ipl-logo

Biblical Allusions In Dracula

406 Words2 Pages

Throughout the novel, Dracula is described through biblical terms. An example is when Dracula is crawling up the wall Jon asks “What manner of man is this?” and this is the same scenario and question from the disciples when Jesus calms the seas in Matthew 8. Another biblical example is when Mina describes Dracula as a “pillar of cloud” when she sees him in her bedroom, this is the form God took when guiding Israelis into the wilderness. Mina is picturing Dracula as a godly figure which pushes the evil representation of Dracula back causing the reader to not see him so fiercely as the anti-god. Beal suggests Dracula is “a dangerous admixture good and evil, divine and demonic, holy and accursed.” (Beal, 2002). The novel is an example of the feelings towards unfamiliar religions.
Transilvania is both otherness and sameness, the Christian religion is present but is non-western and non-English. The location is rather odd as it is a mountainous region which would have been seen as a foreign …show more content…

Podonsky said, “Bram Stoker’s now-legendary novel, Dracula, is not just any piece of cult-spawning fiction, but rather a time capsule containing the popular thoughts, ideas, and beliefs of the Victorian era that paints an elaborate picture of what society was like for Bram Stoker’s generation” (Podonsky, 2010). The conservative views of the late 19th, early 20th century are reflected in Dracula through lust, sex, and evil. Controversial topics of the time included homosexuality and sex, people were cautious when discussing these matters and were keen on keeping up a modest lifestyle. This does not mean there were not temptations because that is the premise of this book. Stoker glorifies the temptation of female sexuality, this was not acceptable and actually seen as animalistic for women to seduce a man. Connecting back to religion, this novel is about the temptation of the forbidden fruit (Podonsky,

Show More
Related

What Does Religion Symbolize In Dracula

1196 Words | 5 Pages

Bram Stoker's Dracula is filled with interesting symbology and religious comparisons. Dracula is a gothic novel set in late 1800s Britain and Transylvania. Dracula is an epistolary, meaning it is told through a series of journal entries, news clippings, etc. It’s like the written version of found film. Dracula draws from many old myths for its villain and is the basis for the modern vampire.

Read More

The Morality Of Blood In Bram Stoker's Dracula

115 Words | 1 Pages

Blood is involved way more in the story of Dracula than people are able to see just by simply reading the story. During the writing of Dracula, victorian England was a society governed by the strict morals of society. Bram Stoker wrote Dracula in order to voice an opinion on politics and the morality of society when it was incredibly looked down upon to do so in public. The book was significant because it was one of the first to indicate sexual topics in a novel without explicitly saying them. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Blood is the driving force that transfers the book from plot point to plot point and is active spiritually and physically.

Read More

Good Vs. Evil In Dracula

889 Words | 4 Pages

All throughout the story there is conflicts between the good and the evil. In Stokers novel it’s a battle between the good and the evil. The good defeat Dracula by using Christian references. All throughout the book is a holy war.

Read More

Gender Roles In Bram Stoker's Dracula

1350 Words | 6 Pages

At first glance, the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker appears to be a typical gothic horror novel set in the late 1890s that gives readers an exciting look into the fight between good and evil. Upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that Dracula is a statement piece about gender roles and expectations for men and women during the Victorian age. Looking at the personalities, actions, and character development of each of the characters in Dracula bring to light startling revelations about Victorian society and how Stoker viewed the roles of men and women during this time period. To really understand Dracula, it is important to note that this novel was written during a time “of political and social upheaval, with anxieties not just about the

Read More

Female Characters In Bram Stoker's Dracula

1360 Words | 6 Pages

The role of female characters in Bram Stoker 's "Dracula" and its movie adaptation by Francis Ford Coppola Gothic novel made its breakthrough with Horace Walpole in the late 18th century, when the term 'gothic ' was used to describe something barbarous or medieval. In the late Victorian era, Bram Stoker wrote "Dracula", a novel written in a form of journal with a monster living in a castle full of mysteries that ought to be revealed within the atmosphere of gloom and terror. After the first publication in 1897, its movie adaptations, which "constitute a simpler attempt to make texts 'relevant ' or easily comprehensible to new audiences and readerships via the process of proximation and updating" (Sanders 19) have begun. The most famous

Read More

The Influence Of Dracula

816 Words | 4 Pages

When compared to how influential it was during the Victorian era, Dracula has become increasingly significant over the past decades. This can be attributed to the fact that, in actuality, the story only acquired its legendary classic status in the 20th century, when the cinematic versions appeared. In order to write the masterpiece described by many as “the sensation of the season” and “the blood-curdling novel of the century”, Bram Stoker had to engage in extensive research of vampirism; as a matter of fact, a Romanian prince named Vlad was Stoker’s inspiration for the main character of Dracula. Thus, the story of the mysterious aristocrat who lives in a castle in the remote region of Transylvania, Romania, became play and film.

