“The Blood of The Vampire” and “Nymphomania”: The Vampire as a Sex Symbol 19th century society was not as accepting of female sexuality as per se 21st century society. The female vampire in this story is representative of many things, however this theme will look at Harriet as a symbol of female sexuality. The novel will be looked at through a lense of Gustave Bouchereau. Bouchereau wrote a piece entitled “Nymphomania” in 1892. This theme will focus on the relationship between “The Blood of The Vampire” and “Nymphomania”. 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. The female figure, when paired with danger in literature, often points towards something …show more content…
He writes, “[a] habit of our times, which is far spread and most dangerous for our children, is, not to keep the dogs, which are now in almost every house, in the yard of the stables, but to allow them to come into the house and even into the bed” (296). In “The Blood of The Vampire”, Harriet is compared to a dog: “The girl put her head down on the pillow, and taking the corner of the linen case between her strong white teeth, shook it and bit it, as a terrier worries a rat!” (151). Bouchereau writes that nymphomania is transferred from dogs to children, by witnessing the dog's tendency to uncontrollably put his tongue on everything (296). Harriet is compared to a dog to further the idea that she is not able to be tamed; that she is animalistic, and has no control over her
The novel Dracula by Bram Stoker has plentiful examples of key concepts we have examined in class including: Purity and impurity, magical thinking, strong emotions such as disgust and shame, , formalization, and myth. In this essay I will summarize events that take place within the novel when the protagonists deal with Dracula and then relate these events to the key concepts to demonstrate why the characters view him as dangerous, and therefore something to be avoided completely.
Humphrey, Robert. "Ideals of the Victorian Woman as Depicted in ‘Dracula’." The Artifice. N.p., 11 Mar. 2014. Web. 6 May 2014. .
This essay explores the blurring of gender roles within Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Angela Carter’s The Lady of the House of Love, focusing on the presentation of a sexually assertive female and its threat to the patriarchal society, and the duality of the female characters as they are presented as enticing and thrilling, but also dangerous and somewhat repulsive.
Stevenson, John Allen. A Vampire in the Mirror: The Sexuality of Dracula. 2nd ed. Vol. 103. N.p.: Modern Language Association, 1988. JSTOR. Web. 6 Jan. 2014. .
Bram Stoker’s Dracula illustrated fears about sexual women in contrast to the woman who respected and abided by society’s sexual norms. Joseph Sheridan LeFanu’s “Carmilla” represented not only the fear of feminine sexuality, but also the fear of sexuality between women. John William Polidori’s “The Vampyre” showed society’s fear of sexuality in terms of the seductive man who could “ruin” a young girl.These texts are representative of vampire stories in the Victorian Era, and will be the focus here.
Vampires have been viewed with fear and fascination for centuries. Of all the vampires in literature, Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula is probably the most prominent vampire. Recently, there has been an upsurge of public interest in socially acceptable vampires, like the Cullens in the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer. This essay will contrast Stoker’s Dracula with Carlisle Cullen, one of the newer vampires from the Twilight series. They will be examined in terms of their origins and how they dealt with immortality.
After analyzing The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth is the ideal vampiric figure, supporting Thomas Foster’s perspective about vampirism from his book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor. In fact, Roger Chillingworth, presents many instances of how vampires might act and appear in literature. Even though he is not a literal vampire, it does not
In Bram Stoker's Dracula, the most blatant and powerful symbol is blood. He takes the blood that means so much to the believers of this legend and has it represent more than even they could imagine. Blood is the main object associated with vampires and vampirism. From a mythical standpoint, it is the basis of life for the vampires as they feed off of the blood of young, vibrant souls. From a more scientific standpoint blood is what would drip out of the corpse's mouth when family members would dig up their dead kin to check for the dreaded disease. Stoker takes the significance of this symbol and puts his own unique twist to the meaning of blood. He combines the traditional folklore of vampirism and the immense sexual undertones of the Victorian era to create a simply horrific tale which completely confuses the emotions of his readers. Stoker knew bloods importance in vampire history and used the overwhelming symbolism to convey his own personal lust and sexual obsessions. The scenes where Lucy is receiving transfusions; first from Holmwood, then from Seward, and the unforgettable vampire baptism between Dracula and Mina all have these very erotic, sexual feelings associated with them. What makes these so powerful is the combination of violence and sex. As a reader, you know that what Dracula is doing are horrific and wrong, but because they are so sexually described and associated you think you should enjoy them, but you can't. This is the confusion which stoker implements into his readers minds, especially ones of the Victorian era. This is why stoker used blood as the most important symbol in the novel; to create an intense horror that was not just in the words of the book, but in the minds of the reader.
