Dracula:Three Critical Points
The mix of lore, fact and fear are the three key elements that has kept Bram Stoker's Dracula alive, they have congealed the novel into practical and secular legends of vampires that have not only dominated the fifteenth century, but the twentieth century still. The novel has been rewritten, adapted, and replayed through it's travel throughout time. Bram stoker's masterpiece can't be represented by one pure theme rather a multitude of small things resulting in a large encompassed theme. Stoker explores experiences with sexual volputousness, battling encounters with good verses evil along with the idealolgical work of religion, and the involvemnt of the audiences emotions.Stoker uses the characters,such a Mina and Lucy to portray women as embodiments of goodness and Dracula as the evil. In these notions, Stroker reflects Victorian ideas of womanhood and then, the true desire of society, sexuality. In times of Victorian era sexuality is a fragile subject, a topic that is subject to much scrutiny. Dracula is largely criticized for the sexual influence it has throughout it's works. Sigmond Frued's influence is apparent through Stroker's use of characters. Van Helsing and Dr.Steward a
The reader is then immediately brought to the awareness of the threat of his supernatural presence, throughout the novel, an example of this is in a quote from the text describing Dracula's unnatural presence, the description is from Harker at his first encounter with the Count; "His eyes were positively blazing. All of these traits are implied into two women, Mina and Lucy as they fall prone into becoming lascivious women under the power of Dracula. In Noel Carroll's, "Horror and Ideology," the progression of a horror story is setup up as a three part series: "1) from normality . Stoker's next and most critical comparison comes with the drinking of Dracula's blood by Mina. Had he intended to write an ideologically repressive novel, Stoker would have written Dracula with ideas and passages that supported Victorian sensibilities, which he clearly does not. They are the Catholic force that is determined to banish this evil through their strength in each other and in God. While Seward appears to be making a casual reference to Renfield's insanity and his ideas of this "Master", he is unknowingly making a direct comparison of Dracula to Christ, in the parable where Jesus feeds thousands with a few loafs of bread and a couple fish (Matthew 15:38). Stoker brilliantly turns what should be an ideologically repressive work into a story that provokes a desire for liberation from the stringent religious and social restraints on Victorian society. I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and red tongue as it lapped her white teeth. He is cast as a foreign invader that has come to London to change the implicatons and to create a new way of living: that of Vampirism. By using the vampire hunters to embody Victorian morality then Dracula to symbolize a challenge to those ideals, Stoker creates a battle between good and evil, ending with the defeat of Dracula and a return to the proper. With a rapidity which, at the time seemed incredible, and even afterwards impossible to realize, the whole aspect of nature at once became convulsed" (Stoker 76). Just as Jesus quieted the storm while he was a sea with his disciples (Luke 8.
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