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.
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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.
Since the 19th Century, Bram Stoker’s Dracula has entertained its readers taking them to heights of excitement in the climax
Horsman, Reginald. Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.
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Podonsky, Amanda . "Bram Stoker's Dracula: A Reflection and Rebuke of Victorian Society." RSS. Student Pulse: The International Student Journal, 1 Jan. 2010. Web. 6 May 2014. .
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Moretti, Franco. Atlas of European Novel 1800-1900. Theoretical Interlude II. Geography of Plot. New York/London. Verso. 1998. 70. Print. 6 March 2014.
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...
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.
Myers, Norma. Reconstructing the Black Past: Blacks in Britain 1780-1830. Portland: Frank Cass Press, 1996.
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