Stoker uses phenomenal imagery to produce a late nineteenth century setting, located somewhere within eastern Europe. Transylvania, the infamous home to Dracula himself, is described in great detail in Harker’s journal. There, Stoker purposely and meticulously outlines Dracula’s castle and the surrounding town. Stoker manages to do this with a very gothic tone, immediately lowering the societal status of women. In conjunction with Dracula’s gothic tone comes the understanding of male and female traditional roles of the era. The reader sees that there is no hesitation differentiating between the two, as Stoker “ cast[s] men as rational, strong, protective and decisive…[and] women as emotional (irrational), weak, nurturing and submissive.” (Tyson, 82).
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.
It has long been said that the most explicit scene in Coppola’s film occurs right at the beginning of the plot during Jonathan Harker’s imprisonment in Dracula’s castle. Bram Stoker’s original work also managed to make this incident highly eroticized as well, featuring such words and phrases as “voluptuousness” and “wicked, burning desire;” these descriptions, coupled with actions that featured the vampires “licking [their] lips like animal[s],” creates an unmistakable aura of sensuality around the scene (Stoker 42-43). For Victorian writing, this is an almost obscenely sexualized bit of writing, as emphasized by the way Stoker incorporates the word voluptuous no less than three times in this scene, which was a common term associated with carnality in literature at that time. There is a certain amount of erotic anticipation associated with Jonathan’s involuntary reaction to the inevitable, which hints at latent sensuality.
...in excluding her from their undertakings, and include her again. However, now that she is infected with vampire blood and is capable of reading Dracula's mind, the men both fear and need her. They are forced to accept her in the public realm, but the quest is to eventually rid her of evil influence and restore her purity again, that is, to turn her back into the virtuous woman who will stay in the dominion of the home and not pose a threat to men.
...sitive depiction of their sexual relationship. For Mina, however, renunciation of Dracula's evil must include the renunciation of her own physical needs and desires. The roles played by social mores and conceptions of gender and sexuality are, in the end, more than incidental. Indeed, the difference between Victorian England and 1990s America causes the subtle -- but significant -- valuation of the connections between good and evil and women and sexuality in two in many ways similar texts.
Bram Stoker and Sheridan Le Fanu’s texts, Dracula (1898) and “Carmilla” (1872), use gothic tropes in similar ways to captivate readers with horror and terror. This essay will illustrate how, in comparison, both texts include gothic tropes: the New Woman, sexuality and setting, in order to provoke emotions and reactions from the readers. To achieve this, this essay will focus on the women that challenge traditional gender roles and stereotypes, and deconstruct each text in regards to the very strong undertones of homosexuality; specifically between Carmilla and Laura, and Dracula and Harker. By discussing the harshness and darkness of the environments described, including ruined castles and isolated landscapes; this essay will also explore the
The author’s op-ed piece was published in 2009, the very peak of the vampire contagion, where one could find these creatures wherever they looked. This pandemonium that arose from vampires is what drove del Toro and Hogan to pen “Why Vampires Never Die.” Furthermore, the purpose behind this essay is to give an abridged description of the past of vampires for the people who had become fanatics of the creatures. Also, this essay showed how vampires have persisted in pop culture. They suggest that vampires have been remade by diverse cultures at different times, and this change echoes that society's angst and concerns. The novelist’s imply that Stroker’s Dracula may mirror an exaggerated human on a prim...