Essays on Dracula

The rise of British Imperialism during the 1800’s created a new sense empowerment among English citizens and redefined British culture in the Victorian Era. During this time, British imperialists valued personal lineage and emphasized the importance of protecting one’s ancestral purity through rigid social customs...

In the Gothic novel Dracula, Bram Stoker largely presents good and evil in stark contrast in a very simple manner. This perhaps mirrors Victorian views of good and evil as opposed yet inextricable, a strict view of right and wrong in a religious sense. But...

Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, written in 1897 during the Victorian era depicts and delves through the historical context of what society was like in the past. His extraordinary piece places a strong emphasis on sexuality by contrasting it with the conventional and stereotypical views towards...

In the first fifteen chapters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula¸ the author examines and subtly comments on the role of women in Victorian England through the actions and words of Mina and Lucy. In particular, evidence from the passage that appears on pages 164 through 167...

Gothic literature uses gender to discuss social norms and explore stereotypes while commenting on whether gender stereotypes should be upheld or disrupted in society. In this essay, I will compare two female characters and two male characters in Gothic texts to establish how gender stereotypes...

The title character in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” is a sexually perplexing figure. Nietzche wrote of a creative being called the “berman”, or “superman”. Men who overcome their handicaps and identify with God are potential supermen; as models of this concept, Nietzche named Socrates, Jesus, Leonardo...

Within the pages of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the author explores concepts of love, darkness, and sexuality as well as the theme of good versus evil. The most powerful theme surrounding the infamous vampire, however, is that of mortality. Death and the possibility of life after...

The issue of social class and its effects upon society in Victorian-era Europe is a theme central to Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. On the surface, the novel seems to be a story of a battle between good and evil; upon further analysis, it could be...

The opening chapters of Dracula by Bram Stoker set the scene atmospherically and build the feeling of fear steadily through a combination of themes which were feared in Victorian times. Gothic literature was a new and exciting concept for the stoic Victorians, who weren’t used...

In periods of cultural insecurity, when there are fears of regression and degeneration, the longing for strict border controls around the definition of gender, as well as race, class, and nationality, becomes especially intense. If the different races can be kept in their places, if...

“Mere “modernity” cannot kill.” The year is 1897, and European culture is changing. Skepticism about both Christianity and the introduction of Darwinism into common thought is current, and the concept of what we now call “feminism” is planting its roots, apparent in the rise and...

This chapter from the novel ‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker includes an abundance of conventions typical of the Gothic genre, primarily employed here through Stoker’s characterisation of Johnathan Harker, Count Dracula and the three seductive women. Published in the late 19th Century, at a time when...

Bram Stoker’s use of setting to establish some of the key gothic elements to the novel Dracula proves to be crucial in developing both suspense and intrigue. This can be studied particularly closely with reference to Jonathan Harker’s narrative of his journey into the Carpathian...

Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula relies strongly on the construction and deconstruction of binaries. Arguably the most prevalent and important of the various binaries are good vs. evil and dark vs. light. At the beginning of the novel, Stoker establishes a clean cut line between...

In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the title character is omnipresent. To the protagonists of the novel, the difficulty of escaping his power and ultimately defeating him is often overwhelming because he is always with them in some way, shape, or form. Throughout the novel, there are...

In his novel Dracula, Bram Stoker’s characters are deeply disturbed by the existence of the vampire. The notion of a creature that is both living and dead challenges their sanity by forcing them to question those things which they had previously considered to be obvious...

The era of industrialization ushered in new ways of disseminating and creating art. Along with technological innovation come the anxious reservations of aesthetic purists. These reservations stem from wariness about the dehumanizing effect of mechanical reproduction and a sense of powerlessness over the work of...

Doctor Abraham Van Helsing is an intriguing and somewhat problematic character on several levels. According to critic Martin Willis the introduction of Van Helsing represents a new understanding of disease and infection. In Victorian times it was still common for people to think of disease...

Bram Stoker uses the characters of Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker in his novel Dracula to explore the essential attributes of a “New Woman” in Victorian England. Written during the late nineteenth century, this novel emerged out of a time where the long held traditions...

The Victorian Era produced a community organized strictly into stratified classes and social positions. Men dominated this cultural structure, with women acting as their inferior counterparts. Women were bound to an expectation of servitude, viewed as lesser-beings to the strong, intelligent men, and required to...

In the novels Dracula by Bram Stoker and The Purple Cloud by M. P. Shiel, the conscious efforts by characters to preserve their humanity and align themselves with others act as barriers to their pursuit of personal fulfillment. Indeed, our lives as humans are defined...

The economic instability which fueled the radical political divisions in America during the 1920s more than set the stage for Universal Studios’ rise to Hollywood powerhouse as the home of horror and monsters; it constructed that stage and defined the message that audiences would receive....

Bram Stoker’s revolutionary novel Dracula gave way to the splendor of modernism. Displaying many ground breaking modernist techniques, Dracula is especially reliant on the use of a meta-textual narrative. Stoker introduces his novel with a paragraph stating that how “these papers have been placed in...

The fantastic lasts only as long as a certain hesitation: a hesitation common to reader and character, who must decide whether or not what they perceive derives from “reality” as it exists in the common opinion. At the story’s end, the reader makes a decision...

History is sometimes told through stories and this is a fact but sometimes, these stories are not a hundred percent loyal to what really happened in history. This relationship between “history” and “story” is going to be the base for this work because I have...

Throughout the Gothic novel Dracula, Stoker uses symbology and imagery to reveal social anxieties and fears of the late Victorian era, for example the use of animalistic description and blood. Wilde, in his own Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray uses imagery to explore...