Knowledge in Stevenson's The Beach of Falesa and Stoker's Dracula
Several works of late 19th century British imperial literature contrast the role of information with the role of superstition in colonial encounters. Looking at Stevenson’s “The Beach of Falesa” and Stoker’s Dracula, we see that information plays an important role in both British and non-British characters’ abilities to dominate over their opponents. However, each of these works differs in its treatment of rational and irrational forms of knowledge. In “The Beach of Falesa,” the natives’ irrational belief in demons stands in contrast to the practical knowledge of the Europeans, which is shown as superior to knowledge based on superstition. The role of information in “The Beach of Falesa” also demonstrates that the high intellect of whites allows them to dominate over the native people whose land they colonize. Stoker’s Dracula counters this point by illustrating that both Europeans and their non-European opponents can use information as a tool for domination and conquest. While “The Beach of Falesa” portrays rational forms of knowledge as superior to beliefs in magic or folklore, Dracula shows the importance of utilizing multiple types of information in defeating the enemy. Comparing Dracula to Stevenson’s “The Beach of Falesa,” Stoker uses the theme of information to challenge the idea of a clear separation between Europeans and the “others” they encounter in imperial experience.
In “The Beach of Falesa,” the protagonist Wiltshire asserts that the native Kanakas have a natural predisposition for superstitious beliefs. As he explores Case’s “devil’s bush,” Wiltshire tells the reader, “Any poor Kanaka brought up here in the dark, with the harp...
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...defeat the enemy. By avoiding an overly simplistic connection between natives and magic and Europeans and science, Stoker forces the reader to consider a difficult question: if rationality and information does not distinguish the British from the “other,” then what does? While we may not be able to definitively characterize Stoker as a pro- or anti-imperialist based on the role he gives these types of information in Dracula, his novel shows how information can blur the distinction between Europeans and the “other.”
Works Cited
Bolt, Christine. “Race and the Victorians,” in British Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century, ed. C.C. Eldridge. St. Martin’s Press: 1984.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. “The Beach of Falesa,” in Fictions of Empire, ed. John Kucich. Houghton Mifflin: 2003.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula, ed. Glennis Byron. Broadview Press: 1998.
This fictional character was soon to be famous, and modified for years to come into movie characters or even into cereal commercials. But the original will never be forgotten: a story of a group of friends all with the same mission, to destroy Dracula. The Count has scared many people, from critics to mere children, but if one reads between the lines, Stoker’s true message can be revealed. His personal experiences and the time period in which he lived, influenced him to write Dracula in which he communicated the universal truth that good always prevails over evil. Religion was a big part of people’s lives back in Stoker’s time.
...usion that race is deployed "in the construction of power relations."* Indeed a "metalanguage" of race, to use Higginbotham's term, was employed by colonial powers to define black women as separate from English women, and that process is deconstructed in Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, Anxious Patriarchs. However, Brown's analysis rests mainly on the shifting English concepts of gender and race imposed on colonial society by the white elite, becoming at times a metalanguage of colonial gender. Nonetheless, Brown's analysis of overlapping social constructions is instructive for understanding the ways gender and race can be manipulated to buttress dominant hierarchies.
This week’s articles carry a couple related, if not common, themes of imagined, if not artificial, constructs of race and identity. Martha Hodes’ article, “The mercurial Nature and Abiding Power of Race: A Transnational Family Story,” offers a narrative based examination of the malleable terms on which race was defined. To accomplish this she examines the story of Eunice Connolly and her family and social life as a window into understanding the changing dimensions of race in nineteenth-century America and the Caribbean, specifically New England and Grand Cayman. While Hodes’ article examines the construction of race in the Americas, Ali A. Mazrui’s piece, “The Re-Invention of Africa: Edward Sai, V. Y. Mudimbe, and Beyond,” looks at the construction of African identity. Although different in geographic loci, the two articles similarly examine the shaping influences of race and identity and the power held in ‘the Other’ to those ends.
Horsman, Reginald. Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.
In Jasper Jones, racial power has been reflected through the representation of certain groups and individuals of the 1960s and the conflicts that occurred. At the time in which the text was set being the 1960s, racial prejudice was evident in Australia, especially in rural areas that maintained a parochial and xenophobic society. Aboriginal people were not recognised as citizens of Australia and in some cases, not even as people. They were mistreated and typically seen as uneducated drunkards and criminals. Offspring of white colonists and Aboriginal people were regarded as ‘half-caste’ and were also not acknowledged as Australians. In the same context, there was a growing hatred and resentment towards Vietnamese immigrants due to the impac...
Tuffnell, S. (2011, March). "Uncle Sam is to be Sacrificed": Anglophobia in Late Nineteenth-Century Politics and Culture. American Nineteenth Century History, 12(1), 77-99.
