Bram Stoker: A Brief Introduction To The Victorian Era

I. Brief introduction to the Victorian Era

The Victorian Era started when Queen Victorian inherited the throne in 1837 and lasted till 1901. Over those years, England underwent “technological, commercial, and social developments that fundamentally changed English life, replacing the world into which Victoria was born with one that looks much more familiar to the twenty-first-century eye.” (Nelson 1). According to Houghton “never before had men thought of their own time as an era of change from the past to the future.”(1). England was in the period of transition, the change from the Middle Ages to the modern period. The old doctrines and institutions were attacked and modified and a new order was proposed. The Victorians had to live between two words,

the old world that was losing clout and the new world that was gaining momentum. Houghton escribed it as the age of science, new knowledge, searching criticism, followed by multiple doubts and shaken beliefs (11). The society was becoming aware of the fact that their beliefs were no longer quite secure due to the colossal increase of knowledge; they questioned “to great points in moral and intellectual matters; where things which have been settled for centuries seem to be again brought into discussion” (Houghton 9). As a consequence, the emerging capitalism led to “a growing sense of isolation and alienation”(Punter and Byron 20) and disturbed the notions of human identity.

These notions became of particular interest to the Gothic writer. The Gothic novel originated as the result of changes in culture in the eighteenth century: “Gothic represented excess and exaggeration, the product of the wild and the uncivilized, a world that constantly tended to overflow cultural boundaries.” (Punter and Byron 7). Bram Stoker used the Gothic novel as a medium to present the dark cultural changes in the Victorian society. His Gothic novel Dracula, published in 1897, depicts the fears and anxieties of the society of that period. Bram Stoker found “the prototype of our modern vampire (q.v.) and created one of the most potent of all literary myths.” (Punter and Byron 230) The fears and anxieties he depicts are the fears of reverse colonisation and the foreign, the contrast between science and folklore, breaking the taboo of sexuality and homosexually, and the change of the traditional role of women. Stoker lets his characters use the modern technological advances of that period such as phonograms and Kodak Cameras; he also emphasises the modernity of its settings by setting the plot in Transylvania and England. A special focus is set on London as the centre

of the British society and imperialistic power. Count Dracula symbolizes the threats for the British society, “And this ‘foreigner’ blends just a little too easily into the modern Victorian world, strolling down Piccadilly in full daylight and watching the pretty girls pass by.” (Punter and Byron 232)