Oral Dracula From A Reader And Femminist Perspective

Bram Stokers “Dracula” an oral presentation

Good Morning/Afternoon Today I will review Bram stokers’ 1897 novel Dracula, the approaches I will be using to reviewing the novel include the world centred approach, and the reader response approach exploring the themes of reader positioning and the authors intented reading and reader, then focusing on the world centred approach of the feministtheory.

reader centred

-attention on the reader

-different readers from different social, cultural, religious backgrounds ect, will being and interpret different meaning to text, reflecting from there own backgrounds and life experiences

-perception of real life and the way the text presents personal or human life experiences

world centred approach

-derives from a range of sources

-Marxist

-feminist

-post cononel and past structuralist theories

-covers universal themes...eg war, love , hate, good vs evil.

First we must look at Dracula from the reader response approach, Wolfgang Iser said: "A text can only come to life when it is read, and if it is to be examined, it must therefore be studied through the eyes of the reader"

This realism of this quote is evident within Bram Stokers’ Dracula. As we are introduced to Stokers’ characters they appear to almost come to life, with the majority of the novel being told in the form of journal entries and letters by the main characters Jonathan, mina, and Dr Seward, through the other characters opinions and descriptions we are positioned through , and purely by the authors inteded reading to obtain the negative feelings that the tittle character “Dracula” although his appearance in the text are few, the reader is immediately brought aware of the threat of his supernatural presence which is evident throughout the novel, an example of this is in a quote from the text describing draculas’ unnatural presence, the description is as follows “His eyes were positively blazing,.The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames of hell-fire blazed behind them. His face was deathly pale, and the lines of it were hard like drawn wires, the thick eyebrows that met over the nose now seemed like a heaving bar of white hot metal”. Unlike Dracula the human and moral characters created to appeal to the reader, within each character are characteristic are present that the reader can no doubt find and relate to people in there lives. Stoker...

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...him in the end...Mina describes herself as “heroic”(98) yet she is shown within the text to several times be drawn by the counts power. The character Lucy is also portrayed as a sexual benign or something that men wish to possess, she has three male suitors and is described as looking “sweet as ever”, and other constant description depicting her beauty as if she would be meaning less without it. Lucy was Draculas first victim, she was weak and easily taken under the power of the vampire, with evidently caused her death...., only to have her rise days later, , Lucy was transformed into a vampyress again bringing upon the sexual role of the vampiresses throughout the novel, this is shown in the text when the three men are waiting for Lucy to rise from her tomb so that they may killer the evil un-dead suductress Lucy and put her soul to rest, when she returns Lucy attempts to lure Arthur to her, using her power of seduction.

To concluded the main role of women through out Bram Stokers novel, is that of and evil, sexually aggressive being, and the only triumph that is achieved by women during the book is when Mina help to destroy the count.... thank-you for your time and your patience