The British Empire entered the age of modernity at the turn of the 20th century on the heels of the industrious Victorian Era (1837-1901), which had been a time of rapid technological advancement. By the end of the 19th century there was...

The Other is often used to mean the hostile, the dangerous, the deadly. However, the term itself makes no mention of this, it can just as easily refer to the inexplicable or simply taboo, something that humans are notorious for attempting to...

Both Waters and Stoker use narrative point of view to enhance their novels. This is achieved by the use of striking openings, the inevitable elements of unreliable narration in both novels, and how this links to themes of uncertainty as well as...

In periods of cultural insecurity, when there are fears of regression and degeneration, the longing for strict border controls around the definition of gender, as well as race, class, and nationality, becomes especially intense. If the different...

The title character in Bram Stoker's "Dracula" is a sexually perplexing figure. Nietzche wrote of a creative being called the "berman", or "superman". Men who overcome their handicaps and identify with God are potential supermen; as models of this...

The era of industrialization ushered in new ways of disseminating and creating art. Along with technological innovation come the anxious reservations of aesthetic purists. These reservations stem from wariness about the dehumanizing effect of...

The issue of social class and its effects upon society in Victorian-era Europe is a theme central to Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. On the surface, the novel seems to be a story of a battle between good and evil; upon further analysis, it could be...

The fantastic [...] lasts only as long as a certain hesitation: a hesitation common to reader and character, who must decide whether or not what they perceive derives from "reality" as it exists in the common opinion. At the story's end, the...

Bram Stoker's use of setting to establish some of the key gothic elements to the novel Dracula proves to be crucial in developing both suspense and intrigue. This can be studied particularly closely with reference to Jonathan Harker's narrative of...

The Absence of Amsterdam: Confounding Principles of Presentness in Stoker’s Dracula

Doctor Abraham Van Helsing is an intriguing and somewhat problematic character on several levels. According to critic Martin Willis the introduction of Van Helsing...

In his novel Dracula, Bram Stoker’s characters are deeply disturbed by the existence of the vampire. The notion of a creature that is both living and dead challenges their sanity by forcing them to question those things which they had previously...

Within the pages of Bram Stoker’s <i>Dracula</i>, the author explores concepts of love, darkness, and sexuality as well as the theme of good versus evil. The most powerful theme surrounding the infamous vampire, however, is that of...

In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the title character is omnipresent. To the protagonists of the novel, the difficulty of escaping his power and ultimately defeating him is often overwhelming because he is always with them in some way, shape, or form....

In the first fifteen chapters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula the author examines and subtly comments on the role of women in Victorian England through the actions and words of Mina and Lucy. In particular, evidence from the passage that appears on pages...

Gothic architecture thrived during the high and late medieval period. The upper echelons of the feudal system were so impressed by the looming cathedrals that they had their castles built in the same Gothic style. These castles are striking yet,...

Throughout the Gothic novel Dracula, Stoker uses symbology and imagery to reveal social anxieties and fears of the late Victorian era, for example the use of animalistic description and blood. Wilde, in his own Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian...

In the Gothic novel Dracula, Bram Stoker largely presents good and evil in stark contrast in a very simple manner. This perhaps mirrors Victorian views of good and evil as opposed yet inextricable, a strict view of right and wrong in a religious...

“Mere “modernity” cannot kill.” The year is 1897, and European culture is changing. Skepticism about both Christianity and the introduction of Darwinism into common thought is current, and the concept of what we now call “feminism” is planting its...

The Victorian Era produced a community organized strictly into stratified classes and social positions. Men dominated this cultural structure, with women acting as their inferior counterparts. Women were bound to an expectation of servitude,...

The rise of British Imperialism during the 1800’s created a new sense empowerment among English citizens and redefined British culture in the Victorian Era. During this time, British imperialists valued personal lineage and emphasized the...

The presentation of the Gothic has spanned the centuries, gripping each and every reader with its dastardly plot and unsuspecting victims. The Castle of Otranto, written in 1764 by Horace Walpole, ‘is generally regarded as the first Gothic novel’...

This chapter from the novel ‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker includes an abundance of conventions typical of the Gothic genre, primarily employed here through Stoker’s characterisation of Johnathan Harker, Count Dracula and the three seductive women....

In the novels Dracula by Bram Stoker and The Purple Cloud by M. P. Shiel, the conscious efforts by characters to preserve their humanity and align themselves with others act as barriers to their pursuit of personal fulfillment. Indeed, our lives...

The Gothic is undeniably intertwined with transformative states, both literally, such as with the presentation of supernatural beings that lie between life and death, and also thematically, with the idea of transitional time periods and settings....