and with no

children, when turned into a vampire begins to prey on children. Instead of nurturing

them at her breast like Mina does, Lucy feeds on children. “With a careless motion,

she flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the child that up to now she had clutched

strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls over a bone. The child

gave a sharp cry, and lay there moaning.”6 Lucy is portrayed as animalistic and

inhuman, as if without caring and nurturing for a child, she wasn’t a woman at all.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula represents far more than a story about a Transylvanian count

with a thirst for blood. Hidden in the text are Stoker’s thoughts and ideas on women,

sex and his own anxieties. By tapping into the deepest and most morbid fears of the

responder, Stoker managed to create an in-depth story that is one of the most

influential novels ever written that gives chills to any reader.

6 Stoker, B., 1897. Dracula, p.226

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References
Stoker, B., 1897. Dracula. London: Archibald Constable and Company.

Trollope, A., 1875. The Way We Live Now. London: Chapman and Hall.

Buzwell, G., 2014. Dracula: vampires, perversity and Victorian anxieties. British

Library,

Humphrey, R., 2014. Ideals of the Victorian Woman as Depicted in 'Dracula'. The

Artifice,

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