Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Sexuality in dracula critical analysis
Original dracula homosexuality
Repressed sexuality in literature
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Sexuality in dracula critical analysis
For a large part of his life, Stoker knew the world famous actor Henry Irving. Irving is said to have even inspired the Dracula character. Brigitte Boudreau states that “Many have described the friendship as one where Irving – like the notorious Count-depleted Stoker both physically and emotionally, from the moment they met until Irving’s last breath.” (Boudreau, 44).This is interesting for Stoker may have even been a closeted homosexual who was in love with Irving even though he had a wife named Florence Stoker at the time. In fact he was so devoted to him that he wrote an entire “idolatrous biography” about Irving. However, he was more likely to have been a “homosocial” man which means that he mostly associated himself with other men instead
According to Mrs. Anne Bradstreet and Mr. Cotton Mather, I think Puritans have some admirable qualities, such as the relationship with the family - especially Mrs. Bradstreet with her husband, and she was trying hard to be a great mother. In addition, Mr. Mather was strong and powerful person even though his life was darkened by disappointment and tragedy. He tried hard to make a difference for his life.
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.
Bram Stoker was born into a lower-class Irish family in late 1847. He grew up with six siblings, at least four of which were brothers. Throughout his childhood, Stoker was an invalid, sickened with an unknown disease. Many days were spent listening to his mother tell stories of Ireland. It is thought that her stories played a large role in his writing (Stoker 5). Perhaps due to Stoker’s childhood illness and relationship with his brothers, his writing in Dracula exhibited a great deal of homosociality, the idea of same-sex relationships on a social level, rather than romantically. In the novel, Stoker introduces the idea of homosociality by creating a friendship and camaraderie between the main male characters.
Society today is more accepting of promiscuity than it was during the Victorian age. Religious and social customs have become more lenient since then. During this time period, these customs and traditions were enforced on the population harshly, as they were frowned upon and even punishable in some instances. Throughout Bram Stoker’s masterpiece, Dracula, it is clear that he sided with the social norm of waiting until marriage to pursue sexuality. He felt that going against the word of God was an evil practice. Because of this belief, he made the villains in his novel be violent demons. Bram Stoker’s portrayal of his characters’ violent and sexual driven actions throughout his novel, Dracula, illustrates the taboo of sexuality in the Victorian
His skin is pale, with slicked-back hair, lips blood red, and his pearly white teeth sharp; he’s Dracula, the original vampire. Bram Stoker’s famous novel Dracula, which was written in 1897, started the vampire craze that still lasts today. It has sparked numerous novels, movies, and songs across the world through the year, and its popularity is still growing. As times have changed, so have Dracula and his predecessors. Dracula is about Count Dracula meeting this human Jonathan Harker for business and Jonathan along with his friends learn that Count Dracula is a vampire. In the end Count Dracula is killed before he can reach the safety of Transylvania. Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula is the pinnacle of all modern concepts of vampires; however, the modern concepts of vampires are superior because of the traits of the vampire characters, the central idea of the storylines, and the historical context from which the vampires are based.
In Senf’s essay she points out that modern readers of Stokers novel are more likely to be surprised by this version of Dracula. In Stokers novel most of the action occurs in nineteenth-century London. Senf also shines a light on the fact that Stoker has made it so he cannot comment directly on his characters’ failures in judgment, or their lack of self knowledge with the type of narration selection he has chosen, Dracula as well is never allowed a voice in this novel.
strong that the two knights feel that it is worth more than life. At one point
This is an odd little book, but a very important one nonetheless. The story it tells is something like an extended parablethe style is plain, the characters are nearly stick figures, the story itself is contrived. And yet ... and yet, the story is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking because the historical trend it describes is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking.
One of Hawthorne’s best novels was The Scarlet Letter which presents a stable and sad tale of love and betrayal it was set in the context of the seventeenth-century, Puritan, New England. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s authorial intentions were to be the first American writer to explore hidden motivations of characters. His intentions of his beliefs were to show people that witchcraft wasn’t real and that Puritans were paranoid. Even though he had a Puritan descent he hated them with a passion he was ashamed of what his grandfather was and he added the w to his name through the shame of his history. Nathaniel Hawthorne wanted to present the puritans with a negative stigma. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. His family descended from the early Puritan settlers in America and had lived in Salem since the 1600s. One of his ancestors was a judge in the Salem witchcraft trials where many women were executed. Hawthorne's father was a captain of a ship, he died when Nathaniel was aged 4, and his mother became a virtual recluse. Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, where his best friends Franklin Pierce, who later became a president of the United States.
Stevenson's choice of certain words in the novel is extremely pertinent to a homoerotic reading of the text. In some Victorian circles (and most certainly not in others), certain words had very explicit homosexual connotations.
Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice explores the English social standards during the early 1800's. It shows the emphasis on marriage, or, namely, whom you marry. This story consists of three marriages. The first is socially based, the second is based on mutual admiration between two people, and the third represents one man's love and fight for a woman. This novel shows how marriage and love can arrest or improve social status and how love overcomes adversity.
Passion, wild emotion, and forbidden love: Nathaniel Hawthorne 's The Scarlet Letter. Published in 1850 and set in the seventeenth century, this is the story of the adulteress Hester Prynne (who has been forced to wear the scarlet letter A) and her lover in the early Massachusetts Bay colony. Pearl, Hester 's daughter, is a complex character whose primary function throughout the novel is symbolism. She is a living version of her mother 's scarlet letter, the physical consequence of sexual sin. As the story comes to an end, we learn details about the majority of the characters’ lives except one sassy damsel, Pearl. Hawthorne chose not to give more details about Pearl 's life, after her and Hester 's departure from Massachusetts, to ensure his intended themes throughout the novel went unaltered, and to maintain the underlying message of the original story as it compares to Mary Batcheller and her life.
In Bram Stokers Dracula, the Count Dracula represents a homosexual figure, which in Victorian times was seen as an inversion of the “typical” male figure. Diana Kindron states the Victorian idea of a homosexual was one of a male body being fused with a female soul. This is just what Count Dracula represents in Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula. By Amanda Podonsky, “The Count seems to be an exaggerated representation of the concept concerning ‘evils’ of abnormality and how it can spread and infect.” This says how Dracula represents the fear of Victorians at that time of something abnormal, in this case homosexuality.
Love is a train that everyone wants on, but nobody knows the trains schedule. In Jane Austen 's Love and Friendship, the speaker Laura is send letters to her friend 's granddaughter about her experiences in life. In Lord Byron 's Don Juan, a young Don Juan finds himself in various situations that all started because of a single woman. Both stories focus on the interactions between the main character and others, but the stories focus on different relationship types. Love and Friendship has an average number of interactions and focuses on all relationship types while Don Juan has few interactions and focuses on mostly on romantic relationships. Of these stories, the better relationships com from Love and Friendship.
In the late eighteeth century, notions of modesty and propriety meant that there were few ways in which sexuality could be discussed openly in a social setting. Gothic narrative served as an outlet. In Victorian Supernatural fiction, the anxieties surrounding homosexuality is a very prominent theme. However, due to the cultural status of homosexuality as taboo, the subject is heavily veiled in literature. In John Mead Faulkner's `The Lost Stradivarius,' the story appears to be about a young man's obsession with a wonderful musical instrument and a particular piece of music. Through carefully disguised metaphor's, the story conveys pertinent information regarding the reception of homosexuality in England during the Victorian period. Similarly, Henry James' psychological tale, `The Turn of the Screw' subtly deals with homosexuality as taboo, and elucidates the repercussions of sexual deviance in children.