Dracula In The Victorian Era

Embedded within the heart of Victorian England, Dracula offers a unique contribution to the conversations about women and colonization during the Victorian Era, reflecting a period and a people vexed over rapid social and moral change.

Throughout the years, Dracula was received very differently. When the novel was first published, it was devoured by the growing middle class, partly due to the Education Reform Act of 1870. This law is what allowed education to be offered to all British children. As a result, more people were able to read in general, and so more people read Dracula as a popular gothic novel. At the time, it was even compared to other victorian novels like Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights. Unfortunately, however, even though the novel was well received by the general public, it was never taken seriously, and remained the subject of harsh criticism by newspapers and critics in England. Dracula persevered in the public eye, despite countless critiques, but Stoker was forgotten, and it was not until the 1970s that the novel began to be taken seriously by academics (Welsch 39). Once Dracula was rediscovered in the late twentieth century, academics began producing many scholarly journals on the themes present throughout the novel. Before discussing themes and interpretations of the novel, however, it is imperative to recognize how the life of its author affected the events of Dracula.

Bram Stoker was a masterful storyteller, who penned Dracula in 1897, along