Compare And Contrast Dracula And Carmilla

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

two of Dracula, John Harker was nervous when he arrived at Castle Dracula – until the count appeared and, with much warmness, welcomed him inside and showed himself to be very hospitable. Carmilla also drew people in and made them want to be closer to her.

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

Decadence). The plot of Dracula played heavily on the sociophobics of the era. Dracula represented eastern Europe, being that he was a Transylvanian nobleman. He was animalistic in appearance and nature and was barbaric by Victorian's standards – what they would call a degenerate. The war between the Western men and Dracula played on the Victorian fear that some barbaric society, possibly from the east, would invade and undo all of the progress that had been made. Once Dracula arrives in England, he begins his assault on Lucy Westenra. The five vampire hunters and Mina fight him using modern technology, representing the fight between barbarism and progress. They use such technologies as blood transfusions, phonographs, type writers, and trains in their fight against him - all examples of the most modern technologies of the time. In the end, Dracula, the past, is defeated by the modern era. Another sociophobic of Victorian era England was sexuality (Carmilla powerpoint). There was a strong belief in that period of history that women did not experience sexual feelings at all or at least they experienced very little compared to their male counterparts. In the novel, Carmilla is very physical towards Laura in a way that seems almost like sexual advances. An example is when Carmilla and Laura are sitting and Carmilla is staring into Laura's eyes, blushing, breathing heavily and holding Laura's hand. Moments like the one just depicted went against the taboos on homosexuality and on women having sexual desire.