study of Dracula and Twilight when it comes to race, class, gender and sex but also religion. 4.1 Gender/Sexuality. In Dracula the characters follow curtain roles and perform actions that usually are significant for the opposite sex. Three main characters are portrayed by Stokes in ways that implies that the gender roles are reversed. Jonathan Harker is a victim, Mina Harker is one of the men in the novel and is portrayed as a modern woman and Count Dracula push the lines of sexuality. Jonathan
Gothic literature draws heavily on the influences of the Romantic Movement in its appreciation of nature, and the use of sublime imagery is prevalent in the literature du jour, and is presented as the diametric opposite to what Julia Kristeva calls the abject in her 1980 work, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Abjection is the human reaction (such as terror or horror) to a threatened loss of meaning when confronted by the loss of distinction between the subject and the object: the moment at
n Dracula, several characters are seen following roles and actions that are usually reserved for the opposite sex, these situations allow for the Victorian reader to understand that this is a special situation and that something is not right. In clearer terms, the switching and blurring of gender roles allows for a greater sense of strangeness and wrongness for the novel to continue successfully as horror fiction. Jonathan Harker is the first character we see allowing himself to be feminized, firstly
Essay 2 The Victorian era, or the reign of Queen Victoria, has become known a time period that has transcended literature, cinematography, art, and ultimately has become a kind of style for our modern day culture. Bram Stokers novel Dracula is an example and the prime example for this essay of what the Victorian era means to literature as a whole. Most literature has a specific time and place as to where it is set, whether it is set in the mid-west or outer space is has a time and place. However
(Campbell). Likewise, the modernization of a classic text offers insight into the current culture as much as the original text does. For centuries, common themes of gender roles and homosexuality permeated the gothic horror genre. Though the themes have remained constant, the cultural context which surrounds them, have not, as exemplified in Dracula, a novel by Bram Stoker, and Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film adaptation. Gothic horror is a well-known genre, believed to have been invented by Horace Walpole
Dracula: A Portrait of Victorian Society Every novel is a product of its time, and no matter what genre, every author reflects the world around them. In the 1897 novel Dracula, author Bram Stoker examines societal anxieties regarding sexuality and from these observations he draws parallels to characteristics in the story’s antagonist, Dracula, and vampirism itself. Stoker recognizes the distinct sexual repression of the late 19th century and specifically incorporates elements of homosexuality, feminine
I will analyze two Gothic Victorian novels Dracula by Bram Stoker and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. In both of the novels I will focus on the monstrous ‘Other’ of humanity. Derrida’s concept of transcendental signified is beautifully described in this novel; the identity of the other has generally been defined in terms of the central entity, be it God and man. The center also uses the other to define himself. The center creates force field in which general meanings are created. The center always
Writing, 1987) and Kelly Hurley (The Gothic Body: Sexuality and Materialism and Degeneration at the Fin De Siecle, 1996), Skin Shows challenges the meaning of representation of the Gothic body. In many ways however, in contrast to her contemporaries, Halberstam rejects the typical reading of the physical Gothic body and focuses on the significance of skin itself, as a culturally poignant element which represents a ‘fabric’ of race, gender, sexuality, and social class while also expressing the importance
Stoker portrays Dracula as the threat of colonialism to the moral standards of Victorian society; the threat exists when he transforms the female characters into vampires and releases their carnal desires. Therefore this represents the dangers of the ‘New Woman’ who are
While still rooted in sexuality, The female protagonists share a common trait of repressed unbridled sexuality and inner bestiality which according to the psychiatrist, Phyliss Roth, it is ‘She who threatens by becoming desirable’ a typical paradigm in gothic fiction would be that of the three vampire sisters who seduce Harker with a paradoxical image of ‘dreamy fear’ (44) epitomizing an amalgam of sensuality and a daunting fear. In a stark disparity between the female role of Laura and that of the