Essays on Bram Stoker

Some of the greatest works of Victorian literature look at English culture in the 1800s through a critical or jaundiced eye; these works then find ways to expose the restrictive, oppressive and isolationist aspects of British culture that were characteristic of the empire at that time. This is particularly true of Bram Stoker’s Gothic novel Dracula, as it looks critically at race through the personification of Dracula as the feared Other from Eastern Europe, seeking to violate the women of England with his exotic sexuality and behavioral taboos. Looking at Dracula through the lens of race, it becomes ...

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Introduction Vampires are mythical creatures that appear in ancient folklores. Most cultures have their own version of the vampire although they share a common characteristic; that is, the lust for human blood. There is no particular gender to the vampire character. Male and female vampires do exists even in ancient literatures, making the vampire one of the most gender neutral characters. The depiction of the female vampire in human culture, however, is an interesting way of looking into the development of women, particularly on how society views women and their social status over the course of time. ...

Ghost stories and narratives can take many different forms and change according to history, location and culture. What is considered scary in one culture could be dismissed as a fantastic tale or a comical narrative by another. The cultural values and everyday narratives of the people in a certain location determine what is scary and what is not. The West and the East have different cultural values and beliefs. They differ not only in simple matters such as greeting a stranger but also in the principles that govern their conduct in life and business. These differences are also evident ...

Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula

The Film Dracula directed by Godfather trilogy director Francis Ford Coppola and based on the book by Bram Stoker, released in 1992. The story was slightly revamped from the book and it was modified to adapt to the culture of the 1990s. As in Stoker's book, sexuality forms the core part of the film. It defines the characters in many ways. The scene in which the Dracula and Harker were together alone, shows great passion and closeness between these two. The scene where Dracula shaves Harker in front of a mirror and when the mirror reflects only Harker, it ...

Van Helsing as a Protector: The Role of the Vampire Hunter the Present-Day Vampire Culture

Abstract The vampire culture grew out of the Gothic genre and became extremely popular throughout the world. The first and most famous representative of the vampire cast is Dracula, who first appeared as a protagonist in Bram Stocker’s book with the same name. Dracula was created as a predator that hid within his threatening castle, and attacked helpless women. The author also introduced Van Helsing, the hero who acted as a protector of women and fought to destroy the monster. However, Van Helsing remained a less popular and well-known character as compared to the monster he hunted. In ...

Introduction

“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.” These words by Stephen King illustrate the concept of the modern literature: what is treated as an imagery shall become a fixed figure of the culture. The effect of the mass culture provoked a big irreversible changes of the European culture into the mass one. For example, a vampire no longer rises from his grave and turns into bat to fly from place to place. Skinner Sweet, an anti-hero born from the comic book series by Stephen King and Scott Snyder, is the first American ...

Bram Stoker’s epistolary novel, entitled Dracula, offers a glimpse of a dark, supernatural world, wrought with sexual symbolism and the draining of human power. Stoker introduces his protagonist, a young solicitor named Jonathan Harker, who finds himself on the road to Transylvania for the purpose of visiting a certain count Dracula and organizing a real estate transaction. Harker leaves behind the vehicles of modern civilization as he is driven into the desolate mountain country (Davison 79). The countryside he passes through is picturesque enough to lull him into a state of false security, while the villagers offer charms against dark, evil forces and mutter ...

Dracula, Bram Stoker’s legendary novel, is more than just fiction writing, it is a blurry reflection and critique of the Victorian era, with its thoughts, lust and decadence hidden under a pile of conservative ideas. It draws its essence from common fears of the Victorian era and from the author's own view on homosexuality and sex, at the same time relying on several sources. The novel was published in the early half of the 20th century, before the beginning of the suffragette movement (Levin 14), when the standards and expectations with regards to women were extremely limiting. In a society ...

Produced in 1897, Bram Stokers renowned tome Dracula, has been the muse or catalyst for innumerable plays, movies, short stories and fiction. This book not only delineated the modern concept of a vampire and outlined how contemporary horror novels should flow, it presented, extrapolated upon and discussed hotbed issues in Victorian culture that illustrate how swiftly the times where changing as well as the tussle between a civilization advancing while it sheds the encumbrances from the previous modes of life. This situation is particularly depicted in regards to the altering roles of women and how sexual relations were viewed. Penned ...