Human Sexuality in Bram Stokers “Dracula” July 27, 2009 Human Sexuality in Bram Stoker’s Dracula In the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, we experience the traditional ways of the nineteenth century. There are strict gender roles for the Victorian man and woman. Through the acts of romanticism, sexuality, and seduction, Stoker introduces the idea of the ‘New Woman’ and its effects on men by lessening their ability to control their craving of forthcoming women and he portrays a man who yearns for the pure love that only a wife can give. Thus, it is important to consider the notion of the ‘New Woman’ and its effect on the Victorian man. The roles of women during Victorian times were considered to be constricted.
Sirus is Kat's father who is the care taker of the vampire camp. We end up learning that Sirus is also the head vampire of the local vampire hive. Plot The first part of the story is Joss desperately trying to find out whom or what has murdered his younger sister Cecile. While at his sisters funeral he meets his uncle who talks him into going with him to a camp to learn how to kill vampires. Joss meets his first trainer Malek he learns a lot from him till the local hive of vampires murders Malek.
Rather than gain eternal spiritual life by consuming wine that has been blessed to symbolize Christ’s blood, Dracula drinks actual human blood in order to extend his physical—but quite soulless—life. The importance of blood in Christian mythology elevates the battle between Van Helsing’s warriors and the count to the significance of a holy war or crusade. The three beautiful vampires Harker encounters in Dracula’s castle are both his dream and his nightmare—indeed, they embody both the dream and the nightmare of the Victorian male imagination in general. The sisters represent what the Victorian ideal stipulates women should not be—voluptuous and sexually aggressive—thus making their beauty both a promise of sexual fulfillment and a curse. These women offer Harker more sexual gratification in two paragraphs than his fiancée Mina does during the course of the entire novel.
Matre1 Matt matre Lit form Mr. Hoerner 2-16-10 Bram’s Symbolic scenes In the book Dracula by Bram stoker, Many themes in the story represent a deep meaning, these themes usually reveal a major theme in the book, Bram uses many symbolic scenes that express deeper meanings, express an idea and clarify deeper meaning. One scene from the book Dracula by Bram stoker where symbolisms are used is when Lucy is sleepwalking in the night. When the ship crashes onshore and Dracula gets off. Lucy walks up to the seat that really is a grave, which is her favorite seat. Then Dracula finds her and bites her whereby he starts to drain her blood.
Ramirez 1 Angelica Ramirez Ms. Happ-Mendel 19th Century Unlit November 9, 2009 – Block 6 Treachery of Dracula In Dracula, Stoker’s characters manifest humans’ nature to be dishonest for their personal benefit. For example; Jonathan betrays Dracula’s trust by writing secret letters and disobeying his instruction on where to sleep. In addition, he betrays his fiancé when he cheats on her with the three seductive women. Jonathan is not the only character that betrays; Dracula betrays Renfield. Finally, Lucy betrays Arthur.
Despite Lucy’s flirtatious manner and breezy ways, both Mina and Lucy are pure and sweet women, truly in love with their men. In Victorian England, women were either wives, or virgins. However, Dracula destroys the very essence of Lucy by turning her into a vampire. As a vampire, women become objects of desire and sexual gratification, an idea very contrary to Victorian norms. They become devoid of their purity, able to make men abandon all logic and control.
Paula Rashel Flyangolts Professor: K. Sanders English 151-9613 23 February, 2011 Superstition and Religion in Dracula Dracula, by Bram Stoker, is a novel that can be considered known throughout current culture, as it is a classic. Written in 1897, it is still one of the most popular books in literature. It is referred to as a horror story and is sure to indulge you. However, Stoker’s intention was not to petrify the people of Victorian times, who were the first people to be entertained by the novel. Stoker created the character of Dracula to teach the readers lessons and morals about life and its questionable attributes.
“How does ‘Shadow of a Vampire’ appropriate the earlier texts of Nosferatu and Dracula and create something new?” Shadow of a Vampire (2000), directed by Elias Merhige, is a film that recreates the making of the 1922 film ‘Nosferatu’. Shadow of a Vampire distorts the reality of what actually went on whilst filming Nosferatu yet appropriates the text to make it entertaining and scary. As Nosferatu is based on Dracula by Bram Stoker, Shadow of a Vampire also becomes an appropriation of this text, mainly using the elements of gothic to create what is essentially a horror movie. An appropriation that adds to the scary nature is the behaviour of Nosferatu director Friedrich Murnau. Murnau’s behaviour is questionable from the early stages of the film.
As preoccupied with propriety as the Victorian era was, it always surprises me to read a classic from this period that could just as easily have been written a hundred years later. Dracula, a novel by Bram Stoker, was published in 1897, but it reads like any horror novel written today. The novel is so modern, in fact, that it has inspired many movie adaptations, two of the most recent being Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1992 and Van Helsing in 2004. Toward the beginning of the novel, when Jonathan Harker is trapped in Dracula's castle, Harker's journal tells how he was waylaid by three female vampires while resting in an ancient section of the castle: "I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat,
(Foster 16) Although in many cases evil does have to do with sex such as rape, I don’t believe it has everything to do with sex. During the Victorian era when all of these vampire stories were emerging in literature, Foster writes that since they couldn’t directly write about sex and sexuality, they found ways of transforming those taboo subjects and issues into other forms. (Foster 17) This may be true however he goes on to say that even today people write about vampires, ghosts, and werewolves to symbolize something that will imply something sexual. Since I was an avid reader of Twilight, I will have to defend my beloved novel and say it wasn’t all just about sex. There was evil in it but it wasn’t about some creepy old guy that wanted to take a young girl’s virginity.