British imperialism
- fear of reverse-colonialism
- influx of new cultures
Oscar Wilde
- imprisoned for homosexuality
- friend of Stoker’s
Anti-semitism
- 19th c. saw a huge intake of Jewish people into London
- racial prejudice, anti-semitism
‘New Woman’
- 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
Marxist perspective
- abuse of social standing
Dracula uses social standing to gain fear and strength
- abuses for own gain
Marxist perspective
- Harker’s view on lower classes
- Jonathon Harker sees lower class gypsies as just picturesque
- IRONIC: it is their superstitions and expertise that save him later, i.e. crucifix, garlic
Marxist/New Historicist perspective
- mixing of social classes
- Lucy’s blood transfusions
- eventual futility = critique on archaic traditions of upper class
feminisation of clerical work
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
Bram Stoker’s preoccupation with repression and sexuality ; Stoker’s death
- 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
‘The Wandering Jew’
- 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
When was Dracula written?
1897 - Victorian society
anti-semitism
- 19th century Victorian society: Dracula embodies the racial prejudice and anti-semitism
- 19th century London = mass intake of Jews
Literary - Matthew Lewis’ ‘The Monk’
Lucy’s rape scene - dehumanised as “the thing” and “the body”
Similar to Antonia described as “the body”
Madonna-Whore complex
women = angel or demon
middle class
- 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
Homosexuality
made an imprisonable offence in 1885
Lombroso’s theory of criminal anthropology
- criminality could be hereditary
- everyone at risk of its spreading!
Ripper murders
1888
- haunted London, preyed esp on prostitutes
Transylvania
region divided by racial tensions
- British gov anxious about Transylvania 1880s and 1890s
middle class women
- 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
Spring-heeled Jack
- 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
