Sexuality And Sexualism In Dracula By Joseph Bram Stoker's Dracula

Over the centuries vampires have been creatures of mystique and intrigue to our society. They represent danger, death, lust, and allure. They are immortal, and often sexualized beyond the bounds of the puritanical values that still guard modern society. Due to these traits they are practically irresistible to the reader and have fascinated society for centuries. While vampirism can take on multiple forms, with each form possessing its own specific set of traits that allow it to successfully prey on the living, the official definition for a vampire in literature is: “The vampire as ghost or revenant; as monster or deformity; and as reanimated corpse, revenge-seeking emanation of the dead. (Huggan, 192) Early mythological vampires date back centuries

Carmilla, the title character and the vampire of the work, is especially important to the definition of vampirism in literature, not only because she threatens to take young women from their religious societies, but also because her victims are all women. A vampire’s victim is often synonymous with his or her lover. Both sex and homosexuality are considered taboo in Western society, because it presents both of these topics, the work is especially deviant from the time in which it was written. Le Fanu in particular was inspired by the near obsession the British Empire had with morality in the 17th century. While sex and sexuality was not necessarily suppressed during the time, and most of society was beginning to come to terms with their own agreement the topic was still banned from polite conversation. Homosexual acts, like those depicted in Carmilla were still considered extremely taboo, and often times illegal, as homosexuality was a crime punishable by death up to ten years before the work was written. Carmilla, like most of the other works in the time it was written is the product of strictly religious society and represents the amoral. Carmilla however was exceptional in the fact that the vampire is female, rather than a male vampire that has remained present throughout most vampire-centered work since their creation. Women were

Warped significantly from its original form by the modernization and challenging of the belief system of the western world, Salem’s Lot by Stephan King is a modern twist on classic vampire horror. “As if Dracula came to the 20th century” as said by the author of the work. The elements of a gothic-vampire work remain present throughout the work, there is a vampire, a pure being-in this case a quaint town with little to no access to the outside world, and the series of events which allow the vampire to gain power over the residents of the town. Religion has been all but removed from this work, and no longer bound by puritanical morals, the work is noticeably more sensual than its predecessors. Much like Joseph Le Faunu, Stephan King wrote the book to object to a type of corruption. But rather than write about a religious corruption, which-due to a decreasing influence of religion on the modern world, was non-existent, King focused on government corruption. The characters and events of Salem’s Lot had a lot to do with King’s fear for the future of the United States, much like Le Faunu’s motivation for writing Carmilla. The work centers around the same themes from Carmilla, including: good vs. evil, deceit,