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A brief summary of the dracula by bram stoker
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Critical analysis on Dracula
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Throughout the excerpt from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Stoker utilizes diction to convey the central idea that peoples’ worst fears lie in the unknown. In this section, the narrator is being held captive by an unknown entity. He begins to feel that his only hope is to understand the captor and starts to question the manner of the individual. In an effort to express the central idea, Stoker employs diction.
The beloved novel “Dracula” by Bram Stoker is an influential piece of gothic literature. Horror stories typically portray the Victorian woman to be a helpless victim and to be sexually objectified, but the story “Dracula” continuously uses the character Mina Murray Harker to challenges these gender norms. Mina is one of the several protagonists in the story, and it is important to note that she is the only female in the protagonist group. She is engaged to a man named Jonathan Harker who is also in that group. Initially, she embodies the ideal Victorian woman who is gentle, maternalistic, and loyal to her husband, but as the story progresses, her character develops to show independence and take on a more active role in defeating the antagonist, Count Dracula.
Everybody knows the classic tale of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It is most famous for its introduction of the character of Count Dracula into both deep-rooted and contemporary literature and media. One critic claimed,” Bram Stoker set the ground rules for what a vampire should be.” It follows the story of Jonathan Harker, an English solicitor who visits Count Dracula in his castle in Transylvania – soon realising that he is being kept as a prisoner. Dracula forms a liking to the character of Lucy which ultimately leads to her death.
There’s a young man laying in bed, who tries to fall asleep however is unable to; knowing that when he finally falls asleep — the soon subcumming nightmares will once again haunt his somber slumber. Tonight, no different than any other, the restless mind of the teenager is unable to bring calmness to his mind, he sits up from his bed. Friskly walking down the stairs, he slips on a white t-shirt, and plugs his iPod headphones in his ears. Iron Maiden’s flash of the blade, starts to play as he walks out the front door and starts to wander down the street, through the small neighborhood. He realizes he has no sense of destination or direction; he just aimlessly traverses the sidewalk is not paying attention to where he’s going, escaping
Dracula traps Jonathan Harker in his castle, but he finally escapes without the Count killing him. Dracula then sucks Lucys blood and turns her into a vampire. At this point everyone is against the bloodsucker. Since Lucy died, well turned into a vampire. Lucys friends have to stab her in the heart and cut off her head.
He is considered to be a “threat” to a Victorian woman such as Mina, she becomes his victim by force, which some see as rape. Mina feels violated after being “penetrated” by Dracula. There’s a scene in which helps support the idea of Mina being raped. “With his left hand, he held both Mrs. Harker’s hands, keeping them away with her arms at full tension: his right hand gripped the back of her neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white night dress was smeared with blood, a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare breast which shone by hi torn-open dress.”
Lucy Westenra is the best friend of Mina Harker and thus the second female main character of the novel. Stoker describes with Lucy a representative of the New Women movement, as the time was seen by the British population. She is single and lives with her mother, who is suffering from heart disease. Her family, that was once very prosperous, consist only of herself and her aging mother. She is Dracula’s first victim /vampire child in England.
As she is sick, Arthur gives her a blood transfusion to try to help her become better but when it does not work, she is stabbed in the heart to go back to her original beauty and die. Lucy in the book shows how the ideal Victorian woman can so suddenly turn into the bad, evil, sexual woman that was unacceptable. Throughout the novel, Bram Stoker showed in detail what was considered to be the ideal Victorian woman through the character Mina. He also showed how women were sexualized, misbehaved, and evil through the behaviors of Dracula’s three daughters.
Feminist Reading: Dracula between Beauvoir’s and Roth’s Ideas In her article, “Suddenly Sexual Women in Bram Stoker’s Dracula” Phyllis Roth argues that Dracula is a misogynistic novel which is obvious in the system of power in which men are dominant and active figures whereas women are just followers and obedient to their system. She draws on Simon de Beauvoir’s idea that “ambivalence as an intrinsic quality of Eternal Feminine”, in order to show that women are victims to men powers. In her chapter, “Myth and Reality”, Beauvoir discusses the way that anybody in the society, specially men, doesn’t do their job in taking a step towards the oppressed women, but to act just like what the system of myth impose them to act.
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
My take-away from “Walking on Eggshells” is that parents can be their own worst critique and parenting can be “tricky” we you try to navigate the parent-adult child relationship. When I say “tricky”, I mean that parents and older children form a new relationship as they go through different stages in life. Parents want to continue treating their adult children the same way they always have, but this can cause a rift or strain on the relationship. In the book, I noticed many parents felt guilty for things that happened with their children and some of the children blamed their parents. Naturally, a parent wants to fix any problems that come up with their kids and now they can’t.
This can even allow the reader to possibly ‘fill in the blanks’ about the unknown character with her own fears, adding to the horror of the novel. Count Dracula’s first appearance takes place in his castle in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania when Jonathan Harker arrives to discuss a real estate transaction. When Harker arrives at the castle, he first hears Dracula approaching in an ominous manner before he actually sees the Count. “I heard a heavy step approaching behind the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming light,” Stoker writes, “then there was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts drawn back. A key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back”.
The letter-writing format of Dracula allowed for me to find the text more engaging. It takes on the role of a conversation, which in my opinion made the story easier to dissect and understand. The author, Bram Stoker, could have just written the story and narrated the plot, but instead he chose to include a variety of documents, newspapers, and journals. The choice of format also makes each scene feel like reality. Stoker includes all these elements to make the reader think about what happened during this time and how is could potentially happen again —at any moment.
The character Lucy is described as the most innocent character in “Dracula” which is why she is loved by both the characters in the novel as well as the reader. Lucy is thought to be a more traditional woman, in the sense that she is chaste and pure, making her more desirable. She has three different men proposing to her and has the ability to choose the one that she likes the best. Lucy’s purity is sought after because this is how a traditional Victorian woman should act in the eyes of society.
This sheds a light on Dracula as a figure who truly does feel homosexual affection towards Harker. When Harker disobeys Dracula he finds himself in a room where Dracula’s three wives are. Harker journal entry recalling this event describes it in very close details. He describes the women in a very erotic way, saying “I could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle” (Stoker, 48), and the “soft shivering touch of lips.
