Compare And Contrast Dracula And Carmilla

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A. Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla are written very differently. Stoker chose to follow the storyline via journal entries and letters written by the characters, allowing us to see what is going on in the story from their points of view. This kept the audience from knowing more than the characters did and also showed the characters’ personal takes on the unfolding events. Le Fanu chose to show the story from the reflective writings of the main character, also limiting our knowledge to that of (one) character. Seeing things from only one perspective narrows things.
B. Both vampires were presented as being particularly inviting upon the first meeting between themselves and the protagonist of their respective novels. In chapter …show more content…

Bertha asked for Carmilla to stay at her house at their very first meeting. Carmilla was described in words that suggested something sexual about her (languid) throughout the novel and was very physically affectionate to her victim, Laura. She passionately told Laura of her passion for Laura on multiple occasions. While it was never suggested that anyone might find Dracula physically attractive, his way of drinking the blood of his female victims from their necks gave the story some sexual overtones.
C. The people of Victorian era England prized reason, science, forwardness, and progression above anything else. What they feared most in their society at that time, their sociophobics, was that society would regress and people would de-evolve into primitive societies once again. Around that time, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was well established and widely believed in England. Victorians believed that evolution from animals to humans was something that could be reversed and people could revert to animalism (Dracula, Atavism, and Decadence). The idea of atavism asserted that humans could regress back to more primitive forms (Dracula, Atavism, and

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