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Compare and contrast dracula with more modern representations of vampires
Dracula and Carmilla
The study of Gothic literature
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(Sheridan, 2013)Carmilla is one of the first stories, if not the first, concerning vampirism. Written by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, an Irish writer who is often compared to Edgar Allen Poe, this novella was originally published in 1872, thus predating in fact a full twenty-five years before Bram Stoker’s famous tale ’Dracula’, which is heavily influenced by Carmilla. It tells the story of a young woman's susceptibility to the attentions of a female vampire named Carmilla and the story is thick with erotic undertones. Story is thick with sexual feelings and is must read book for the vampire or horror fans! An abstract pioneer, Le Fanu is a Victorian writer who is integral to the advancement of the Gothic classification. Likewise a conspicuous …show more content…
As stated by the story, we know was an friendless young who was abandoned by her mother. Even in childhood she never had friends or companion's she was constantly forlorn. Laura might have been honest as stated by me concerning illustration we view in the story. Interestingly, Le Fanu initially presents Carmilla as the distressed heroine in the Radcliffean tradition. Young and beautiful, she arrives "on a journey of life and death, in prosecuting which to lose an hour is possibly to lose all" and is initially unconscious, and therefore helpless, dependent on the goodness of others. Laura rapidly perceives Carmilla from a fantasy she had as a youngster; a fantasy of being gone by in bed around evening time, and bitten on the shoulder. Carmilla, as well, purports to recollect Laura from a comparing dream, wherein she stirred to wind up in a new bedchamber, and Laura there. Rapidly, they build up a personal companionship, portrayed pressings of hands, kissing of cheeks, and a lot of reddening. Laura recognises that "there was also something of repulsion" in her feelings towards Carmilla, but "the sense of attraction immensely prevailed. She interested and won me; she was so beautiful and so indescribably engaging." With Laura as our first person narrator, Le Fanu forces his reader to feel the same enthrallment and anxiety that she does- though our experience as a reader is amplified by Laura’s telling of the …show more content…
It merits perusing both as a begetter of the vampire class and as a nuanced depiction of a female relationship—part sentiment, part repulsiveness story—that exists outside the limits of manly power. The novel itself is composed in a basic, straightforward tone. Numerous pundits have noticed that this expressive approach loans to the story's capacity to attract its perusers to the ghastly story. Unhurried character and plot advancement additionally help the novella develop to a crescendo. This unhurried approach, combined with master narrating, has additionally permitted the novella to peruse similarly as crisply after rehashed readings as it does the first run through around. As a format for Dracula and other vampire stories, Carmilla is likewise worth perusing to see where the stories vary and how they reflect each other. So it depends entirely on Readers point of view. Some of them might even consider it more of a romantic and sexual work because it contains a lot of erotic stuff and romantic relationship between girls . Even knowing of Carmilla’s vampirism and the countless people she has killed, Laura lingers upon the vampire’s duality and her own conflicted attraction: “to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to memory with ambiguous alternations—sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” Clover, the main character in the story The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson, Clover grows up, disobeys her mom, and makes a new friend. I think the theme of the story The Other Side is courageous because Annie and Clover are both kind to each other, they accept each other, and they are both brave.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic novel written by Harper Lee. The novel is set in the depths of the Great Depression. A lawyer named Atticus Finch is called to defend a black man named Tom Robinson. The story is told from one of Atticus’s children, the mature Scout’s point of view. Throughout To Kill a Mockingbird, the Finch Family faces many struggles and difficulties. In To Kill a Mockingbird, theme plays an important role during the course of the novel. Theme is a central idea in a work of literature that contains more than one word. It is usually based off an author’s opinion about a subject. The theme innocence should be protected is found in conflicts, characters, and symbols.
The late nineteenth century Irish novelist, Bram Stoker is most famous for creating Dracula, one of the most popular and well-known vampire stories ever written. Dracula is a gothic, “horror novel about a vampire named Count Dracula who is looking to move from his native country of Transylvania to England” (Shmoop Editorial Team). Unbeknownst of Dracula’s plans, Jonathan Harker, a young English lawyer, traveled to Castle Dracula to help the count with his plans and talk to him about all his options. At first Jonathan was surprised by the Count’s knowledge, politeness, and overall hospitality. However, the longer Jonathan remained in the castle the more uneasy and suspicious he became as he began to realize just how strange and different Dracula was. As the story unfolded, Jonathan realized he is not just a guest, but a prisoner as well. The horror in the novel not only focuses on the “vampiric nature” (Soyokaze), but also on the fear and threat of female sexual expression and aggression in such a conservative Victorian society.
“Often fear of one evil leads us into a worse”(Despreaux). Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux is saying that fear consumes oneself and often times results in a worse fate. William Golding shares a similar viewpoint in his novel Lord of the Flies. A group of boys devastatingly land on a deserted island. Ralph and his friend Piggy form a group. Slowly, they become increasingly fearful. Then a boy named Jack rebels and forms his own tribe with a few boys such as Roger and Bill. Many things such as their environment, personalities and their own minds contribute to their change. Eventually, many of the boys revert to their inherently evil nature and become savage and only two boys remain civilized. The boys deal with many trials, including each other, and true colors show. In the end they are being rescued, but too much is lost. Their innocence is forever lost along with the lives Simon, a peaceful boy, and an intelligent boy, Piggy. Throughout the novel, Golding uses symbolism and characterization to show that savagery and evil are a direct effect of fear.
Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone should stay in Sterling High School’s English 4 curriculum because it teaches the reader that recovering from a horrible situation is possible, also Beah’s complex literal devices he uses to express his situation opens it up to the mind of a more experienced reader.
Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, is a highly controversial work of fiction that is still being read for the first time today. Dracula touches many different categories including; sci-fi horror to 1800’s English romance literature. This is the main reason why the novel Dracula can be analyzed in many different ways using many different literary theories. The theory which stuck out most to me while reading this novel was the Feminist Theory. The Feminist Theory cannot be used to analyze Dracula as a whole novel, but it can be used in order to analyze the different female characters throughout the book. Therefore, Bram Stoker’s Dracula can be analyzed through the feminist theory by focusing on the characters Mina Harker, Lucy Westenra, and the three brides of Dracula.
The idea of Victorian womanhood is extremely sacred, especially to a woman like Mina, who primarily wishes to be of use to her husband. Dracula’s penetrating the West and his actions are threats to female purity, and so they are threats to Victorian culture and order of England (Western world). Dracula is penetrating the entire nature of Vi...
Stevenson, John Allen. “A Vampire in the Mirror: The Sexuality of Dracula.” PMLA 103.2 (1988): 139-149. JSTOR. Web. 17 Feb. 2011. .
In The Way to Rainy Mountain, the author Scott Momaday uses the theme of a journey to drive this story. He begins his journey after the passing of his grandmother, the journey to reconnect and rediscover his own culture. He shares this moment on page 10, “I remember her most often in prayer. She made long, rambling prayers out of suffering and hope, having seen many things…the last time I saw her she prayed standing by the side of her bed at night, naked to the waist, the light of a kerosene lamp moving upon her dark skin…I do not speak Kiowa, and I never understood her prayers, but there was something inherently sad in the sound, some merest hesitation upon the syllables of sorrow”. The passing brought a realization upon him to have to keep the culture going. He can barely speak Kiowa, while his grandmother was one of the few members who were completely fluent. I believe this book is a call out to his tribe to take the same journey Momaday took.
Poverty and homelessness are often, intertwined with the idea of gross mentality. illness and innate evil. In urban areas all across the United States, just like that of Seattle. in Sherman Alexie’s New Yorker piece, What You Pawn I Will Redeem, the downtrodden. are stereotyped as vicious addicts who would rob a child of its last penny if it meant a bottle of whiskey.
Bram Stoker wrote his infamous novel, Dracula, during the turn of the century in 1897, and the Victorian era novel is heavily influenced by the time in which it was written. Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula is influenced by the period in which it was produced, and it diverges from the novel in the sexualisation of women, the humanization of Dracula, the representation of friendship, and the depiction of science. Dracula is a classic story that can represent the current era’s fears and desires. Although the story changes in Coppola’s Dracula, in comparison to the original, it is not the first time Dracula has been adapted according to the era, and it will not be the last.
At first glance, Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the hour-long TV series which premiered in 1997 and is now in its third season, bears little resemblance to the book which started the vampire craze -- Bram Stoker's Dracula, published a century earlier. And yet, looks can be deceiving. Although the trendy -- and often skimpy -- clothing and bandied about pop-culture references of "Buffy" clearly mark the series as a product of a far different culture than that of the Victorian England of Dracula, the underlying tensions of the two texts are far similar than one might think. Beneath the surface differences in the treatment of their heroines, the two texts converge in similarly problematic anxieties about gender and sexuality.
Despite popular culture today with shows like The Vampire Diaries where vampires are often continuing their daily lives as if they are human and being the heroes to their friends and/or family, Dracula is a depiction of how vampires have, for centuries, been exposed as bloodthirsty, supernatural beings with sexual appeal. The way women are portrayed in Bram Stoker’s, Dracula, is a result of the Victorian ideals. Once Dracula begins to feed on the women, they become bloodthirsty temptresses which are exactly what society fears and try to prevent. In Dracula, Stoker makes sexuality directly linked to the vampirism in the novel. This is seen through the change of Lucy’s somewhat modest behavior into a temptress, the blood-sharing between characters in the novel, and the description of the way Lucy was killed.
In her novel “The Blood of The Vampire”, Florence Marryat writes about a female “vampire” that sucks the life out of humans around her. The word vampire is in quotation marks, for she is not a self proclaimed vampire, rather she is categorized as one by society. Harriet Brandt is the protagonist of the novel, and she is written to be made out as sort of a heroine; she is charming, and beautiful. However, the fact that she seems to weaken and kill anyone that comes in close contact with her, deems her a danger to society.
Le Fanu’s approach using gothic tropes is obvious here, as he uses the tabooed deviations from the sexual norm, to explicitly showcase the rise of the New Woman, chasing sexual freedom. One of the main differences between Dracula and “Carmilla” is the way each author interconnects the gothic trope of sexuality. Carmilla is portrayed as beautiful and majestic (Le Faun Chapter III). Whereas, Dracula is portrayed as a horrid, hairy and harmful looking man (Stoker Chapter II). While both Stoker and Le Fanu create creatures that both hold power over there victims, Le Fanu effectively uses Carmilla’s beauty, to portray her victims as more willing. Therefore, readers’ are lead to believe that Carmilla depends more on the act of seduction, referring to the very strong lesbian undertones. By drawing on this, Dracula is predominately a more vicious attacker. This separates Carmilla from her male counterparts as Carmilla is seducing victims in a very literal sense, opposed to Dracula whose victims are just under his trance. Therefore, what has already been alluded to in Carmilla’s case, becomes explicit in Stoker’s Dracula. This is apparent during Johnathan being tempted and repelled (Stoker Chapter III) by the three vampires. However, Dracula focuses mainly on facets of male homosexuality and male hegemony, and