Read More

Gothic Literature: An Analysis Of The Role Of Women In Literature

1763 Words | 8 Pages

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of women in these texts, paying special attention to Stoker’s novel, and to draw an overview of how they were represented in the society of the nineteenth-century. Freeman claims in his essay “E. Nesbit’s New Woman Gothic” that ‘the treatment of gender and sexuality’ is an important issue in the Victorian Gothic, ‘with plentiful analysis of the fear of feminism and the New Woman’ (454). We can see this both in “Carmilla” and in Dracula. Women in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) play an essential role. As a matter of fact, the only male vampire in the text is Dracula himself, and all the other vampires that we can find in the novel are female.

Read More

The Role Of Sexuality In Dracula By Brahm Stoker

114 Words | 1 Pages

As a woman in the Victorian era, you have three options. You are either a pure blessed virgin, a married wife and mother, or a ravenous harlot. This seemingly repressed period of history was dominated by the idea that one’s sexuality formed their identity, social standing, and respectability. Ironically, the modern person would think of the common Victorian as extremely repressed and didactic, when in fact sexuality became a private focus in the public through literature and arts. These ideas of glorifying sexuality are very prevalent in Brahm Stoker’s

Read More

Theme Of Deception In Bram Stoker's Dracula

778 Words | 4 Pages

Dracula’s deceitful traits carry over to his victims that become

Read More

Morality And Morality In Dracula

1329 Words | 6 Pages

During the Victorian period in which Dracula was written, morals and ethics were often strictly enforced. Some of the morals that were upheld had to do with personal duty, hard work, honesty, as well as sexual proprietary. It was very important during this period that one was proper in their sexual behaviors and conventional in whom they had sexual relations with. However, during this period, many authors sought to challenge the ‘norm’ with ideas of reform and change and Bram Stoker was no exception to this. In his novel, Dracula, Stoker provides a critique of this rigidity in his portrayal of Dracula and Dracula’s relationship with Jonathan Harker.

Read More

The Importance Of Dracula In Stoker's Dracula

1253 Words | 6 Pages

Gothic horror novel Dracula, the title character makes only several relatively short appearances, some of which are while in disguise. Throughout the novel, Stoker keeps Count Dracula in the shadows, both literally and figuratively. This essay will describe these appearances and analyze Stoker’s use of them to determine what effect they might have on the impression of the character and the novel overall. It will be claimed that by keeping his title character hidden for much of the novel, Stoker’s Dracula is made much more frightening to the reader. Human beings tend to fear the unknown, and by leaving Dracula to the imagination,

Read More

Dracula And Van Helsing Analysis

711 Words | 3 Pages

He is supposed to represent science and advancement, yet he relies in the use of old fashioned or ancient practices to resolve conflicts in the novel. Dracula himself has been roaming the world for centuries; he is ancient. In a way his practices are ancient

Read More

Contaminating Sexualities In Bram Stoker's Dracula

2061 Words | 9 Pages

6. Contaminating Sexualities Another group which is often excluded from the action in Dracula are women. Vampiric women, for instance, do not get their own voice but are only talked about by other characters (mostly men). Mina seems to be the only woman with a proper voice in the story. Carol Senf argues in her article "'Dracula': Stoker's Response to the New Woman": "If it were not for Mina Harker, the reader might conclude that Stoker is a repressed Victorian man with an intense hatred of women or at least a pathological aversion to them" (34).

Read More

Feminism In Bram Stoker's Dracula

1991 Words | 8 Pages

It’s A Man’s World Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a highly controversial work of fiction. Bram Stoker’s Dracula touches on many different categories of literature which is why it can be analyzed in many different ways using an assortment of different criticisms. Throughout this piece, however, it is only focused on the patriarchal society and how women are portrayed throughout, leading to the expectations of women during this time period. Amongst this novel a feminist approach comes into play, but cannot be used to analyze Dracula as a whole but, more so to analyze multiple female characters. Bram’s stoker’s

Read More

Sexual Hypocrisy In Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'

1777 Words | 8 Pages

‘Dracula’ is a modern play adapted, by Liz Lochhead, from the classic horror novel written by Bram Stoker. The play is set during the Victorian era and develops the key themes that were prevalent during this era such as sexual hypocrisy. Lochhead’s unusual approach places much more significance on the female characters, in particular, Mina and Lucy and puts much less significance on the more well-known and traditional main characters such as Dracula and Van Helsing. The power dynamics of the Victorian era conditioned men to be strong and women to be weak, innocent and fragile. As women had to be innocent and expressing sexual desires was seen as a form of corruption that made you guilty, women’s rational and natural desires were silenced and

Read More

More about Biblical Allusions In Dracula

Related Topics

Open Document