Dracula: Context Flashcards

1
Q

British imperialism

A
  • fear of reverse-colonialism

- influx of new cultures

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2
Q

Oscar Wilde

A
  • imprisoned for homosexuality

- friend of Stoker’s

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3
Q

Anti-semitism

A
  • 19th c. saw a huge intake of Jewish people into London

- racial prejudice, anti-semitism

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4
Q

‘New Woman’

A
  • Suffragette movement - concept of the ‘New Woman’
  • growing desire for access to education and suffrage
  • threat to social and domestic order
  • ‘New Women’ often expressed as promiscuous or mad
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5
Q

Marxist perspective

- abuse of social standing

A

Dracula uses social standing to gain fear and strength

- abuses for own gain

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6
Q

Marxist perspective

- Harker’s view on lower classes

A
  • Jonathon Harker sees lower class gypsies as just picturesque
  • IRONIC: it is their superstitions and expertise that save him later, i.e. crucifix, garlic
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7
Q

Marxist/New Historicist perspective

- mixing of social classes

A
  • Lucy’s blood transfusions

- eventual futility = critique on archaic traditions of upper class

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8
Q

feminisation of clerical work

A
In period during which Dracula was written, typewriting became increasingly viewed as an acceptable part of a middle-class woman's life
- greatest % increase of female clerical work occurred during 1891 - 1901
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9
Q

Bram Stoker’s preoccupation with repression and sexuality ; Stoker’s death

A
  • Stoker died of tertiary syphilis, exhaustion being one of the final stages of that disease
  • Bram’s writing showed signs of guilt and sexual frustration
  • probably caught syphilis around the year of Dracula, 1896
  • celibate for more than twenty years
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10
Q

‘The Wandering Jew’

A
  • Stoker intrigued by legend of The Wandering Jew:
  • depicted as simultaneously a rebel and a Romantic wanderer
  • plays to humanity’s sympathies by working to defeat humanity’s true enemies
  • Dracula not a figure of evil, but one of ostracisation and mystery?
  • Dracula mirrors jewish characteristics “aquiline nose” and sentimental history
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11
Q

When was Dracula written?

A

1897 - Victorian society

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12
Q

anti-semitism

A
  • 19th century Victorian society: Dracula embodies the racial prejudice and anti-semitism
  • 19th century London = mass intake of Jews
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13
Q

Literary - Matthew Lewis’ ‘The Monk’

A

Lucy’s rape scene - dehumanised as “the thing” and “the body”
Similar to Antonia described as “the body”

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14
Q

Madonna-Whore complex

A

women = angel or demon

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15
Q

middle class

A
  • class difference = source of anxiety
  • middle class in ascendancy, aristocratic class perhaps in decline
  • despite ‘respectable’ middle class, many cities esp London notorious for criminal activities - prostitution, gambling, opium dens, etc.
    => fear of spread of corruption
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16
Q

Homosexuality

A

made an imprisonable offence in 1885

17
Q

Lombroso’s theory of criminal anthropology

A
  • criminality could be hereditary

- everyone at risk of its spreading!

18
Q

Ripper murders

A

1888

- haunted London, preyed esp on prostitutes

19
Q

Transylvania

A

region divided by racial tensions

- British gov anxious about Transylvania 1880s and 1890s

20
Q

middle class women

A
  • fear that middle class women were at risk of being sexually exploited by libertine aristocrats
  • due to lack of inherited wealth
  • fear that middle class men x defend them
21
Q

Spring-heeled Jack

A
  • fear of unknown = mass hysteria in London
  • 1838: “red balls of fire”
  • for 10 years, gripped Victorian imagination
  • ‘seen’ all over, man even put on trial