...h. Best and Hariot take very different approaches to reaching their intended audience; Best is identified as the traveled and informed British man and Hariot as the “Americanized” expert with British roots and loyalties. Both knew where these distinctions should lie, and were very successful in their representation. They considered all topics and how they should stand in regards to them. Best included himself in every topic, without distinguishing between “me” and “you”. Hariot switched from distant expert, to loyal Brit from one paragraph to the next. He knew that he could not risk drawing a line between the two sides that left him on one or the other. He needed to expertly straddle the line between the new world and the old one. These works show the difference between one who reports the information of exploration and one who makes the discoveries a part of him.
...vitable, brutal warfare ushered in the eighteenth century. It seemed like colonist and Natives would never find a way to peacefully share the continent and coexist together. War over land was not the only issue. Despite the diversity between the Natives and the English, they became more as merchants that produced a well consumed market. Richter explains the luxuries that most aristocrats to even commoners got to have in their households such as: imported tea, coffee, sugar, rum, and other luxuries, but suddenly they began to see the world as a racial view between "red" versus "white". The balance that these two paths had was broken down when France (French and Indian War) ended and France was forced to leave the continent. The author gives specific details and explains how the Natives and the british hardened their racial views of each other. Richter helps you view
Moretti, Franco. Atlas of European Novel 1800-1900. Theoretical Interlude II. Geography of Plot. New York/London. Verso. 1998. 70. Print. 6 March 2014.
While the character of Renfield is ostensively extraneous to the central plot of Dracula, he fulfils an important role in Stoker’s exploration of the central themes of the novel. This paper will examine how Renfield character is intertwined with the three central themes of invasion, blood and otherness. Firstly, through Renfield’s inner struggle we learn that he is ‘not his own master’ (Stoker, 211). The theme of invasion is revealed by the controlling and occupying powers of Count Dracula. Secondly, the recurring theme ‘the Blood is the Life’ (Stoker, 121), is portrayed throughout the novel and has been interpreted through Stoker’s character Renfield. Then finally, a look at the social construction of the ‘other’ in Dracula and how, through Renfield, who is ‘unlike the normal lunatic’ (Stoker, 52), the Count emerges as the ‘other’ of all ‘others’.
Stepan, Nancy. The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain 1800-1960. Hamden, CT: Archon Books 1982.
Criticism on the Gothic novel has been plentiful, yet such work tends to view the Gothic novel within the constraints of genre rather than investigating its wider influence in the nineteenth century. “Gothic Archives” will track this influence, arguing that the Gothic novel indicates changing attitudes toward reading, and especially toward reading history, in the nineteenth century. Gothic novels such as Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), and the meta-Gothic of The Antiquary (1816) presume that authentic historical experience is difficult, if not impossible, to represent accurately, emphasizing in their plots the misunderstandings that result from attempts to read and write historical experience. It follows that the Gothic novel typically stages scenes of reading that delve into (often fictional) archival sources. Thus Gothic novels always situate authentic historical knowledge within the archive, requiring characters to excavate obscure source material such as letters, books, portraits, wills, and the like in order to discover what the Gothic construes as historical truth. In so doing, the Gothic novel proffers a historically oriented epistemology of reading, founded upon the affective possibilities of history writing, which challenges the considerations of truth and accuracy that inform traditional historiography.
To show how stories can affect colonialism, we will be looking at British authors during the time of colonialism. During this period of British colonialism, writers like Joyce Cary, author of “Mister Johnson” wrote novels about Africa and more specifically, a Nigerian named Johnson. Johnson in this novel is represented as “[an] infuriating principal character”. In Mr. Cary’s novel he demeans the people of Africa with hatred and mockery, even describing them as “unhuman, like twisted bags of lard, or burst bladders”. Even though Cary’s novel displayed large amounts of racism and bigotry, it received even larger amounts of praise, even from Time Magazine in October 20, 1952. The ability to write a hateful novel and still receive praise for it is what Chinua Achebe likes to describe as “absolute power over narrative [and...
One of the most baffling aspects of European interest in African people is the civilizations collective distaste of and fascination with people of African descent. The initial journey into Africa, and the planning that preceded it, spawned many of the most enlightening theories about African people. These theories, usually in support of African savagery and inferiority and in favor of European superiority and civility were based in the colonial mentalities of that time. Of the most notable theories is the idea that African religious system was pagan and that African people were inferior because of their darker skin pigmentation and “beast-like” nature. These theories dispersed rapidly across the globe, and even today people of African-descent collectively, however subconsciously, grow into them. Moving forward, how are these theories presented in post-modern works of literature? Equally so, how do authors weave the colonial and post-colonial mentalities into the framework of certain texts. Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage advances both colonial mentalities as well as post-colonial perspectives. The novel sheds light on traditional European colonial notions African savagery, the inferiority of African people as sub-human and commodities, and—at the same instant—presents the post-colonial perspective of the archetypical American Negro serving as a “middle man” between Europeans and Africans.
Myers, Norma. Reconstructing the Black Past: Blacks in Britain 1780-1830. Portland: Frank Cass Press, 1996.