How Does Bram Stoker Use Aestheticism In Dracula

Traversing the Darkness: Morality and Aestheticism within Bram Stoker and Joseph Conrad In Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the authors explore the issue of morality through the use of aestheticism. These two post-Romantic writers utilize intense and artful imagery to propel the plots of their narratives, never explicitly address the topic of morality in the books themselves. Instead, the narrators of each story stand on the periphery of moral judgement, providing the audience with description and allowing the audience itself to project their own morality onto the novel. Further, the narcissistic inclination for people to see themselves within others results in identifying with situations and characters in literature

Dracula’s description, both physically and sexually, creates a threatening atmosphere, painting Dracula as the story’s antagonist. When Dracula arrives in London, the idea that he can move undetected amongst the people due to his human attributes and turn others into vampire shows the effectiveness and spread of Dracula’s moral depravity. The concept of not being able to detect the threat, shows that anyone could be Dracula. As Dracula says at the beginning of the novel, “I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is” (Stoker 24), he wishes to partake in all facets of society, leaving nothing untouched. Coming from Transylvania to England represents an inverse imperialism, as the “other” comes into the imperial power and affects its people. Therefore, Dracula, as an allegorical disease of sexual deviance and moral depravity and his position as an imperial power, infects his colony changing its occupants into the “un-dead” and quite literally drains the colony of natural resources, in this case this resource is blood. This allegorical reading of Dracula calls for the audience to delve deeper than the gothic beauty on the surface of the novel, in order to perceive the intricate balance of morality