Dracula and Victorian Culture

In genus genus genus Dracula by Bram Stoker, the author explores Eastern Europeans religion and culture in a number of ways, as soundly as traditional position notions of heathenish superiority. It is important to note that the text edition in the first place explores religion through antithesis. Stoker begins with the mentation that Dracula and his ilk atomic number 18 fiendish creatures as far from God as possible, and piles upon them the sins that religion, presumably, is never guilty of vampires argon sexualized, decadent, and violent.Worst of all(a) to the ghostlike readers is the fact that vampires violate Christian notions of the resurrection of Jesus by personation creatures who return from the grave not to let guidance, but to prey on all of tenderity. English superiority is insist by the ending of the text, in which the English forces get the better of Dracula away from his pool of victims and last destroy him. This represents the cycle of magical sexual pe rversion being broken, allowing for the normal Christian lives to go on, free of evils taint.Stokers tale became famous for its unique transmit on the vampire invention. As contrasted to being a horrific giant wandering the wilds, Dracula is a culture count who is able to blend into lavishly society (before, of course, feasting on it). By making an agent of evil unrecognisable as such, Stoker represent the 19th-century precaution of The former(a) in a religious context. Readers are encouraged to h sure-enough(a) abstain to Christian beliefs, as that might be all that saves them from insidious infiltrators such as the Count.Fittingly enough, Dracula is not content with the indicant that he already has in the world, nor with his supernatural abilities he wishes he could be in the world more than, and affect the outcome of study stillts. This helps serve the didactic character of the text. as yet as Dracula is ostensibly a creature of unfathomable evil, he is portrayed as a collection of hu slice faults, such as the lust for power. In that sense, he is a manifestation of embodied sin, offering punishment for the decadent world. The world, in turn, has to settle for being saved by the English.Symbolically, Mina is the redemptive force for the sins of man in the text. She ostensibly represents the hetero-normative view which is prerequisite to be an exemplar of a niminy-piminy Christian story, yet even later her marriage, she never seems sexualized by Stoker. Instead, she represents duty and bow to her husband, as well as the more abstract qualities, such as soul and more character. Her union with her husband is an clear counterpoint to Draculas kind with the deuce-ace sisters even in worthy marriage, she is portrayed as chaste, bordering on sex slight(prenominal)the Victorian ideal.Regarding Dracula and his relationship to his 3 sisters, the reader is free to speculate on its true temperament. At best, it seems to be a parody of matrimony, with the women representing a kind of hareem (hence, the representations in pop culture of the three sisters as the brides of Dracula). With Stoker taking picky care to note both of the women resembling Dracula himself, there is even the possibility of incest added to the already-disturbing nature of erotic force out permeating the text.Erotic violence symbolically provides the ironic climax for Dracula himself. For all of the strange instruments that are wielded to cover off and harm vampires throughout the text, it is lastly knives that are used to dispose of the Count. In this sense, English pagan superiority is asserted over its evil Other by appropriate the violence of the other fairish as Dracula corrupts good quite a little by discriminating them, the countryside can plainly be cleansed (as in, returned to its Judeo-Christian, hetero-normative and ultraconservative state) by piercing Dracula himself.The violated become the violators, and the Other is driven from the countryside, once and for all. The purity of the countryside is even evoked by Draculas specialized dirt, a not-so-subtle representation of other shore up corrupting good Christian citizens before it is properly sterilized. There are hints of symbolic Eugenics embedded here sterilizing a corrupting outsiders land before driving him out so he can no long-lasting convert others to his cause, leaving good Christians (such as Mina) to continue the proper race of the English (even though she remains so plain chaste).Ultimately, the reason for the enduring popularity of Stokers text is the surprisingly sympathetic nature of Count Dracula himself. He is at once a creature of two worlds a horrible monster who literally preys on humankindity, and a cultured old man who represents knowledge of the world. He is a bloodthirsty abomination who, nevertheless, seeks out companionship. He is an unknowable monster from the depths of hell, yet the sunglasses that comprise him are made up of all- too-familiar human sins.Stoker doubtlessly wrote the book to reassert the cultural values of the time his creature of the night, with human follies, is driven out and killed. Yet the text endures because, as times become less overtly Christian and much less conservative, individuals sympathize with the persecuted monster more than they do the gallant Christian forces. And long afterwards Victorian England slips further into the footnotes of history, the vampire myth will continue attracting souls who perceive themselves as outcasts from the sterilizing forces of society.