Dracula Flashcards
The Victorian Era and Ideas presented in Dracula:
Sex and Sexuality
Technological advancement: a new science that is about to be discovered.
Darwin’s theory of evolution, for instance, called the validity of long-held sacred religious doctrines into question.
The fear of the dead rising was linked to medical advancements, yet many were unaware of this connection, attributing it instead to supernatural forces like vampires. This tendency to attribute societal threats to tangible enemies, like vampires, reflects a broader pattern of scapegoating to preserve societal norms and power structures. Ultimately, fear is wielded as a tool to maintain power, rather than solely for protection.
Industrial revolution - cities growing for the first time. Politicians and popes getting nervous about the control getting out of hand.
Xenophobia
themes
Fear: fear of not knowing what we don’t know
Sexuality: adam and eve - women’s ungovernable desires leave men poised for a costly fall from grace.
Superstition and Modern Technology: Both are necessary! For example, Lucy Westenra’s malady is treated both by hanging garlic in her room (superstition), and via blood transfusion (modern medical knowhow).
Outsiders/The Other: Stoker seems to suggest that foreigners who go to another country will contaminate the native culture there and that their invasion needs to be resisted.
addiction: opium - Dracula sleeping on a bed of soil from Transylvania and also blood, Lucy becomes addicted to sensual pleasures, dies, becomes a vampire, and then dies again, Renfield starts by eating flies
morality: Stoker suggests that the reader should be more like Van Helsing - and less like Lucy - the reader should strive for purity, but be aware of the dark underbelly of modern life. (In Lucy’s case, her moral purity borders on ignorance and naivete, and she is lost to Dracula as a result, Van Helsing, on the other hand, is wise to the dangers of the world, and knows how to protect himself)
The Promise of Christian Salvation
Symbols
The holy sacrament - blood of Jesus and wafers/bread that represent the body of Jesus.
Blood: Temptation & Addiction - There was a problem with opium in London at the time. If everyone is addicted to opium there will be nobody to invent new things, to manage the economy and the country.
Soil from Transylvania: Addiction and Contamination of Culture
Sleepwalking, Somnambulism - don’t be naive, don’t go in your life with your eyes closed, be aware of your surroundings,
Mesmerism/Hypnosis - if you put someone in a hypnotic state you reveal your true state. Lucy goes to dracula, Mina finds her cutting her own neck shows hidden desire.
Doorways and Windows: How easy it is to lose yourself, to give into temptation and if you do it will destroy you. Dracula has to be invited in, through the threshold. You need to do it consciously once, and they you are lost.
Quotes on sexuality/patriarchy:
sexuality/Patriarchy:
Dr. Seward: “Lucy’s eyes in form and colour; but Lucy’s eyes unclean and full of hell-fire, instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew. At that moment the remnant of my love passed into hate and loathing.”
“Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine.”
“Think, dear, that there have been times when brave men have killed their wives and their womenkind, to keep them from falling into the hands of the enemy”
“The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating.”
quote on Addiction
Renfield: “For the blood is the life.”
quote on Superstition and Modern Technology
“unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere ‘modernity’ cannot kill.”
“Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.”
I think I must have fallen asleep and kept dreaming. . . .” Harker’s inability to accept what is unknown, irrational, and unprovable
quote on Christian salvation
Even the face of Dracula himself assumes
“a look of peace, such as [Mina] never could have imagined might have rested there.”
Stoker presents a particularly liberal vision of salvation in his implication that the saved need not necessarily be believers.
