Dracula: Critical views Flashcards
The Physical Other
Burton Halton - Dracula is physically “other”: the dark, unconscious, the sexuality that Victorian England denied.
Desire and actions of a Vampire
Stevenson - the actions of a vampire can be simplified down to a lack of control and perversion of human desires and instinct
Xenophobia and societal fears
Wesson - Count Dracula represents those forces in Eastern Europe which seek to overthrow, through violence and subversion, the more progressive democratic civilisation of the West
The “Traditional woman”
Bond - Mina’s sexual behaviour fits in with traditional societal norms
Masculinity and the “New woman”
Kunnecke - masculinity functioned as a driving social force to subdue threatening female sexuality
The other in London
Baumbauch - The outsider has become an insider, able to pose as a member of British society
Supernatural/Imprisonment
Rowen - To live in immortality in circumstances such as Dracula’s seems like imprisonment
Breaking taboos
Byron - Dracula is above all concerned with the breaking of Taboos
Breaking boundaries
Botting - Dracula’s crossing of boundaries is relentless
Dangerously modern
Buzwell - Lucy Westenra, who is, by contrast, dangerously modern in her ways
Threat from the past
Stoker - The count is simultaneously a historical and a modern threat
Sex and Stoker
Hindel - Sex was the monster that troubled Stoker the most
